Wordsmiths

Workshop tomorrow and a poem

2009-11-15T17:08:00.002-05:00

Eric,

Tomorrow in the faculty commons from 7 to 8:30, we're hosting a spoken word workshop that is going to be given by staff member and spoken word/slam poet Michelle Jackson. The workshop will focus on delivering poetry to a live audience. Try to come with a poem you want to work on, one that is possibly memorized, although that doesn't matter.

the poster:

and here's a poem I'm working on for verse writing:

Ode to Myself

1.
I am supposed
to be a giving
mafia-body to the rapids.

Last night I was the thin
wings of a butterfly and tonight I will be the tenuous
skin in between the tongue and jaw.

I am meant
to be a bag of uncompleted
"when I grow up I want
to be"s.

Last night I was Mae West,
and tonight I will be Sophia Loren.
Next week's schedule is to be announced.

I am told
to be a gaudily painted,
reproduced
ragdoll.

2.
I am
Chaos'
orphan
child a bacterial
blistering growth
in fomenting fragmented
spaces without ebullient
lips and I am
their jaunty
megaphone
spouting
space
fillers.

A POST!

2009-10-20T14:47:00.002-04:00

Eric,

A prose poem for y'all during break. I was thinking about making the middle part have line breaks and be more in Billy's voice. I wrote this for verse writing, as a "creative response" to Native American writings on poetry. There was a quote in one of the essays we read that this came from. It was:

"Beneath the map imposed by science is a map in the blood that takes us back to a more original knowing—that we are not a separate creation."

Billy Fulson: Cartographer

Today in preschool Billy Fulson scribbled a map of his world. Prior to this, he had no experience in cartography. The teacher gave the assignment. Magic markers and pieces of paper were passed out, which is all you need for cartography. The kids began, tried to present experience with geographical boundaries. Billy wanted to show this:

where the color-swirler, image-creator is when he watches the bigger people form lines and pass the ball and hurt each other with his dad—moments of familial good-fortune and twining; where his mother sits in the good green armchair and stares at pieces of paper all pushed together when dad isn't home and she actually has a smile (a smile!) and he can walk to her and she will pick him up and kiss him so much it hurts his face but he doesn't care because it's his mother; where his mother takes him on weekends in the park with Anaximander, their dog, that part with the box of sand and the other kids who laugh with him and want to play on the swing with him even though his mom won't let him because it's dangerous but they still want to play with him; where his mother leaves him everyday and promises she will be back to to get him again, and he always worries even though he knows somehow he shouldn't; where he goes behind the house, inside a cleaner corner of the old red-chipped stable that his mother told him she was in when her and her father visited the house and that at that time a snake fell on her hair—in there he has put a small table and a chair (that his parent's have been looking for), and when he sees his parent's eyes getting smaller and mouths moving faster there he sits in the silence of self-constructed spaces that are filled by moments you don't want to be a part of, that you live within even when and though you aren't in them, that are so much more of a home than where you keep your head at night.

Making her rounds, the teacher saw Billy's scribbles and didn't know what they meant because scribbles are subjective. Even though Billy's teacher tried so hard to intertwine with the singular subjectivity of children she could not, just as she couldn't combine with that of her husband who was an architect and planned public restrooms on interstate highways. She told him he should do something grander, better. He told her he liked what he did; it was important. She looked at Billy's scratches of experience and told him "Good job. Keep at." But none of it she understood.

Trans-Atlantic Post

2009-09-25T19:38:00.003-04:00

Hey, Guys. I can't wait to be back with you all in the Spring! I'm so glad the first open mic went well! Here's something I wrote over the summer.

With love,

Rakhel

We climed avalanching dunes

ground so solid from afar

ground solids beneath our feet.

And I collected

rocks to keep forever

to break open and know completely

tamed by hammer and reason.

And quarts is not a crystal.

Quartz is NOT a crystal

My 9 year old body tensed and pulsing

ignited by the friction of your

rock knowledge

against mine.

I knew crystals

from the Hall of Gems and Minerals

from the Museum of Natural History

from engagement rings

from common sense, motherfucker,

common sense.

So I ran to my mother

to verify my truth and

cheek pressed against the unconditional soft pouch between her

belly button and her pelvis

inhaling the sharp smell of woman I lacked and loved and loathed as a girl

she told me

quartz is a crystal.

Quartz IS a crystal.

All summer insurmountable dunes sank and shifted beneath me.

A Bust of Eleanor Leo

2009-08-27T15:26:00.002-04:00

Eric,

A Bust of Eleanor Leo
Eleanor Leo lives in Euclid, Ohio. In high school her favorite subject was geometry.
Now 68, she sees the wit of a chaotic universe in that detail.
Her cats, Pythagorus and Leibniz, watch her examine her old workbooks--rhombuses and rays, theorems and equations.
They sit on her couch, assembled, she figures, in some sort of geometric pattern she cannot remember.

Whether it was the numbers or aesthetics that had recently brought her to be obsessed with her old workbooks she didn't know.
A labyrinth of right angels and -gon endings, of degrees and therefores, of rays and parallels--this was her home,
not the carefully constructed abode she inhabited, built to include all triangles
because they are strongest of all forms. This she remembered,
that three lines were more powerful than six, eleven, twenty-three. That fact, along with the Fibonacci sequence,
that beautiful and natural
string of 1,1,2,3,5...

Life was managed by a schizophrenic and bipolar figure. The years had taught
her this. But she was trying to forget it, to re-teach
herself the spurious mathematics of order.

68 and with the afterimage that memory garners of her husband.
A student of the universe's wit, of 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34
- seashells, pineapple, cauliflower, rabbits:
Eleanor Leo.

Wordsmiths' goals. Important.

2009-08-26T05:38:00.004-04:00

Eric,

Wordsmiths goals:

To provide an outlet for creative, poetic energy by way of group meetings that double as workshops, open mics where group members and non-members can perform their work (poetry, songs, etc.), and pamphlets where group members works is featured. The last two of these, the open mics and pamphlets, serve two further goals: to increase Vassar awareness of Wordsmiths and, more importantly, to increase poetry's place on campus rather than just in the classroom. Let us make poetry virile and vibrant by saturating the school with a verse that is not magnetized to condescension and academia, that, in how it is delivered (voice, paper, etc.), embraces and, crucially, beckons an audience.

Beckons an audience. This is a key point. Last year, this was a problem, that we had so few members at our meetings and such sparse attendance at our open mic. We need to meet and talk seriously about how we'll approach this. For now, I have a few ideas:
-Use either the measly money we have or appeal to the speakers fund and bring a poet to Vassar.
-Bookmarks we make with poems on them that we put in the library. "Wordsmiths and our blog url will be on them.
-More events. At one point we were discussing doing something with VCPUNX. This should occur. We need monthly or so open mics. Continue and expand the poetry at the FLLAC.
-More small publications. Our material should litter the campus. People should it when they see it.
-Get English faculty somehow involved, have them at events or have them be leaders at workshops we organize. Something.
-Involve other literary groups and many music groups on campus with our events. People at Helicon and Write Club should be at our open mics.
-Someone talked about t-shirts at one point. That has some potential. They'd need to stick out and be well designed.
-t-shirt ideas:
-Someone said something about putting quotes on t-shirts. I like that. Let's make the quotes big and put them on t-shirts by cutting cardboard to create a guideline. Then spraypaint or just paint the letters in. Each shirt, this way, will be unique.
-Shirts with a logo on them. I've been working on a new one.
-Just WORDSMITHS in big, black, bold type. All uppercase. It should be askew. We could split up "word" and "smiths."
-Get coverage in the Misc. about Wordsmiths, our pamphlets. This we can definitely do.

I like having our pamphlets be themed; adds a unity to them. All together, we should make a list of ideas for pamphlet theme ideas. Here are a few I've thought of:
-Poems all in the form of romantic classified ads.
-In the same vein of this, poems in the form of obituaries, missed connections.
-All poems inspired by one painting.
-or movie, song, etc.
-All poems in one poetic form that are on the same subject. E.g. haikus on auto repair.
-All poems in the style of same poet or poetic movement.
-Poems that all retell greek myths
-Maybe all poems from one single greek myth.
-Poems on subjects: love, religion, etc.
-Poems all on one experiance. E.g. the last physical contact in a relationship.
-Poems on the first time having done something. E.g. riding a bike, first time to an aquarium, etc.
-Poems all written while on some kind of substance--could have sections titled the name of the substance the poems written under. Intro to it could remind readers of the grand tradition we are following in by writing substance-ridden, that of Coldrige and his opium, Yeats and his mescaline, Dylan Thomas and his alcohol.
-Poems that all use the same words, but in each poem they are ordered differently.
-We're Vassar. Let's do something with Elizabeth Bishop.

A note I wrote myself on the pamphlets:
Think of each pamphlet as an episode of This American Life: the poems unified by their topics, but each having a distinct, singular, and subjective take--so that the poems, read together, give a generalized and hopefully valid view of some facet of the human experience. Hopefully, people will at least read them. And that, getting people to read them , is our most basic and, I think, difficult goal.

Our open mics need to be differentiated from other ones. We need to apply Seth Godin's "Purple Cow" theory: everyone would remember a purple cow if they saw one because all other cows are white and black. We could have some weird prize for the audience's favorite person. There has to be something remarkable about our events. Ideas for how to make our open mics memorable:
-Provide odd prize.
-Reserve some public space. Tell no one. Have spontaneous poetry reading or open mic. Plant people?
-Have style nights, where all work read must be Romantic, Modernist, etc.
Crafting a remarkable and memorable open mic is vital to garnering Wordsmiths followers, people who regularly attend and take part in our open mic. Ideas for how to "brand" the open mic are coming slow to me. We'll talk about it.

We are a spoken word poetry group and we need to address that. We need to work on how we perform our material. I know I do. We need to help each other get better. This is the key goal of Wordsmiths: helping each other get better at writing and performing poetry.

What we should do is flood the school with pamphlets and posters starting a week or so before an open mic. Not just tabling. We should keep putting throughout the whole week so that the posters seem new. We could make a number of different posters and roll out one each day or so. We need to have one of those big banners in the DC and Retreat.

-Eric

Oh. School. Yeah, that.

2009-08-22T07:15:00.002-04:00

Eric:

I changed the logo up top. Hope you like it. I know I haven't been commenting as much as I should on posts and there does seem to be a lack of them on most posts. We'll deal with that when school begins. But this blog was a good idea. Let's keep with it!

Wordpiece for a wordsmith

2009-08-08T22:56:00.004-04:00

Hey all, just whipped these lines together as kind of an appreciation of lit's violent magic. Feedback's great; hope summers are being enjoyed.

Wordpiece for a wordsmith

Jordan Kaye

Words.
The Invisible Word Man
eats porridge so that his incisors remain an apt means of impingement.

Inside incisions produced by verse which rests in the flesh of my arm,
virulent verse forcing its way through channels that collapse capriciously.

Vitality inverted, my lifeblood is being vacuumed; The Oreck is engaged by the page and his plain print siblings.

How funny a thing to succumb to. Just verse. Verse plain. Verse Simply. Strictly Verse that happens to be the most utterly dominatory force that I’ve so far encountered.

Collins and an unclad Emily are ushering the way out for me- that me which is contained within the air sealed realm of the dust drop.
Yes, Big words fare well against waterless structures, the interstitial tissue dust giving under the lecherous legacy of grammarians and gilded ghosts.

Thanks, Harper Lee, because you took the fight right out of me.

Train ride to the city

2009-07-19T01:41:00.003-04:00

Jordan Kaye

Hope the summer season suits those who could be suited. Any feedback on this one is welcomed.

I was told by the conductor
that I had purchased a peak ticket
for an off-peak train ride,
and when we had bid each
our post-rush farewell,
I slipped into the many footed
transient oblivion of commutopia.
How was I supposed to know
about Armani Asphyxiation,
or a myriad of killer couture
clad puppets whose masters
are rendered muscleless,
incapable of enacting movement-
Particle to particle, pulsing,
panging, collision, which I guess
only I care about.

I Killed My Plant

2009-07-15T18:05:00.002-04:00

I killed my plant

Jordan Kaye

I killed my plant
while tending to yet another.
I killed my friend and his brother.
I learned to laugh again while leaning
on something holy like
the empire state or something.
I laughed and laughed as I
lent my gaze to the
cuerpos destrozados,
the flaccid forms of my kin.
Gunned down by yours truly,
they were teeming with neurosis.
These victims of mine
were teeming with objectivities-
observations far too fine.

I needed something holy- like
to lay my thoughts to rest,
something to silence and suffice,
to germinate my siege of the botanic.

The speechwriters, those fucking scoundrels,
never got the chance
to address the state of my union.
I killed my plant.

“I can’t come down,
it’s plain to see.
I can’t come down,
I’ve been set free.”
--J. Garcia

Reader's Digest, "Untitled Interview"

2009-07-14T01:18:00.005-04:00

Jordan Kaye

Reader’s Digest

I used to do stuff,
I forgot to have fun, though.

Fun, as it was,
did not bother me much-
not as nearly as its lacking.

Its lacking, lacking, lacking,
yet longing lethargic impulses
prescribe a failure, hacking
away and the- bits of
dignified little me pieces
hail toward the ground,
with a smacking, hacking,
finality.

Loss of nothing and nothing more,
yet longing lethargic impulses
prescribe a better future for skin and bones,
twice as good as once before.

This is very rough and unedited... Reminds me of a mix between a Zen Teacher ans student's Koan exchange and something Ashbery. Please comment if so compelled!!

How do you want your yawn to sound?

Like, you know, something that's good, that just speaks and sounds exactly like how you want the audience to perceive what you're saying.

How do you want your breath to sound?

I would say like a screw being fitfully passed over a sea- weathered pane of glass.

How exactly does that sound?

Ssscrrreetchawath, wreth, erth, hask.

Take that and pitch shift whatever aural construction swiftly situated itself in the space betwixt your eyes—where you can feel the input from both ears meet in middle.

And just why do you?

Why do I what?

Why do you persist on insisting upon saying, doing, thinking in the precise way in which you do? Why does your (mind) feel so very safe with whichever operation is proceeding right now, sir, just why are you so safe?
What, why, I, do, just I know not.
I, me, yours knows a lot less than
she said.
Less than that’s what she said would be
a whole lot more dignified,
not to mention its initially taut moral
furnishings in a withering,
worn idiomatic wilderness.

Ok then.

Jawbreaker, La broma de las palomillas, and ship

2009-07-07T23:46:00.007-04:00

Jordan

Jawbreaker

I have the feelings, the word seeds stemming in my head.
I’d like to make them sound pretty before I’m dead.
It’s easy at first, until you start to thirst,
for eloquence by the pitcher,
‘tis the primal itcher,
yes more, and more,
I do implore.

Give me:
One cherry pop,
two gum drop,
three sugar sticks,
and four billion licks
to get to the center
of what I’m trying to say.

La broma de las palomillas

Estoy afuera de mi tristeza
¿Puedo quedar aquí contigo por un minuto más?
No, nunca, no,
responden las palomillas, los grillos, el abismo
que me envuelven esta noche.
¿Hay esperanza en la nada,
La nada, la nada, la nada?

No hay una respuesta.
¿Sí viajo dentro del mar
Que queda entre ahora y
La muerte, entonces,
Te encontraré?

La piel salta de mi cuerpo,
cayendo, creando un charco
Sin fondo.

Sin fondo,
Mis posesiones perdidas, mis deseos interminables,
Infernales.

Estoy muriendo ahogado,
Hundiendo más y más en este afluente fétido.
La memoria incesante, eternal,
El agua con el olor y la suavidad
De tu caricia.

¡La decepción, la gran decepción!

Que me salgas,
Me olvides,
Para que yo pueda enganche mis manos alrededor
del margen de esta cloaca tan desesperada-
Para que llegue al refugio de este abismo infinito.

Sin embargo, las palomillas,
aquellos insectos putrefactos,
Se ríen de mi lucha elemental.
La certeza de mi disposición:
NADA MÁS QUE UNA BROMA SINIESTRA

Siempre, siempre una broma,
como la que sermonean los árboles,
Los niños, y tu mirada primordial.
Todo este va a marchitarse.

Todo este va a marchitarse,
Por fin, descansando debajo del mundo.

Por fin, todo sigue descansando debajo del mundo.
Y mi cuerpo destrozado, pero siempre respirando-
El abismo infernal.

ship

what lies within
its bowels
but You and i?

what lies within
its jowls
but You and i?

what lies within
its scowles
but You and i?

Also, if anyone's interested/ wants to perform , swing by The Cup on Thursday, July 16th:

http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/event.php?eid=100518210822

a condensed open mic, blantant self-promotion, and interesting websites

2009-06-19T23:53:00.010-04:00

Emma:

1) At open mic nights, I have a habit of keeping a pencil in my hand, and letting it go while I listen. So I guess this is a possible precursor to rough drafts. Perhaps full poems will result. Does anyone else do this? Similar pages, or completely different?
Also, if you all are ever in New London on a Thursday night, go to the bean & leaf cafe.

1)I have a poem here: sotto voce right now. Each year they also publish a print anthology, and while poems are up you can vote on them to be in an annual anthology. If you could take the time to read it, and, IF you think it should be printed, vote for it, I would so appreciate it. Also, poke around at some of the other work, and vote for things you like, and consider submitting. It is a nice place.

3) A friend sent me a bunch of word-related links the other day. If you haven't seen them before, you may find some interesting.
one word
hangout
graphic poetry

Joan of Arc in Dreams and Time Machines

2009-06-19T13:30:00.004-04:00

Eric,

This isn't a poem but I'm going to post it anyway. I would really love some feedback on this. Right now, it is in a really rough state. I wrote it at 4 in the morning when I couldn't sleep. Just wrote it straight through. There are no edits to it yet. I've been reading some Donald Barthelme so that's probably why it is sort of odd.

"Good morning," he whispered to his pored face. He enjoyed his breath turning the mirror white. Although he never wrote on the fogged glass, he wished he did, and he always tried to think of witty things to put there so that when he came out of the shower there would be something pithy to amuse him and keep his mind off of his cold body. He never did.

Sitting in his idling car in the garage, he thought of Tess and of her curves. His Honda didn't have curves like that. Neither did his wrists, which he was staring at. Rather, only she did because they were her curves and because she owned them just like she owned the pictures they took together in New Mexico last August as the sun was hot and they sweated making love in the hotel room before seeing the desert and its rockfaces. He told her they weren't as pretty as she was. She told him that's bullshit. They're gorgeous.

That day the highway was packed and NPR was fundraising so he listened to a mix he made last december. It played their favorite songs. He threw it out the window and felt stupid because he actually liked some of those songs and really wouldn't have minded listening to them. "So this is it."

Work was shit but it always was. He would have quit but he made a lot of money and that allowed him to enjoy the good weed he never had in college. Tess still had his bong though. On a post-it note he wrote "Get bong from Tess" and stuffed it in his pocket where an engagement ring, a pack of cigarettes, and a boxing knife kept it company. The bong would never be gotten and the boxing knife never used. The cigarettes would be discarded after the usual mind palpitations over their cancer and his death but a new pack would take their place soon after. He never had the balls or whatever to quit. A constant theme in his life that was, never quitting. Sometimes he thought that's why she left. It wasn't why.
She left because he wouldn't stop talking about Joan of Arc, how he saw her when he slept every night and made love to her in his dreams, which he didn't believe were dreams, which he believed were real. In dreams, he told her, you can meet the dead. But he was coming to love Joan and Tess could understand that because she filled their breakfast and dinner conversations: how her chain-mail felt against his bare skin, stuff like that. And after he started getting books about her from the library, she got worried and got him a shrink who he never really went to. He just went to the library and read more, eventually deciding to build a time-machine because dreams were no longer enough and the weed never really brought him to her. The tools and equipment for the machine came in the mail last month and when they did and she saw them she left, knowing what was coming. She took the bong, needing it, as well as his weed.

The time machine didn't work like the ad said. It just made noises. And blinked. He left it on when he slept. It was soothing. After that night's dream of her and her christian lips, he decided that suicide would be a good idea. He bought a boxing knife, thinking it would be quick that way. For days it slept in his pocket, as he slept more and more, trying to be with her always. Tess would call sometimes and break his dreams. She needed to get her stuff. He stopped picking up.

Driving home, he decided it was time. The impact wasn't bad. Metal against metal. Sleep. Joan. Blackness.

A dispatch from the fringes of Wordsmiths

2009-06-15T02:22:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone, this is Andy. Even though I am not exactly a card-carrying Wordsmith's member, I like the looks of this blog so far. Anyway, I assume that if I got the email about this, I am qualified to post so here's a poem. I wrote it using a series of Google searches with an ear for sound.

Attention to All of You in Adulterous Affairs!

I have noticed your pretty pink alcoves,
your flexible travel fantasies,
the seemingly exhaustive lists
of shiny new allures
on the backs of your scapulars.

Properly-trained ministers never fail to identify
these blunderous middle class ventures.
Let me welcome you to my homepage.
Let me drop on you my bag of Salvation.

Let me gently point out that we do not
regularly expose ourselves to inquisition:

What are your guidelines for electronic communication?
What do you do when you are alone in a parking lot,
eaten alive by your rat-like sense of self preservation?
Would you recognize a legitimate divinity if you saw one?
Has your address changed in the past 12 months?

Picture an awful lot of very cold homes.
Visualize everything you would normally do
when confronted with overwhelming confessions.
Believe me when I tell you what Americans believe.

Your misery extends beyond your inbox.
Your mighty conquests end in the kingdom of error.
At least you’ll admit it to your friends.
Now admit that planetary bodies are regulated
by divine immutable laws,
that troubled men cohabitate with true red-bellied vipers.

Renounce the inward spiritual infidelity in your academic work!
Embrace this jealous intervention of my thunderous impulses!
Jesus is a passionate lover pursuing his Match dot com bride!

this is more

2009-06-10T00:03:00.005-04:00

Emma:
of a silly sweet poem than anything else, but I think the line about sweet gadgets is so perfect, and have had it in my head all day without knowing where it came from, so when i finally googled it and found this i had to put it up.
and as far as light-hearted love poems go, i am rather a fan of this one.
I think you're wonderful by Thomas Lux

The Advance

2009-06-08T00:58:00.003-04:00

Jordan:

The Advance

I.
Gallops on a high arched hill
the Troupe’s nigh this morning.
Every man knows his end,
yet fate, he may not rescind.
The wizen willed warrior
Hardens his hide for the fight at hand.
II.
Expel your fears, your burdens,
so that you’re free to kill,
to wound for your mother soil,
for the dirt that’s worth less than you think.
Less, maybe, than the nameless, homeless
flesh that receives your murder tool,
in a most inconvenient place.
III.
Not for you, no,
not inconvenient, the loss
nothing more than the hassle
of having to wipe another man’s life
from your state- issued steel toes.
IV
Another man’s smile set on your steel toes,
You, the perpetrator,
the inciter of spatial lapse,
synapse- space betwixt matter,
space that spans the years,
within which the victim changed in a story of
Myriad mile metamorphoses,
millions of miles,
of miles unmeasured,
moved, yet minute
there to inform you of that contained
betwixt brain flesh and flesh,
axon and dendrite,
number and number in a fucked up
mind puzzle,
which cannot be solved by glancing at your neighbor’s
sheet, screen, Face.
V
Face,
aggregate of synaptic space
the enemy visage that looks at you from your
State-issued steel toe mess,
Face, face, fucking face it-
you know not,
what more than a smileless neural heap,
a half-wit heathen in a sick grenadine charade?
What more than
your only inconvenience?

I don't know

2009-06-04T00:19:00.000-04:00

Eric:

"Just pretend we love each other," Jonathan Herbert told Phoenix, who was just taking off her bra.
"Okay babe, whatever you want." She kissed him.
"Oh," Jonathan whispered.
"How was your day, dear?" she said, licking his ear.
"Shitty...Michael kept messing up the orders." he said, inserting his penis into her vagina and beginning to breath harder.
"Oh!...I'm sorry, dear."
"MHh...it's okay, babe. Wasn't your fault."
"Dinner's on its way."
"Where'd you order it from?"
"Some pizza place we had a coupon for." His arm went around her.

Recede----> (Happy June everybody)

2009-06-02T01:12:00.001-04:00

Jordan

With the unison strike of a thousand once-gilded bells,
giants crash to scorched pavement.
Not gracefully.

Cuff links whose purpose wanes quickly.
Why contain the erupting flesh-fat
that draws the skin from wrist bones,
like rusty sinkers would,
a cloud of squid mush from
from an angler’s reel.

Two thousand leagues from certainty,
yet anyone will tell you what he knows.

Do you have anything to add to that?
Baby, baby, baby it ain’t easy.
Not so helpful a hint,
but twas a good try,
and would have been
in a scene of newspaper clad midtown bums,
not so graceful by Anyman’s standards.

Not gracefully putrefying once-pretty pastures,
comparatively~ innumerable grass blades pregnant with liquid.
Comparatively~ pretty putrid, pretty putrid, pretty putrid,
against a postcard backdrop.

Anyman’s land’s pretty putrid against a postcard backdrop,
lest we embellish.

Skin drawn from wrist bones of anorexsaurus rex,
Rex, rex, reflex,
and the ground shakes when something heavy hits it.

Heavy hits the ground,
the sinker, two thousand leagues from its nylon womb,
its receptor moves to accommodate new life, new lead.

No recoil, rebound, reserve.

Not gracefully,
lest we deserve.

poems found while cleaning, and an unedited poem.

2009-06-01T19:02:00.004-04:00

Emma:
Cleaning out my desk this afternoon, I found piles and piles of poems people photocopied for me over the years. Oddly, a great number of them were read at various meetings/mics this year. Here are a few that I don't think were.
Nude Interrogation By Yusef Komunyakaa
Sunday by Timothy Liu
Poem by Frank O'Hara
Kong Tries for a Mature Audience by William Trowbridget

And here is a poem I just wrote. Sort of a different tone maybe. I have not edited at all. Suggestions and observations?

canning
i will slowly fill
jars with snapshots. i will boil
the jars, to seal the rubber edges.
i will hold them up
to a window and admire
the ruby, citron, emerald
as the light stretches fingers
through the glass. i will save
them through the winter, stacked
on my pantry shelf between
boxes of tea and food coloring,
the edges of each photo
crinkling and grinning. in february,
i will crack, with a spoon
i will pry the lid from one jar, and greedily
we will scoop out the contents,
lick ink and chemicals
from our fingers, scrape the inside wall
clear with a paring knife.
we will try not to look
at its siblings, shining rows
marinating in the next room--

hunger can be too much.

sound poem

2009-05-29T02:19:00.004-04:00

Eric:

So I made a recording for that website emma was talking about. The recording is here. It is a poem called "The Next Generation." The text of that poem is below:

We are not the next generation.
We never were.
We never will be.
We place stones on stones placed by those now living in Boca Raton
and we are building nothing.
And they were never the next generation.

There is no line,
is no progress,
no regress.

They were. They were not.
We are. We are not.
They will be. They will not be.
And this is it. This is not a cycle.
This is not order. This is not planned.
We are. We are not.

Does this depress you?
It shouldn't. So what if there is no zenith
we are aching towards?
Once I rambled with an Indian taxi driver about life and we didn't talk about the coming inauguration or the recession or the recent plane crash that left all its passengers alive; he talked about why he came to America and I talked about college and we chattered on about the nature of jobs and I honestly loved him; I was sitting in the back, but I wasn't. I was next to him. We were in a coffee shop. We were at a hookah bar. We were best friends, brothers, lovers. And I knew him and he knew me and it was all okay
because transience is freeing,
because I am making a web that will never collapse,
because I matter to him, he to me,
because we can't really connect but we try to and that is tragically beautiful,
and worth running up the hill with this stone for for infinity.

You are not the next generation.
You never were.
You never will be.
But you matter, are matter; you do see an angelic nose-pierced ticketing woman with a strand of blue hair trailing from her hat on a train and you talk to her and you make a web and the web catches everything and everything lives.

Elive (Edit I Haven't)

2009-05-28T19:41:00.003-04:00

Jordan Kaye

In and out walk the people,
scurrying from the El platform,
Faces brandished without hesitation.

It’s fun to pretend that you’ve seen
these beings thousands of times,
peering into each commuter’s, each straggler’s
Open book kind of existence.

I’ve been there, oh,
even if in my midday musings.
I think I can feel the tightness
that makes hurt- wrinkles, that
explains the appeal of solemn slumber.

Try and frame the paper so it
becomes the print wall
of the mind’s silly fortress-
a classified ad back hand
stings silence into whom, we hope,
are the spectators.

Fallen back to a typical deduction,
a reduction of my now lost Big breath-
When you look around and it’s hard
to imagine a wall between you,
and it- the screeching, murmuring
accumulated from the wheels and wise men.

Am I the only one still conditioned to
hide inside when from outside,
people pour, pour, pour-
vegetable soup demographic.

De- mo-gra-phic-cracy,
The 1 train’s a salad bowl?
Perhaps pre-steamed, pre-boiled,
all and all and everything
in one, closed container.

mimicking, aren’t we,
the peacock’s innate treasure-
split peacock soup in a melt-ing pot.
Spoons for our own taste (s)
that could be used to,
Smack some Big breath sense
into every little worry withered wo (_man_).

Big breath air.
SMACK SOME SENSE INTO MYSELF.
UNdermine the
colors, fit snugly in
a crayon box world of different-iation.

?

2009-05-28T00:34:00.004-04:00

Emma:
I found this picture while cleaning out snapshots taken between 7th and 12th grade, so forgive the lack of artistic merit. You have probably seen this streetlight, or one like it. I was thinking it could be interesting to post intriguing questions and see if anybody answered them, then recollect them after a week or two. Perhaps the answers, or questions, would lead to poems. Perhaps they would be poems.

Thoughts?

Also, would you?

Finally, odd little rhyming poem that I don't know what to make of, if anybody has opinions. Fear it may be overly...simplistic? Trite? Sing-song? But would like to see what you all think. I'll link it for the sake of post length: distress cry of some small flying thing

Bookmarks!

2009-05-27T23:51:00.001-04:00

Yeah, that idea sounds fantastic! True wordsmiths infiltration of our lovely academic sanctuary Ha.

a poem i just wrote without any edits

2009-05-27T02:07:00.002-04:00

Eric:

well i just wrote this and thought i would put it up without any editing and ask for some suggestions. well. go ahead!

An Idea For Wordsmiths

2009-05-26T20:11:00.001-04:00

Eric:

Two nights ago, I had an idea for Wordsmiths. It was late, and I was at a friend's house for a pool party, and for some reason I had an idea for Wordsmiths. I wrote it down in my iPhone. The next day I checked my phone and in it was a note that said: Wordsmiths bookmarks in the library. Bam. I remembered the idea. It was:

Make wordsmiths bookmarks. Put on them a quote from a book, a cool and interesting image, a poem--something exciting and eye-catching and maybe witty or funny. Put them all throughout the library. On the bottom of them (or, if--this would be hard--we made them double sided, on their backs), we could put Wordsmiths, some info about us, and the web address. Maybe we could have a bunch of different bookmarks, so we can have one with a quote, one with an image, etc.

You guys like it?

not quite like the hamlet scene (a draft)

2009-05-26T17:48:00.004-04:00

Emma:
i hate these dreams
within dreams,

like double shelled
eggs, or potatoes

that you peel and slice
open to find
a second skin

cradled in bone
colored root. there is

a safety in saying
to yourself, "that may
have been only a dream,

but everything before
and after
was real and right,"

that makes the aching
slip into waking
so much sharper

as your fingers tear
at second skins
and yolk dribbles
out of the sun--

freud, i think,
was wrong
about the wish

but not so wrong
about its
existence.

I'm sorry that I didn't have my name on this before. My internet went haywire while I was posting it; I meant to go back and fix it but things got hectic. I'm looking for general suggestions, especially about whether to cut or leave the last two stanzas, because I've looked at it so many times it may as well be a blender manual at this point. Thanks.

Saul Williams and Rives

2009-05-25T19:10:00.000-04:00

Eric:

Since we are a spoken word poetry group, I thought I should (re)mention two great poets: Saul Williams and Rives. Saul Williams is the reigning king of spoken word. I find that individually his pieces are incredible. Taken as a whole, his work seems too focused for me. He is always talking about race, it seems. But he is an incredible performer.

Saul Williams doing Coded Language

Saul Williams in the film Slam doing Amethyst Rock

Rives is full of wit, wordplay, and humor. His delivery is perfect; gestures, rising and falling speeds, conversational. The conversational element works surprising well; he feels like a friend. The only negative thing I would have to say is that his poems are bit shallow, but that suits spoken word.

Rives' website

Rives doing Dirty Talk

Rives doing If I Controlled The Internet

He gave did a great piece that isn't really a poem but that you should watch: Rives on 4am
And a cool piece on emoticons that turns into a story: Rives on Emoticons

The website those last two pieces are on is called TED. It has hundreds of free lectures on it that vary from funny to informational to tragic. TED is a conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design. An award is given by them each year. Check out their website. It's fuel for poems. Great stuff.

Eric out.

Blank Screen Blues

2009-05-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

Jordan Kaye

Paula Abdul lives in a glass house.
In it, she breathes plexi-oxygen through a straw-
this way, her vitality doesn't smudge
the lipstick that carpets her coloring book lips.

Glass house woman
breathes through a straw,
The woman with three
equidistantly cropped chin hairs,
drinks dust through a sippy cup.

Dust that took only a week or two
to collect at the
four corners of my tube.

Dust that confirms
how utterly impossible
it is,
To bear witness:
That Charcoal Reflective Reality Rager

"... To Be Continued"

(Not actually to be continued)

The Pedestal Magazine and a poem

2009-05-25T00:07:00.000-04:00

Emma:

For the more verbal among us: at one point I mentioned seeing a reputable e-zine that took spoken word in the form of mp3 files. With some digging, I found it again. It is called The Pedestal Magazine. There is more information in the submission guidelines. I can't say I've listened to everything in the archives, but from what I remember, you all could add an energy that's lacking. So, if anyone is looking for another outlet this summer...

Also, critiques on this poem: the albums
are welcome and appreciated.

First Post: Blog Points and Bob Hicok

2009-05-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

Eric:

Blog points:

Post as much as you can
Post anything relating to poetry: your poetry, other poetry, a song that sound like poetry, a video of a bowerbird that inspired you to write a poem or that you think could inspire someone else to write a poem, etc.
Within the text of your post, at the top, put your name, as I have done. Have it bolded and in italics.
Please put in labels to refer to the work itself (poem, youtube clip, etc) as well as to who wrote it (do: first name last intial, e.g. eric s.)

Over with that now, let's go onto a link of a few poems by Bob Hicok. The second or third book of poetry I ever read was his Animal Soul. I think it was the first book of contemporary poetry I ever read. Anyway, I really loved his poems and have been reading his books since. The poems in Animal Soul have this discursive, stream-of-consciousness, energetic style that I haven't found in any of his other collections. The poem "Consideration of Song" in the group of poems on the linked-to website has the same verve as those in Animal Soul.

Well that's all for now.