MUSIQUE ANCIEN

music hath no power
        that sensate can
              no image that can
peel, the flayed flesh
the song is weak but
                 sweet
                             thy image shall
not die by song
so long as flesh can
                        peel & image
feel the song.

Stephen Jonas

potential good news

If this is true.

yes yes

"I work by obsession rather than by discipline." Bill James

Fewer & Further Press Release(s)

Michael Carr's Platinum Blonde and Aaron Tieger's February are now available for purchase through Fewer & Further Press. You should buy them, they're mighty good. Here's a photo of Michael and Aaron trading fours at their recent reading for the All Small Caps series.

Photo by Brian Jones.

Tony Robinson

On birds for example. You can order it here Thank you Tony.

Just for the record, my favorite color is orange, but blue is my favorite word.

Poetry Reading

You should come to this.

Here's To You

Tony Robinson

Props

To Jordan for recording and posting all these readings from the Unassociated Garden Party. Jordan rocks.

More From Austin

Reading from Birds for Example

February

Aaron reads from February.

FRAME

Order this. It has some wonderful Joseph Massey poems.

coeditor

Here I am working with my coeditor on an F&F project.

Austin

What can I add to the Austin posts? Maybe something, maybe nothing, but here goes anyway. I've been very sick since returning, the head cold that I developed just before leaving sacked me for a few days and I've been convalescing since. My headspace upon return has been very fickle, Austin stirred a bunch of things in my head.

First a deserved thank you for Farid Matuk and his unparalleled generosity. His cabin and welcoming presence was an Innisfree from all the welter of activity whilst in Austin. It was rejuvenating time and again to descend those flights of stairs back to the porch and jade colored water, to be accosted by the zealous slobbery Moon. A sweetheart of a dog. Scott Pierce mentioned that Moon left a wang contusion on his girlfriend's leg but with us Moon was the perfect gentleman.

Scott Pierce. What a dynamo! You can feel the kinetic energy coming off that guy just being around him. His volume of production, not to mention the quality, is astounding. His Effing Press has always been an inspiration and along with Ugly Duckling Presse, frankly the measure. It was refreshing to hear him talk about publishing and the Effing ethos of getting shit done the right way. I loved hearing him talk about paper and bandwith and just about everything else, but a highlight was talking writing with him late Saturday night. I look forward to reading more of Scott's poetry.

Meeting folks. Too many to mention, ok, I'll mention some: Tony Robinson, Laura, Joe Massey, Reb Livingston, Jonathan Mayhew, Hot Whiskey folks, Jordan, etc. etc. It was terrific to finally meet some of the folks face to face after having corresponded with many of them for so long.

The UGP was more party than readings, which was a little disappointing. That is no fault of the folks who organized this, it was just unfortunate to have it be about beer and schmoozing and not about hearing the poetry. My favorite reading was Tony Robinson, his new collaboration with Andrew Mister Here's To You is a gem, you should own it. Aaron Tieger read from February starting and ending with killer spot on quotes and the poems were really great. I wish people had given them the attention they deserved. Joe Massey's much ballyhooed reading. I look forward to reading with him at the Poetry Project in June.

Perhaps it is a bit of naivety on my part but I was shocked at how much of the poetry scene was about being seen, rather than listening to the work. Perhaps it is just the overwhelming nature of this sort of thing, that drives people to socialize rather than listen. Maybe they reach a saturation point and can't take in anymore. Who knows? I was also surprised at how important the self mythologizing is to some folks, that is almost presides in importance over the work. A friend pointed out that many poets are frustrated rock n rollers. Perhaps this is true, I've never been very interested in being a musician, so this could be where some of the divide is for me. Ultimately it comes back to the work and not the personality.

OK, I'm exhausted, perhaps I'll return to some of this thoughts and try to illuminate them...or not. & perhaps, I'll stop using perhaps in my next post.

hat in the ring

DIY Poetics

from Kid Marine

Flings of the Waistcoat Crowd

Great days are becoming
A matchlight liquour establishment
Where the factory soaks its scabs
It hangs there like insectrocutioner
Over the big river
Scum of us rinsed by a hard rain
The tar, the teeth & the gear
Yet no trail
All around the camp
And that is our game
To brag and complain
To guess who goes next
To tally the scars
Learn every weakness

Bob Pollard

from _Full On Jabber_

Two sections excerpted from a collaboration with poet Chris Rizzo, entitled Full On Jabber. We are looking for the right press to do this project with, if you are interested, drop me a line. Rizzo starts, I follow:

 

XI.

 

“The texture of the bark is in a language I don’t know.”

Anna Moschovakis, from The Blue Book

 

Language into jazzed and fluster. Spans.

Flutter flights. The pen marks.

Take off the day and pencil in, lit little in hull.

 

Must one always be about, as in face

as in faced, a façade for gesture, brick slick eggshell,

a door in closing a way? What fundamental

the greenly, thick brush, violet

into jagged a plush in arbor. Husk today,

grain tomorrow. More shelling

makes, easy bateaux cuts. The current

scans a glister of younger.

 

The quick and of alive the continuous present

a gift rooted to the nills in typewrite—

shellac the flaked lack, yellowy the lowly

a varnish denatured. A flick of wrist

for flow and you flaw, a palmed flash

the way of arch, grids in flesh, a logic

in your print. Dial dialectic, only

you need answer but in a huh. A hand

in a hand in mind but before you.

 

Not taken the notes but made, and there

some finding for grooves, fibered

the leavings, part of the organ that plays

say the digits, quick to the toucher,

handle the feeler, upon to off and up the down.

 

Touched the stamp, fine lines

of tinge, pertinent in passing to match

a tangent, the flicker to adjoin as in taps.

Light contact. A fuse to moment.

The clack of knack, to touch based.

 

Shown in hand and of the pilot muse,

what in trees the spans, ridges to pan,

the nettles of compression and snags

to nag a before ground, blotches

the latches to lag you, musters the isn’t.

 

But neither work, nor but a play and play

to wordings and on, as in turned,

sheer old school the schlock

of plastics, a needle palmed for the record.

Gigs the new black but you mingle

amongst clusters of shadowy,

to quick the blurs of twills, finicky

the darlings at banquet in greenlings,

whenever a pathway makes and you. 

 

The forest is of language

and there you go. 

 

 

XII.

 

“Every botanist is a collector.”

Egon Schiele

  

little more than much I’ve

to say ways and means beyond the bully

for you the pages dog ear

styling for the root to drop

the orange carp obscene unseen scene

footage the coverage to center

flung far afield to took pulled down

first signed the drawn walk

the fewest times from the last

feeds of the land total milk reduce

or to mustache on in estimate

swung the gaping sash pinwheel

alone flowering

game for is it terrible

to say last of the huzzah size ah

I ache and a half

I ache is enough

and width missed

function shortened at the corners

deadpan as on it

delay the heckling count

fallen in the pea vines

those discounted grog

on the way risk of feeling

hasn’t started at first and not once but

since senseless formed the

vocal stroke oar’s mock miasma

inside here a missed river quickens

quivers concentric arrows lurch in mar

signals ripple to mixed I meant other wasn’t

that simple enough heard

but we’re where now?

out to get in

or to get it

you gone round that bend again?

off what the proposed I would do

but what’s need hours wake rent

fear to habit and toys on the floor

a tiger smiling let’s face it

facility

wasted effort mess hall

churns glissando what haven’t I

I give to need

I give to need

deep in worn welcome

who finds that time remember

asunder you give the slip foregone

boot straps I’m on about

this time all the no choice but to cache

and wish for well

the lid o I did I’d love

but remove to sleep and have

none of this

that’s full of it I

need an no man’s any

a spite to flag

a frail varnish move on

flourish and what I’ve sown grown to know

time for or not time for time to

Coco's line

Single.
Double.
Triple.
1 run.
1 rbi.

It's only Grapefruit League, but still.

Here I am reading selections from Michael Carr's Platinum Blonde and Aaron Tieger's February at a local poetry reading series. Note how the camera angle emphasizes my inordinately large and oddly configured melon.

Photograph by Brian Jones.

Happy birthday to poet, publisher, editor, archivist, D n D geek, skateboarder, and good friend Aaron Tieger!