Distribution Automatique

Saturday, September 4

Loneliness ...images! 21 August {click here}
via Media TIC {click here}
this journal blug {click here}
today cited a significant typo on a recent post here.
Why wouldn't a blog that calls itself a blug
not appreciate a typo that might deserve to become a manifesto:

"alll forms of arf (at least indirectly) refer to all forms of media"
(see 4th note below on Friday, Sept 3rd.)

In any case, I have at last been outed for my
secret persona as a dog

How smarf of you, Brother Tom
**********************************
Today, on the subway going out to Jackson Heights
(second home to Sullivan and Gordon):
with Gary, Nada, Kathy, Toni and Tom (Orange)

Nada: Aren't all my remarks ironic?
Gary: I hope not.

No irony when I mention the
the fabulous food & shopping out there
First time I ever visited this fascinating,
diverse, effervesent neighborhood.
Can't wait to see the Bollywood DVDs
and listen to the many Indian & Pakistani movie music
CD's & cassettes I bought (none over $10; most under $4) on
Gary's recommendation ; Toni
looks sparky in her new Indian outfit.

What a day...

By the way, Tom is working on a dissertation about
Clark Coolidge's poetry- can't wait to see that-
I mentioned to him I am right now reading Coolidge's
*The Rova Improvisations* (Sun and Moon) after
quite a long respite from reading (but not collecting)
Coolidge books- I confessed to reading Coolidge
at least weekly, if not more often, since the late
60's- and decided I had to give at last at least
a few other authors a try....

Clark Coolidge {click here }EPC Home Page


Friday, September 3

Notes at the Ed Ruscha show at the Whitney:

First thoughts: language as a sound form
a the same time (simultaneously)
a material, visual (visualizable) form
**
gas stations (1962)-time travel
**
Work (1992)
*Waves of Technology*

Innumerable subtle references
to film and filmaking
**
Due to the preponderance of technology
alll forms of arf (at least indirectly) refer to all forms of media
{thought of my- "Distrlbution automatique and *Le Reve* collages (Poetry Plastique show-
see Electronic Poetry Center pdf of the catalogue
includes an an image of my *Le Reve*)
**
individual words as "film clips"
(literally- drawings of words
clipped and three dimensionally
standing on their edges)
**
25 versions of *The End*
at the end of the show
**
Ed Ruscha
at the Hirschorn {click here}

reference- Dick Higgens, *Intermedia*
essay-manifesto 1966
(fading of the idea of the "specific" genre standing
alone
**
Dick Higgins Intermedia Essay (1966){click here}

Thursday, September 2

Happy Birthday Abigail Cook. Congrats to the proud parents.
Ironstone Whirligig (Amanda Cook) {click here}


While mom rests up, the proud father fill us in:

Polis Is Eyes {James Cook}
*******************************************************************************
from A to Z

With the Zukofsky centenary looming, time to
bone up on the Big A

Stephen Vincent's transliteration of A {click here}
"To speak softly and be heard"

In an era of the clamor of unrelenting attacks,
with hatreds igniting nearly everywhere you look,
is it still possible to write love poetry that counts?
You bet it is- check out
*Serenades* by James Meetze
from Cy Press, in 2003.( I
understand there may be
a few copies available right now-
Cy Press {click here})

"The slender world a bed, love, breeze in the morning
a place to rest our heads.
Have I told you I want to make silence a city
in which to live and write without sirens or drunkeness?
Silence is never completely quiet but enough so
to speak softly and be heard.
To sing softly is to carry the burden of song.
Lights of things we have or things we have
In light of the obdurate summer."

James Meetze
***************************************************
"Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wakd'st me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreams truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, for since thou thoughtst it best,
Not to dreame all my dreame, let's act the rest.
As lightning or a Tapers light ,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee;
Yet I thought thee
(For thou lovest truth) an Angell, at first sight..."

John Donne
(1571-1631)
*The dreame.*

Wednesday, September 1

"Cold

IT'S COLD- CONCRETELY COLD
IN STONE COLD KILLER COLD NYC
AND ME- CAUGHT COLD HAND -IN AMERICA
CAUGHT BETWEEN-COLD RAIN-COLD WIND-AND
OLD COLD FRIENDS-WHO DIG-THEIR AMERICAN
COLD PSYCHIC PAIN-IT'S-SO DAMN-COLD-DAMP DIRTY
COLD-TURNS ME OLD-CUTS MY BLACK BEAUTY AND SOUL
CAUGHT UP-IN THE-FOLD OF-COLD AMERICA"


from*TEDUCATION*
selected poems by Ted Joans
Coffee House Press, 1999

[dashes(-) signify spaces
in the original text]

Ted Joans in Paris with
Nick Piombino, Toni Simon, Charles Borkhuis and Laura Corsiglia {click here}

Tuesday, August 31

Haiku for
Poets of Paranoia

Throwing
a
depressed
pall
over
all that is

Your
vague
accusations
**********************
Wednesday Sept 1, 2004

5-7pm: POETS FOR PEACE reading:
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (Between Blecker and Houston), NYC 10012

7pm: Poetry Superhero March to St. Mark's Church: "Keep the World Safe
for Poetry!"

8pm: DEMO: A demonstration in words. A poetry reading on the RNC,
President Bush and the crisis in Iraq.
St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th St. & 2nd Ave., NYC.

All events are free!

Poets for Peace Readers include: Bethany Spiers, Cat Tyc, Tomomi
“Suh-Bay” Sano, P.A. Weisman, Mark Lamoureoux, Christina Strong, Chris
Bullock, Christopher Stackhouse, Merry Fortune, Steve Dalachinsky,
David Kirschenbaum, Erica Kaufman, Betsy Andrews, Regie Cabico, Corie
Feiner, Brenda Iijima, Fred Arcoleo, Aaron Kiely, Sherry A. Brennan,
Gina Myers, Eve B. Packer, Eliot Katz, Tom Savage, Raymond J. Arendt,
Cynthia Kraman, Susan Brennan, Alicia Ostriker, Paul Johnson, E. Tracy
Grinnell, Anne Waldman

Demo Readers include:
Sonia Sanchez, Grace Paley, Carl Hancock Rux, Sapphire, Katha Pollitt,
Mark Doty, Anne Waldman, Cornelius Eady, Vijay Seshadri, Hettie Jones,
Hal Sirowitz, Bob Holman, Grace Schulman, Eileen Myles, Marie Ponsot,
Robert Polito, John Yau, Rodrigo Toscano, Carol Mirakove, Greg Fuchs,
Anselm Berrigan, Laura Elrick, Bruce Andrews, Kathy Engel, Zero Boy,
John Coletti and Kristin Prevallet
*****************************************************************************
Enjoy
BELLADONNA*
with

Latasha N. Nevada Diggs & Joan Retallack

Friday, September 3, 7PM at SEGAL THEATER,
The Graduate Center, CUNY,
365 5th Avenue at 34th Street
A $7-10 donation is suggested.

Join us to celebrate the first fabulous night of our 5th Anniversary season
with two dynamic, super-expansive, multi-genre artists who challenge the
dimensions of words at a NEW location: the beautiful SEGAL THEATER-CUNY GRAD
CENTER (5th Ave/34th)˜only blocks from most trains.

Writer and vocalist, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs explores sound through a myriad
of macaronic verse, language and electronic vocal processing. She has
worked and traveled with many creative beings and her literary and sound
works have been published and recorded in projects ranging from Asian
fetishes to Euro-House. A fellow of the Cave Canem Workshop for African
American Poets, Latasha is a 2004 Caldera Artist in Residence, 2003 Zora
Neale Hurston recipient from Naropa Institute, a 2002 Harvestworks Digital
Media Arts Center artist in residence, as well as a 2003 New York Foundation
for the Arts fellow. She is the author of two chap-books, Ichi-Ban: from
the files of negríta muñeca linda and Ni-ban: Villa Misería and the producer
and writer for the experimental audio project, Televisíon. She is the lead
electronic vocalist for the Zappa-esque jam band, Yohimbe Brothers, fronted
by Vernon Reid and DJ Logic and The Beat Kids, fronted by Guillermo E.
Brown. She lives in Harlem.

Joan Retallack‚s most recent books are Memnoir (Post-Apollo Press) and The
Poethical Wager˜a volume of essays (University of California Press). Other
poetry by Retallack includes Mongrelisme: A Difficult Manual for Desperate
Times (Paradigm Press), How To Do Things With Words (Sun & Moon Classics),
AFTERRIMAGES (Wesleyan University Press), and Errata 5uite (Edge Books)
which won the Columbia award for poetry in 1994. She received the 1996
America Award in Belles-Lettres for MUSICAGE: John Cage in Conversation with
Joan Retallack (Wesleyan University Press) and a Lannan Foundation Literary
Grant in 1998ˆ99. Her WESTORN CIV CONT'D: an open book was produced at
Pyramid Atlantic Studios in 1995-96˜with inadvertent funding from the
National Endowment for the Arts˜and is still in progress. She is currently
finishing a volume on Gertrude Stein and starting a time-bracketed project
with the working title „The Reinvention of Truth.‰ Retallack teaches at Bard
College.

Belladonna* is a feminist/innovative reading and publication series that
promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental,
politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered,
unpredictable, dangerous with language (to the death machinery). In its five
year history, Belladonna* has featured such writers as Leslie Scalapino,
Alice Notley, Erica Hunt, Fanny Howe, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Cecilia Vicuña,
Lisa Jarnot, Camille Roy, Nicole Brossard, Abigail Child, Norma Cole, Lynne
Tillman and Carla Harryman among many other experimental and hybrid women
writers. Beyond being a platform for women writers, the curators promote
work that is experimental in form, connects with other art forms, and is
socially/politically active in content. Alongside the readings, Belladonna*
supports its artists by publishing commemorative pamphlets of their work on
the night of the event. Please contact us (Rachel Levitsky and Erica
Kaufman) at belladonnaseries@yahoo.com to receive a catalog and be placed on
our list. http://www.durationpress.com/belladonna.

*deadly nightshade, a cardiac and respiratory stimulant, having purplish-red
flowers and black berries

Belladonna* readings happen monthly between September and June

_________________________________________________________________

Monday, August 30

Heathens in Heat {click here} recognizes just how tough all this can be
Received from *Serendipity*, Berkeley, CA

*A Curriculum of the Soul #11
Novalis' 'Subjects'*
by
Robert Dalke

"The strict method is merely study-should not
become printed- one should write only in free,
unbound style for the public, and only the
strict demonstration- the systematic perfection
thereby possess.
One must not write uncertainty etc.,anxious etc.
-muddled, endless- but precise-clear-
solid- with apodictic, tacit suppositions.
-A solidly precise man also makes a beneficent
and decisive and lasting expression.
The scientific style loves the strange word-
therefore not journalistic. Eccentric and concen-
tric constitutions.
(Very changeable-quiet-persistant.)"
****************************************
Getting upset about a "bad meme" concerning
Aristotle. Now there's *breaking news* I can get with!
Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium {click here}

Sunday, August 29

Jean Vengua said she wrote this The Nightjar {click here} shortly before reading this:
re: the Phases of the Moon {click here}

But perhaps I had already read this from Okir {click here}
**********************
Some posters Toni and
I (Kim Lyons marched with us)
spotted at today's
protest march past Madison Square
Garden (site of the RNC convention)
against the Bush/Cheney
agenda:

I will not coorporate.
**
Bush/Cheney: What *lies* ahead?
**
Just say no to *carbs*

C(heney)
A(shcroft)
R(umsfeld)
B(ush)
**
Democracy and
Empire don't mix!
**
Osama Still Has His Job
Do you?
**
Impeach Bush.org
**
Fight Homelessness
Evict Bush
**
No Draft No Way.org
click here
**
take back the future.org
**
Leave no Billionaire
Behind
**
No Dick
No Bush
No Colin
(many variations on
this)
**
Stop
Expoiting
9-11
**