Ptarmigan

2005-05-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

Well, this is it. The last post on Ptarmigan. I've moved shop and set up some annexes at my new weblog:http://www.goblinmercantileexchange.comIt's really not all that drastic of a change. The types of subject matters discussed are going to still be, well, all over the map. And I was able to import all of my previous posts--along with many comments even!--already, so it will be really like you

2005-05-13T17:37:00.000-05:00

Hey. I'm going to be switching to a blog, with Wordpress, on a different host, sometime this weekend, along with 40 other projects. I'm really tired of Blogger grayouts. I'll keep y'all posted when the migration happens.

2005-05-05T22:54:00.000-05:00

Reginald Shepherd's blown a gasket, but don't dare call him on it, because it will just depress him. From the email extant on Josh's blog:"But then, in general it seems difficult these days to make a nuanced argument--people see things only in black and white, and insist on reducing one's arguments to simplistic parody."Later..."There is nothing in the so-called avant-garde, from the New

2005-05-04T18:57:00.000-05:00

Darth Vader has a blog..I wonder, is this one of these "early adopter" or "late adopter" (UNCOOL) posts?When it comes to poetry, Minnesota is pretty much North Nebraska. But I'll try to blog about that later.

2005-05-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

It took me a few months, but I finally figured out the RSS feed for Taverner's Koans:http://www.taverners-koans.com/rss.phpYou think it would be simple for me, until you actually knew me.

2005-05-03T12:21:00.000-05:00

I probably shouldn't care if Ted Kooser sneezes--easy pickings, right?--but I can't help my obsession with him. Probably because the things he says, which are no doubt received as folksy wisdom by many of those who read his crappy newspaper column, are unbelievably passive aggressive. I mean that, by the way. Here's his latest column, where he gives this little "kernel":Though many of us were

2005-05-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

We really wished we could have gone to the Nebulas. Gar! Instead, Kristin was working on her office changing, um, offices, and I watched a lot of snow fall on Sunday. That was fun.Speaking of my wife, some of you might remember that has had a blog. It seems that extremely recently someone has hacked into her blog and made a post and what's more, purports to actually be Kristin. I urge you to

2005-04-29T12:37:00.000-05:00

To the architects and denziens of Foetry.com: y'all do realize, don't you, that for all of your gasbassing and bloviating and paranoiac snipping for more than a year, the three Future Stars comics by Jim Behrle (here, here, and here)--made from stickers--have been 100 times more of a devastating a critique on the "Official Verse Culture" that you (allegedly) despise.So shine on you crazy

2005-04-28T17:26:00.000-05:00

In the obsolete technology dept.--do you remember in the mid-90s when massive CD-changer stereo systems were all the rage? 100 CD changers! 300 CD changers! Holy shit how high could it go!?!? It was kind of like a Babbage Engine form of the iPod. I just checked on some prices and, although this probably isn't definitive, a 300 CD changer is now cheaper (i.e., less desirable) than an iPod.

2005-04-27T15:24:00.000-05:00

Blogger, why are you so touchy today?Anyway, speaking of the GameCube, I rented SoulCalibur II last night, a highly regarded fighting game. Nothing too cerebral, good for some button mashing and the like. It's always interesting how even single-player games in our household are communal affairs. Kristin is really really good with puzzles, and I'm...not. When she's playing say Metroid or Paper

2005-04-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

We don't have a Nintendo DS (though we have a GameCube)--but PacPix looks pretty freaking cool, and very meta:"One day a mischievous wizard came up with a mysterious invention called "Ghost Ink." When something is drawn using this ink, it turns into a Ghost. These ghostly tricksters would then jump into pictures and books, to pull pranks and cause havoc around the world. Our hero, Pac-Man, has

2005-04-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

Browsing a poetry section over the weekend, coming across the collected poems of Richard Wilbur, misreading the cover as saying The Collected Poems of Richard Wilbur: 1643-2004..

2005-04-22T16:15:00.000-05:00

I posted a slightly longer version of this comment in regards to Ron Silliman's post about contests and Foetry. I still don't buy the notion that entering a contest is the same in terms of monetary investment as going to a writing conference or MFA program. The former is by definition, except for one person, throwing money into a black hole. The latter two examples are engagements with people,

2005-04-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

Because the (unseen) (leisure) class lines in poetry still run pretty deep.

2005-04-20T18:47:00.000-05:00

It really really sucks that Foetry.com was such a misguided failure. Contests are still a shitty way to subsidize faux-poor poetry presses.

2005-04-20T18:29:00.000-05:00

After 3 posts yesterday--whew! I'm tuckered.

2005-04-19T18:12:00.000-05:00

Dave Truesdale has another rantreview at Tangent that would be only slightly less comprehensible to me if it were written in Manx Gaelic. It's really, really not worth reading. It's funny--after his first rant about feminism on the new Tangent site, it got a pique of interest from people--BUT mostly in a kind of nostalgiac way, "there's Dave, oh, I remember him, up to his old tricks again!" Now,

2005-04-19T16:54:00.000-05:00

The vast, vast majority of people stumbling 'pon my site are looking for information about ptarmigans. So here it is:The State Bird of Alaska.More of 'em.OK, now I have some facts:1st, don't eat ptarmigans. They are nice and besides when did they ever hurt you?The Sea Ptarmigan was a Dutch cutter that ran aground in Duluth-Superior in 1884, and it carried explosives!The Sea Ptarmigan was also the

2005-04-19T12:52:00.000-05:00

Growing up Catholic, devoutly, going to 12 years of Catholic school and still remaining semi-devout for 4 years after that, all I have to say about the selection of this new pope is that--I'm glad I got out while I did.

2005-04-18T18:39:00.000-05:00

It's 80 degrees outside.It won't last long.I'm thinking about moving this blog to the taverners-koans.com server and perhaps using WordPress. (1) Blogger server touch-and-go-ness, (2) categories for my nearly completely scattegorical posts, (3) it would be free b/c I already have more than enough server space than I can shake a stick at, (4) tons o' WordPress plugin and opensource goodness. So

2005-04-15T13:27:00.000-05:00

I've been reading The Etched City by KJ Bishop at long last--and while I'm not nearly finished with it, I really love it so far. It also does some really cool things from an aesthetic standpoint that I was talking about in this post a little while back. (Mild spoilers ahead, I guess.). In a way, the book is an anti-Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. (Disclaimer: I love those stories too!) What seems

2005-04-15T13:02:00.000-05:00

I've been listening a lot lately to Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) and--I can't believe I'm saying this--but I think it's their best album. Better than Parklife even. The guitar-work is just insane.

2005-04-13T13:07:00.000-05:00

It's my great pleasure to list here the TOC for Rabid Transit #4 (as yet unnamed!). In alphabetical order:Terminós, by Dean Francis AlfarPICK, I am, I am., by James AllisonFragments, by Matthew CheneyThe Sky Green Box, by Rudi DornemannBallerina, Ballerina, by Eric RickstadThe Sign in the Window, by Vandana SinghPleased as punch about this TOC, and we hope you will be too.If you haven't gotten

2005-04-12T15:04:00.000-05:00

If this was done by human hands... this asshole needs to go down.

2005-04-11T19:03:00.000-05:00

So my wife will laugh at this, and she has every right to, since I've said "I'm done!" with this long poem more than a couple times in the past. And then after a couple of weeks the poem would keep...growing. But this is it. The Stations is at last done. 117 pages of a speculative poem, done. Well, I'm done with the first draft at least, the shape it's going to take for the most part. (OK, so

2005-04-11T11:32:00.000-05:00

Ron Silliman has a great post about the School of Quietude in poetry, its development and its roots in early American literary history. And, again, Poe pops up as a pivotal figure here, as he does for both science fiction and mysteries.I don't think are so clearly cut and dried though. I was reading Randall Jarrell's Poetry and the Age this weekend. I guess it's a good sign of criticism that

2005-04-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

Don't look now but I've entered into this discussion. Ben, Ted, David, Susan et. al. are far more smart and articulate than I am on these matters but it's fun to at least take a gander on it.

2005-03-31T11:40:00.000-06:00

[update: Blogger has been miserable lately. Very slow and spotty. So I hope this goes through.]Back from Erie. Gray. Gray gray gray. But it was good to see the family. Good writing weather, actually.Jonathan Safran Foer's latest novel sparked this review, an except of which is below:It's good to see that Foer is sticking to his original, successful formula of milking historical tragedy for yucks

2005-03-22T23:10:00.000-06:00

Kristin and I are going to be in Erie until Tuesday night, so our internet connection will be spotty at best. Not that my posting lately has been all that. It will be good to see my family and I love them dearly but...Erie in March is not fun weather wise. It's going to be 40s and raining the whole freaking trip. Aside from familial stuff, I hope to get some good semi-monastic writing time in and

2005-03-17T16:57:00.000-06:00

I love this poem by Will Alexander: "Optic Wraith" (from Facture Her eyes like a swarm of dense volcano spiders woven from cold inferno spools contradictory consuming clinging to my palette like the code from a bleak inventive ruse now my understanding of her scent is condoned as general waking

2005-03-16T17:01:00.000-06:00

On one of the Asimov's message board threads, Gardner Dozois mentions as an aside...(some of the people who run slipstream-oriented sites seem particularly anxious to have SF die, so they can replace it with their own genre)Can anyone name any semi-credible "slipstream" sites that want science fiction to die die die? (Remember those 80s coffee commercials, when they slipped in Folgers at

2005-03-11T16:01:00.000-06:00

Is there a reason Odwalla is still in business? No matter what the "flavor" of their beverages, it tastes like piss from a goat that just drank a smoothie.This is pretty much all I'm good for today.

2005-03-10T18:06:00.000-06:00

Not surprisingly, they give us Shakespeare at his most Gothed-out, which is to say his most existential. Or at least what I call existential, where it's all about risky undertakings weighed against heaven's displeasure and the nearness of death and bats.David Larsen guest- and book-blogging on Romance of the Forest by Anne Radcliffe.

2005-03-06T13:42:00.000-06:00

I have a question to ask. More of a challenge. Has there been any movie with Judge Reinhold in it that has NOT had an "Eighties Montage"? You know what I'm talking about--the Bette Midler workout montage in Ruthless People, car-washing montage in Fast Times. Crappy 80s music, while not a requirement, is often present. The "Beverly Hills Cop" trilogy ALL have to have Eighties Montages, right???

2005-03-04T16:33:00.000-06:00

I came across (pretty randomly) this essay by Dale Chapman called "Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Paranoia and the Technological Sublime in Drum and Bass Music". Aside from the interesting things it had to say about drum and bass and the movie Pi, the article had a lot of eye-opening thoughts about science fiction:As I hope to demonstrate, the specific coincidence of elements that we find in many

2005-02-22T16:41:00.000-06:00

Another must read screed from Daily Kos today:"The Democratic Party and the left cannot effectively bash by using counter-culture, but instead by proving, that, in fact, the Republicans are the anti-culture."

2005-02-22T16:03:00.000-06:00

The Tiptree final decisions have been made, although not announced. We're still hammering out the long and short lists and the annotations. It's been an amazingly rewarding experience.So, my reading load has been a lot lighter after this weekend. In celebration, I'm actually going to do a blog-meme-list thingy in a non-sarcastic way. This is the "10 things I've done that you probably haven't"

2005-02-11T17:07:00.000-06:00

"D00d, Modernism Sux" reduxThis time it's from a much bigger fish, our current poet laureate of America, Ted Kooser...from an excerpt from his Poetry Home Repair Manual:A lot of this resistance to poetry is to be blamed on poets. Some go out of their way to make their poems difficult if not downright discouraging, because diffi cult poems are what they think they’re expected to write to advance

2005-02-10T19:09:00.000-06:00

So I was looking at Pokey the Penguin and there is a new Pokey posted! As well as the collaborative Skepto-maze!: You are in Florida Orange Juice. The only people, or things, there are Positive Bread, Negative Bread, Sketchpad, random birds, a cane, small pebbles, random plants, clouds, holes, gophers, a hadicap parking sign, a blank sign, and buildings. You see Negative Bread come out from

2005-02-10T17:14:00.000-06:00

So this is "The Post" that I've been working on since 1/3. I've cut out about 60%. I've muddled through to some speculative elements of speculative writing: 1. inchoate wonder (id) 2. extrapolative precision (superego) 3. the speculative "breath" (ego) These 3 will probably need some explaining. And feel free to ignore the little parentheticals I put there. Purely for demonstration purposes,

2005-02-09T16:14:00.000-06:00

Aaand if anyone's interested, I posted a new speculative poetry exercise at Taverner's Koans. Try them all! All two.

2005-02-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

John Klima was kind enough to post my story "A Keeper", which appeared in the 6th issue of his excellent zine Electric Velocipede, here.

2005-02-04T15:28:00.000-06:00

I don't want to give this person anymore airtime than necessary, but I had to post something about Richard Trayson's article on the evils of experimental poetry, specifically Language poetry. Not as much for his specious "argument," which could be summed up as "D00d, language poetry SUX and Whitman is so 1337 and Whitman would say language poetry SUX--w00t". Rather, it's fascinating how his

2005-02-04T13:39:00.000-06:00

I have to admit that I'm looking forward to Mos Def in the role of Ford Prefect in the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.

2005-02-02T01:37:00.000-06:00

Inconstancy Well, what happened? What happens. My mind is a moving target and it's wandered off to something else. Which means that my chess fiction blog is DOA after 3 entries. I know, that short. It usually drags on for a little while more, but I decided to put it out of its misery. If I'm not interested in it, I'm not--and I don't know what process goes on that has me move from writing

2005-01-28T13:35:00.000-06:00

So this is my latest semi-quixotic web project, set in the same world (textual environment?) as "Home of the": http://theblackkittensfaultentirely.blogspot.com And at some point it's going to be part of a novel, hopefully. Or should I say "novel." Jumping around all over the place. Will be interested to see how blog posts can be reshaped into something that will eventually end up on the

2005-01-27T13:47:00.000-06:00

I have two quippy blog posts at withboots, the best-kept groupblogging secret evar! So, my quippy-post outsourcing to withboots will likely continue. But there's some good stuff there. It's kind of like the blogging equivalent of Dinner for Five, with 100% less cloy and Eggers-fawning!

2005-01-24T13:29:00.000-06:00

Those posts, unfortunately, were not The Long Post I was talking about. I look at it squirreled away in my Drafts here. I circle it but not much else. Oh well, maybe one of these weeks. In the mean time, Leon Rooks is one of my favorite short story writers. Here's one of his stories online, Polar Arms. And this is one of his more sedate ones.

2005-01-12T11:32:00.000-06:00

If you do nothing else this day, this week, this month, read this article/diary post.. Absolutely necessary. "You can no more have a functional democracy with a deluded population than you can have a functional monarchy with a retarded king." "This is mall-ternative Christianism, market-tested to humor the consumer, to make G-d a sockpuppet or condom."

2005-01-10T15:44:00.000-06:00

J=E=S=U=S I blogged early last year about Passion of the Christ. And I'm not an expert on political psychology by any means, but in my heart of hearts, I think that the pivotal moment of the 2004 Election had to do with the release of Mel Gibson's "film". It accomplished two things quite successfully (and whether this was Gibson's attention became beside the point after its release). First it

2005-01-10T15:27:00.000-06:00

My first NBA post of the season: Trade Sprewell and Cassell. Get Kidd. Thank you.

2005-01-07T13:37:00.000-06:00

Been working this whole freaking week on a post that's halfway between blogpost and essay. A confusing mess! In the meantime, this is tantalizing: "Zip Code Directory, 1968-70 is the title of David Bunch's lost novel about the relentless dehumanization of Western civilization, his only mainstream literary novel, never published." Any esteemed small press publisher want to take a gander at this

2005-01-03T16:27:00.000-06:00

From the complete corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry Metrical Charm 7: For the Water-Elf Disease Verse Indeterminate Saxon Gif mon biþ on wæterælfadle, þonne beoþ him þa hand- næglas wonne and þa eagan tearige and wile locian niþer. Do him þis to læcedome: eoforþrote, cassuc, fone

2005-01-01T22:23:00.000-06:00

OK, I'm alive again. Everyone have a wonderful 2005.

2004-12-27T19:26:00.000-06:00

I've had the flu. Just recovering. So I'm going to be slow on communication for the next couple of days.

2004-12-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

The numinous is a temporary tattoo. On the morning when you're to wash it off, there's a blast from three blocks away, flash and heat, and the tattoo is suddenly permanent (this is not the same as a scar. I think). The questions then become: (1) what is it a tattoo of? (2) where is the tattoo located? and (3) what caused the explosion?

2004-12-15T14:08:00.000-06:00

Still, still trying to figure out the mass psychosis that is known as "critical adoration of Sideways". Any ideas? ps, if you haven't seen it...it's a miserable, thuggish movie, that only grows more in misery when you recollect it, and the individual funny bits fade from memory. Someone on the IMDB boards posting something like "What am I missing with this movie?" and received this response,

2004-12-13T18:04:00.000-06:00

I'll start with a picture: Remember, Victor is on the right. Aristotle said: "Now to remember the future is not possible, but this is an object of opinion or expectation (and indeed there might be actually a science of expectation, like that of divination, in which some believe); nor is there memory of the present, but only sense-perception." I've been thinking lately how writing is a

2004-12-10T02:01:00.000-06:00

Insomnia: shake it, shake it like a paranoid picture.

2004-12-01T15:55:00.000-06:00

Nothing has never not already happened: "IN 53 B.C., the same year that Julius Caesar invaded Britain, the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus invaded Persia. He was over sixty, and looked older than his age, a round-faced bullet-headed man who thirsted for wealth and fame, and seems never to have been satisfied with the wealth and fame he had acquired. He had already fought in many batdes and

2004-11-30T15:05:00.000-06:00

I'm back! Literally and metaphorically! Lexington was great; even better were the friends. I deeply apologize to them for my druidic undertones (or overtones, as the case may be). Sox!

2004-11-18T17:45:00.000-06:00

Taverner's Koans is uploaded, (a)live, and well. Check it out. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

2004-11-15T11:44:00.000-06:00

Thinking a lot about how Dobson,one of the architects of the current American fundamentalism, writes self-help books--his brand of fundamentalism has a lot in common with the worst New Ageisms, the primacy of individual entitlement cloaked in righteousness. The thunderous apathy of American society in many quarters has as much to do with Madonna's kaballah water as the Left Behind series. Zizek

2004-11-12T11:44:00.000-06:00

From Minor American: If we restrict ourselves, despite all the caveats above, to the church-centered version of the moral values argument, what emerges as a particular strength of the right is the extent to which there are already-existing modes of social organization in the communities where they’re drawing votes. These organizations – churches and attendant “family councils” and the like – are

2004-11-10T19:17:00.000-06:00

Digby as usual nails it: "The fundamental problem is that the super Christians won't compromise on principle and the rest of these 'values voters' are hypocrites. Nobody bought the v-chip in red state America or anywhere else. They don't want to take responsibility for what comes into their TV's, they want to hector people for 'forcing' them to watch these horrible things while they pass the

2004-11-10T13:43:00.000-06:00

Tanks were deployed to break up an anti-war protest in Los Angeles.

2004-11-08T17:25:00.000-06:00

Here's my prediction: in 2006, Bush's NEA will fund a nationwide tour of The Passion of the Christ on Ice. The rink will be like a Pollock with the blood.

2004-11-08T13:42:00.000-06:00

The Arctic meltdown has gathered speed. By 2100 there won't be any polar bears left drinking Coke.

2004-11-05T11:53:00.000-06:00

For these Solomonic times...I'd posted this about a year ago, but I thought I'd replay it. From Walter Bruggeman's Prophetic Imagination: The possibility of an alternative consciousness...was quite removed from Israel in Solomon's time. The king characteristically could find no such notion acceptable. It seems likely that criticism could no longer be practiced because the transcendent agent

2004-11-04T18:38:00.000-06:00

And on a totally random subject--"Wait" by White Lion has to be one of the most underrated pop songs of all time. With all the late-metal context circa 1989 swept away, the song is pure Big Star.

2004-11-04T18:18:00.000-06:00

Take Two Johnny Mnemonics and Call Me in the Morning" "The spacecraft has apparently been taken over – 'conqured' if you will – by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new

2004-10-30T23:19:00.000-05:00

But, blessedly, the community redeems itself with this post.. Because we're not humorless cyborgs after all.

2004-10-30T17:46:00.000-05:00

From the Ptarmigan classic files (2 years ago!), a little post about our finding of a Halloween turkey. Doing my best to concentrate on the election of Kerry, and to steer clear of the sanctimony of places like this, which was once one of my favorite online homes. Now it's self-righteousness this, I-know-better that. It's the usual m.o. of the Annoying Left. God love them, confusing the

2004-10-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

've been scarce lately...doing such things as: finally doing the overhaul of Taverner's Koans (very very rough, watch your step, but feel free to check out the rough template. So far. I'm also off the wagon (or on it, depending on how you look at it) with Sever Decay. I'd just needed a breather. Also Tiptree reading, which has been extremely rewarding. I'll leave this quote from Jake Berry (from

2004-10-22T13:06:00.000-05:00

Here's a speculative poetry writing exercise. Think about how an early 21st century writer can take in, sift through, and refract a 16th century form like a Petrarchan sonnet (as written by someone like Thomas Wyatt). Bernadette Mayer or Jennifer Moxley might be a good example of this. Now imagine yourself as a 26th century poet who has however incomplete it may have become. And, yes, imagine a

2004-10-21T16:17:00.000-05:00

Now I've lost two posts in a row. So I give up.

2004-10-18T17:51:00.000-05:00

Notes on Speculative Poetry; or, Dreams Beyond the Unified Field "But the diffusive energy being withdrawn, and the reaction having commenced in furtherance of the ultimate design -- that of the utmost possible Relation -- this design is now in danger of being frustrated, in detail, by reason of that very tendency to return which is to effect its accomplishment in general. Multiplicity is the

2004-10-07T13:21:00.000-05:00

More on J. J. Gibson and "Informational Pickup Theory": "Gibson proposes that the environment consists of affordances (such terrain, water, vegetation, etc.) which provide the clues necessary for perception. Furthermore, the ambient array includes invariants such as shadows, texture, color, convergence, symmetry and layout that determine what is perceived. According to Gibson, perception is a

2004-10-06T23:15:00.000-05:00

(J. J. Gibson) “To perceive the world is to coperceive oneself ....The optical information to specify the self ...accompanies the optical information to specify the environment ...The supposedly separate realms of the subjective and the objective are actually only poles of attention.” and, many, many centuries before: (Tien Tai) "The wisdom of all kinds is called the real knowledge * The eye of

2004-10-05T22:47:00.000-05:00

Michael amongst the sharp comments left by many below: "there are times when i'm unsure whether an idea i have is really poetry or just a notion about poetry that would be better held by a fictitious poet in a madeup society in a story i need to write. i recommend, therefore, that aspiring writers begin by inventing MORE THAN ONE poet-avatar/poetic movement; & have them interact through

2004-10-03T01:50:00.000-05:00

The cure is won across twice, in glitter patches so cheap they thrill each bidder, staring ahead to the empty room where brightness is born and tagged; to beat the windows of the dying year's fast turn to a faction cut-back. Ever so smiling at this sudden real candour, what to shun of this set cure's topmost retort: remember me: and now give over. --J.H. Prynne, from Not-You * It was only

2004-09-30T13:53:00.001-05:00

In other words, a version of NationStates, only with poetics instead of geopolitics. More later.

2004-09-30T13:53:00.000-05:00

In other words, a version of NationStates, only with poetics instead of geopolitics. More later.

2004-09-28T15:44:00.002-05:00

What I want to do next with Taverner's Koans, in my alleged overhaul of the entire site: I want to provide the poetics essays and exercises in the context of fucking poetry character classes. Yes, a la role playing games. Somewhat lilting, sardonic classes -- but still evocative ones that a young writer can respond to. Have it be somewhat absurd, much like the classes at Kingdom of Loathing (

2004-09-23T18:44:00.000-05:00

"In being vertically lofty and horizontally broad, the vertical is the door to the source whereas the horizontal is the door to the manifestation. The spiritual roots are like those of grass and trees. The grass and trees are the idea of the door to the manifestation. The source itself is water. Pouring the water on the grass and trees is like the idea of the door to the source." --Nichiren "

2004-09-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

Good news...the biopsy came back as "chronic inflammation" and not cancer. My dermatologist isn't 100% convinced, she still thinks there's something weird going on, so I'll be seeing a subsubspecialist in about 6 weeks. So very relieving news, albeit with an asterisk. And, yes, it's snowing outside. I shit you not.

2004-09-22T21:45:00.000-05:00

It looks like it's raining outside but it's not. I'm not sure if it's haze or minute insects. It's supposed to rain tonight. I'm on pg. 71 of the poem. I'm exhausted by it. But I'm not stopping as of yet. I'm not entirely sure how the different sections are cobbled together coherently, as there's a panoply of, er, "expedient means" throughout the poem, with some recurring characters, or should I

2004-09-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

Overheard in line at the coffee shop, two guys with badges from some marine manufacturing company: So did you hear that mussels are now in the arctic? What? I said, mussels are now in the arctic. Global warming. First time that's happened in 3,000 years. Really. Yeah. We need to put this into the trend analysis. There's going to be a lot more water. Because of the melting. Yeah. And

2004-09-20T11:18:00.000-05:00

Forgot to mention that my Introduction to Experimental Poetry class at the Loft is going swimmingly, as it always tends to do. Great, engaged students as always. The 6 weeks is amazingly short, and there's only so much you can do to cover what I'd like to in the last, oh, 90 years of poetry. But you launch a general framework out there, and you hopefully give some names for them to pursue later

2004-09-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

Translations of Nichiren are always going to be tendentious, and necessary to read with a grain of salt, with all of the weirdnessess of the various sects that want to "push poll" (to use a political term) their own idiosyncracies to the forefront of the translations. (For an example of the most embarrassing, slovenly, non-Buddhist, and altogether greedy rendition of Nichiren Buddhism possible--

2004-09-15T16:48:00.000-05:00

A sheet of paper just floated up near my 26th-floor window outside. Did not see what was written on it.

2004-09-14T17:35:00.000-05:00

And speaking of Tusk, The Twilight Singers have a great version of the Buckingham-penned "What Makes You Think You're the One" out.

2004-09-12T22:14:00.000-05:00

Er, and all of the sudden, on page 62 of the poem, I'm writing about Corey Feldman as a bodhisattva. Er, "poem turning the poem"? What the hell, Alan? I just thought I'd mention that. I think it has to do with the tragic figure he cut on Surreal Life.

2004-09-10T06:47:00.000-05:00

Already fall is beginning to creep in. Leaves are turning. NBA training camp isn't that far away. But I digress. I'm still working on my long poem. It's up to 53 some pages now. Bit by bit. And the funny thing is, as I guess was to be expected if you really think about it, that my "poetics" or whatever you want to call it have already mutated from the beginning to the now. And will likely before

2004-09-09T13:37:00.000-05:00

This absoultely rules: "How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?" * *$753.29 Bounty to the first person to ask George W. Bush this question in a public forum. And growing...

2004-09-07T21:48:00.000-05:00

REREADING GOGOL'S MISWRITTEN BOOK: "Gogol could ill stand the presence of unfamiliar people, wrote out his lectures (or else feigned sickness), and tried to monitor from Europe all the movements and exchanges of information related to him, for instance, the itineraries of acquaintances who could bring him messages or money, as well as the circulation of his letters and the exchange of opinions

2004-09-05T21:34:00.000-05:00

Listening to Tusk--not only a good album but a brilliant album. Lindsey's parts are easy to like, of course, but it's Christie's songs that lull you into a false sense of calm. And then you realize her songs are really unnerving when paired against Lindsey's cokeapaloozas. Oddly, it's Stevie (if anyone) who doesn't hold up her end of the bargain as much. I'm probably showing how square I am by

2004-09-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

One of the most fascinating chapters of syncretic history: the Greco-Buddhist kingdoms: Evidence of direct religious interaction between Greek and Buddhist thought during the period include the Milinda Panha, a Buddhist discourse in the platonic style, held between the Greek king Menander (160 to 135 BC) and the Buddhist monk Nagasena.

2004-09-05T20:32:00.000-05:00

Rock On, you two.

Abulafia

2004-08-17T00:40:00.000-05:00

From Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291?): And vowel-points were set into the letters to demonstrate the vibration of pronunciation in their translation from the book to the mouth. Thus the vibrations are essentially the letters of the mouth, and accidentally, the letters in the book. And joined to this by necessity with the places of the various vibrations, for nothing will vibrate without place and