tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12049441378149508072024-02-21T02:40:46.024-08:00poetryburghPittsburgh's poetry, reviewed by me, Poetryburgh. MAKE POETRY IN PITTSBURGH. <br> For an up-to-date Pittsburgh Literary Calendar, I recommend<a href="http://www.littsburgh.com/?post_type=tribe_events"> Littsburgh</a>.<br>Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-49805438847281677872018-09-01T09:23:00.003-07:002018-09-01T09:24:22.607-07:00JASON BALDINGER'S THE LOWER FORTY-EIGHT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well, ladies and gentleman. Youve seen me here before. Peeking at the corner of yr reading. Thinking I'm better than everyone else. Concerned with the outcome. Bored or happy. The same old shit as usual bc we're stuck in the city. Jason isn't he travels, he has some world experience.<br />
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<u>The Lower Forty-Eight</u> is a series of poems. Jason Baldinger once made the whole van drive around the city a second time to tell a story in the car. It was about these kids who hosted Jason and co. who were clueless. They were my age and they bought him coffees from starbucks in their backpacks, and warmed them up in the oven, because they didn't have a coffee maker.<br />
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Jason writes about not having health care. He writes about coming into a record collection and living off the proceeds for a year. My professor said "I don't know what you're going to find out there in Pittsburgh, Peter, there's a few Labor Poets, but that's about it."<br />
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Basically, I show up to Jason's readings, and there's a few flavors: 1/2 bad, 1/4 middling, 1/4 good. The good one is a guy expressing legitimate tragedy. It's sort of the David Newman flavor. I assume Newman lead the charge. I assume there's some history.<br />
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What David Newman does write is the essential panic of Pittsburgh. Alcoholics combined with bad employers. You know, I'm pretty sheltered. But if you're about one rung down from where I am there's a certain panic, I know my peers feel it... It's all these yinzers who are still used to paying employees nada and then drinking with them later. There's a lot of bars here but they're all $3.50 a beer??<br />
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Pittsburgh has a series of speakeasies you have to apply to get into... My one friend said like "yeah, I got molested there". It's not a good or basically decent thing that these Pittsburghers are drawing on, the you know working-class shit... at least, nostalgia guarantees very little...Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-28821287074186426902018-06-22T15:35:00.000-07:002018-06-22T15:35:57.854-07:00a review of "vast necrohol" by caolan madden<br />
I played final fantasy XII and I too experienced the magic moment when you encounter the optional "necrohol" dungeon and are warned by your party members to turn back. Then there's a bunch of level 30 goblins that attack you.<br />
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I would call "vast necrohol" by caolan madden "a complete failure to use the video game lexicon in poetry". Probably because I've seen the "disintigrating art text" thing a bunch of times before, and sometimes better. but it's usually just an impediment.<br />
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I keep on thinking of those 30 something year old poets, in pgh, basically all the people almost close to the frame of reference that I love, you know, video game culture. I have no idea if caolan is 30. But I keep seeing that total failure to interact with the video game thing, in a way that I like, personally. I keep thinking those 30 year olds grew up with MTV values and that's why they act like this.<br />
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]\this book like lou welch says "maybe it's better if the poet was reading it out loud." Ok, I say, I can wring more out of it I read it out loud and there's a certain something in there sometimes but it's still a poor man's descent of allette which I wasn't crazy about anyway.<br />
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I have to explain why I'd call it a "complte failure to use the video game lexicon in poetry." Ok, it's not a complete failure. The churning of items in your stomach = the churning of items in your inventory. Domesticity of videogames == grinding loot. These are images which we give credit to the writer for.<br />
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But hey, I still don't like leet speak in the captain's name because it's just there to give the appearence of digital shit going on. which I guess is the point of leet speak anyway. It is maybe a valid argument against this chapbook to say "how much are caps and italics and leet speak and white space doing the drama". How much is imitation middle english there to just seem impressive. Well I'll give the imitation middle english stuff some credit as it does lend a lot of sound to what's going on. But it's also pretty tiresome.<br />
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ok mashing a = grinding in video games = erotic and frustrating, cracking femme oppression. But fuck the poems don't really do it, they're not banging, if you read it right and had personality when you read it you could get them off but maybe if you were at a tough bar everyone wouldn't give a shit?<br />
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<br />Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-16271467947458447742017-09-05T19:41:00.001-07:002017-09-05T19:44:40.538-07:00Poetryburgh Presents: "Under the Bridge"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This was a night of poetry I arranged at my friend's house.<br />
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The actual event was definitely one of my favorite poetry events I've attended. It sounds self-serving but there was a lot of good qualities:<br />
<ul>
<li>I really liked all the readers.</li>
<li>I got to present, and host, and make things the way I wanted, and look pretty and wear gym shorts and eye shadow (thanks to Karla Lamb)</li>
<li>Jenson Leonard's performance was _excellent_ and I got to react while listening by moving my body.</li>
<li>A lot of people and a lot of cool people showed up.</li>
<li>We ran out of toilet paper and had to emergency restock from Shur-Save</li>
<li>We got a noise complaint.</li>
<li>BD and Carlisle's backyard, where we read, overlooked the Bloomfield Bridge and the valley below *and the train tracks and bus way*, it's probably one of the most beautiful views in Pittsburgh.</li>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the bridge. See also: fireplace.</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>This view is entirely unrepresented in the film.</li>
<li>I had a cheap mike and bass amp and that was our P.A.. Our lighting for the second half of the readings was a maglite taped to a railing and a floorlamp. We also had a campfire.</li>
<li>We had four or five different areas where people could hang out, including a campfire in the backyard, next to the readings.</li>
<li>We had an open-mic, untaped, on the city steps down to the valley. I made everyone only read two poems, and it was entirely dark except the lights/phones we brought. We had maybe ten fifteen people and it was really *hot* like *hot jazz*</li>
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For the video, Dave Williamson is responsible for the beauty of the framing. There's fire sparks in front of some of the poets and a beautiful spinning ceiling fan/light in the background for others. I instructed Dave to try to act as casual as possible to get the interviews and candid material and we got pretty much just enough for the video.<br />
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I think the video drags during some of the readings-- it's hard to put a whole poem being read in the middle of a film like that, usually you want more cuts. I edited this all in one night and sat on it for a while, I never arranged for a second edit, so I decided just to publish what I had, even with the long readings in it, and the misspelled title, it's documentary at least, also I think a lot of the movie has verve.</div>
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I said the party/movie was based on "Debt Begins At Twenty" <a href="http://poetryburgh.blogspot.com/2015/05/poetry-in-pittsburgh.html">which is actually the founding text of this blog</a>. The party was an ideal state of poetry for me, and very true to the phrase "I Want Pittsburgh To Be Fun".</div>
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The full lyric from DBAT is "I Want Pittsburgh To Be Fun, If It [doesn't change soon?] I Might Pull Out A Gun" [I have to rewatch the movie, it's offline].</div>
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I danced with my dad at a punk show revival night at SPACE downtown featuring the band "Carsickness", this same gallery having "Debt Begins at Twenty" playing in the back room. Jon (my dad) has a peculiar way of dancing, my mom told me this growing up. All I knew about my dad's residency in Pittsburgh in his 20's was that he did a lot of drugs and also danced at punk shows, he was also a huge fan of "Carsickness". So I got to dance with him to the same band he danced to when he was my age.</div>
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The way Jon dances is he hangs his jaw out like a severe underbite, hunches his shoulders up, and twists back and forth. It looks completely without grace and I was wondering if there was something wrong with him; but there wasn't, he pulled me in and I did my own version of punk dancing which is like you know head bobbing shit. Also when I finished my beer the thing to do was just throw it on the ground, dad showed me that at that show.</div>
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The thing about that dance was that there was a lot of gracelessness to it, but it was entirely intentional, and entirely in the spirit of the thing, and we were dancing in good company with the other aged punks who showed up, we had mosh pits, I was shoving a small aging american around and throwing cups of water at my twin.</div>
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The main connection I make between that night and this night, was that in both cases there was a sort of odd perfection that the night was spelling out, relative to my personal everything, and it wasn't perfect for being completely good and not awkward but having a total form to it-- and in each case either was the result of careful artistic planning, my work for "Under the Bridge" and Dennis Childers and Larrey Rippel's for the SPACE gallery show.</div>
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Maybe there is one more thing which is impressing me which is the meta-form relations between these carefully planned artistic events, my movie, and "Debt Begins at Twenty". At all times I was aware, and I think maybe other people were too, during the events, and while I watched DBAT, that there was a certain ideal we could achieve, or an activity we could follow, in that sort of "being punk, being poets" vein. Mostly I am trying to activate that spirit if and when I am doing poetry or planning events.<br />
--poetryburgh 5/9/17<br />
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Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-60434201134114805412017-02-08T10:46:00.000-08:002017-02-08T10:46:15.739-08:00A Review of Amit Majmudar's "Dothead"<i>(I wrote this on company time, trying to put up something for the CLPGH website. Not going to use this.)</i><br />
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<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">What do we do with our ancestry? What do we do with our race,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>interpreted by our culture? Generally the habit of perhaps even<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">the second generation of </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">children of immigrants is to be stuck between the demands of an American </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">life and the behavior of (a different culture). "Dothead" is surprising for handling this distinction so adroitly, with violence, on occasion, and to be reunited with violence.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">I generally don't enjoy poetry. I didn't really enjoy<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Dothead</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">, except for the one excerpt from the titular poem:</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">their</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>flesh in little puddles<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">underneath,</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">pale</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>pools where Nataraja cooled his feet.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">I also enjoy the shape of the poem, which manages to transmit some funk across these rhyming schoolboy lines. I didn't read the rest of the book.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Dothead: the term itself a slur, being modified/owned by the descendant. In general the rhyming is insufferable and the poems themselves obsessed with the conceit of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="SpellingError SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">poemhood</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>as all this</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>book generally is. All books of poems that have singular word as the title, meant to express some<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">wond</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">rous</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>victimhood, tend to be this way, and I think the average consumer reacts as if each book were a wounded bird. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Maybe you nurse this bird back to life, but guess what, it's wing's broken, so it's just<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="SpellingError SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">gonna</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>fly around your house and crap everywhere, but do a half-flying with one broken wing that ends up<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">suicidal</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>mostly. And<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">lik</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">e all</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>animals it's just obsessed with its self. You can raise it but for slowly getting the sense that you could have just nature take care of this and have everyone, book/bird included, be better off. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: white; clear: both; color: black; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; user-select: text; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">I think books should generally make you feel uncomfortable, albeit as forms of entertainment, those that do might not leave the shelf. But I remember Al Columbia's<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">The Golden Bear Days</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> which is all violence and obscene kids and I think about how a book<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">can summon a great terrible<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">nonsense</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that your eyes seem peeled to, take in a certain patter and leave and if you want and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">get that</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> patter back you return to (it).</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Patter they is, great and terrible it's not, Indian-</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="SpellingError SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">ess</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>sure, and sort of diversity-</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="SpellingError SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">esque</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX76393815" lang="EN-US" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; color: #121212; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>writing that has at least some of that great terrible violence. I think the moment when schoolyard Amit blazes his fellow kids with the dot on his head is better for being literal.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX76393815" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></div>
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Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-87608657082895467112016-09-12T21:11:00.002-07:002016-09-12T21:31:49.741-07:00The Odd Communion: TRPGs, Poetry, Videogames, virtualworlds and more Andrea CoatesMy next project for Pittsburgh is to have writers write about videogames. In general I think pop culture subject matter makes a poem fresh. It's relatable and it's not flowers or valleys and like I spend 2/3 of my day staring at a screen, so.<br />
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I live in a world most defined by the commercialsprawl thing that Andrea Coates talks about <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http://andreacoates.blogspot.com/2011/12/blog-post.html">here</a>*. Products, logos, not necessarily all bent to sell me things because the machine throws sparks, too. Nothing's perfect, and not too many people are at the helm.<br />
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In this popmedia sprawl lies video games, commercial structures included. Is it just my particular ///sidenote: check out this Andrea quote and the future of Alt Lit as it does not exist sadly:<br />
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In this popmedia sprawl, as I was saying, exists a fun and potentially valid future venue of art called gaming; the ultimate V.R. experience which is as well the future "3d experience" of other various digital medias. To a lesser extent, i.e. the poetry's equivalent, lies role-playing games, those on the tabletop, involving paper and pencils.////</div>
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///Ok, for the record, here's my life experience right now: I loaded up, on my twin brother's advice, the Donald Glover short film "<a href="https://vimeo.com/83651386">Clapping For The Wrong Reasons</a>" to watch as I wrote this piece. Somehow the video ended up paused and an Andrea Coates poem, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/andrea-coates/dear-shane-smith">Dear Shane Smith</a>, started playing on Soundcloud in a background tab. Little did I know of any of this, as I thought the still image of Don Glover lying in bed while Andrea Coates' growly revolutionary message played in the background was, having not recognized the voice of A.C., that this was the actual Don Glover film. I thought it was pretty good. ....All this while I try to type and simultaneously load up the <a href="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/mercyvr/index.html#_=_">Arcane Kids' faux-virtual-reality Soundcloud/Unity webdevice</a>.... My computer threatens to crash. All my blogging may delete. I'm running a Chromebook which has very little RAM. You may begin to get a sense of the strained techno-interpersonal connections of my life. A.C. begins screaming as I try to pause the Don Glover movie which doesn't seem to be actually playing, the whole façade begins falling apart as the computer does crash, and I'm left with a digital silence at least along with my writing which was not deleted. This as I sit in my parent's house 1 year after a 5-year college english-degree completion with little-to-nothing to do during my 15-hour workweek. I can't write poetry because no one cares. I type up a blogspot.////</div>
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The obsession that has entered my life <i>lately</i> is the rpgs as made by Zak Smith, Patrick Stuart, James Raggi: <a href="http://www.lotfp.com/RPG/products/lotfp-weird-fantasy-role-playing">Lamenations of the Flame Princess</a>. A stripped-down version of D&D meant to semi-emulate original-edition D&D but built with more horror in mind. Kinda eldritch, kinda disempowering, kinda simple character creation to replace the dead characters who died fighting that evil thing at 1st level.</div>
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I find communion in these objects -- gametexts, online virtual webtoys, and yeah I guess videogames themselves-- when they occasionally create cohesion between individuals, as opposed to the more regular solitary cohesion between individual and produkt. I mean the online gaming experience, with its modulated microphone voices ringing through virtual death machines, these, your friends. I also mean sitting around a table and bullshitting about what you're going to do to a white dragon. There's dice involved, in virtual reality too, and these mechanical components seem to strain-- usefully-- against the more nuanced and forgiving social interactions. You can commit a player to death on the back of lady luck, and similarity, you can stomp a public server of noobs** if you've mastered the art of clicking and clacking fast enough. </div>
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Poetry in these circumstances I think doesn't lie with the storywriting behind the gametexts- virtual or not- or with the social interactions, or with the mechanical interactions. I think the poetry connection lies in the making of love to a machine. The obsequity of man serving machine, machine pleasing human, in an endless loop for hours. This in a possibly ritualistic formal setting between you and your friends. This is the kinda poetry I'm after, making sense of this digital-mechanical-psychological connection which bounces back and forth in my living room for days at a time. It's an odd communion.</div>
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~poetryburgh</div>
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*Note that this, the article I wanna talk about, wherein A.C. takes down Tao Lin for a kind of rampant commercialism which both emodies his work as well as the environment we live in (as millennials, or really everyone on earth), this article has been been made private on Andrea's former blog. This too is the condition of internet literature: temporary publications. Everything is accessible but for limited times! It's hard not to feel as if I'm standing by the edge of grinding pit, digital publications being as vulnerable as they are... some of my favorite writing lost forever... As well it would probably be a good blog post to write about the increasing ability of artists themselves to sequester their own work from the free-online space.</div>
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**outdated...</div>
Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-647973459854257942016-09-08T14:09:00.000-07:002016-09-08T14:09:04.117-07:00Poetryburgh Reviews Canadian non-poet Andrea Coates's Blog: Watch As I Try to Label it "Insane" In a Good Way<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/165926472" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/165926472">SPRING BREAKERS 2.0: Only God Forgives \\ Trailer - Andrea Coates & Harmony Korine</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user45383568">Andrea Coates</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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The above is one of Coates' videos, a near-unwatchable mashup right? Kinda masterfully dense collaboration of her own ideas of celebrity with her music and with pop images. I'm not discussing her videos for this post though, I'm discussing the writing on her blog at <a href="http://thehighwayoftears.blogspot.ca/">thehighwayoftears.blogspot.ca</a>. I just have the above for color. Also if anyone knows more about Coates' current figuring in Canadian culture please email me at peterbowensewebb@gmail.com</i><br />
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Why is Andrea Coates good? She’s a radical, willing to see multiple sides of one issue, including the otherwise “insane” ones. I use the word "insane" not because I believe in insanity as a legit social identifier but because I think people will connect with what I'm talking about when I say it. Is that implicit-ly supporting the label "insane"? Andrea Coates would probably empathize with my use of it.<br />
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Coates understands that empathizing with all human beings is the project, and that a general sympathy for all humans isn't just a moral necessity, it's a pathway into interesting ideas:<br />
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"Nowhere in modern politics, in Canada or elsewhere - besides here, this blog - will you find an individual or association campaigning for the societal and economic rights of Organized Criminals as such. Which means, to my mind, the “Gangster Human-Rights Advocate” is a political niche waiting to be filled, and, considering I am the first person I know of to point to the absence of an Organized Criminal perspective in the public debate around recreational drug-policies, I think I ought to doodle it in. Not because I personally sell recreationals (rather I hang out with people who do and listen to their stories and give them advice), but because I am willing to take on the difficult task of empathizing with and articulating the position of the professional Organized Criminal in a hypocritical legal culture."</blockquote>
- http://thehighwayoftears.blogspot.ca/p/marijuana-legalization-in-canada-where.html<br />
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With the above, the "insane" perspective is a way to examine drug politics. But I also label Andrea as "insane" because you'd identify the celebrity-identification that she does as a common pattern of "insane" people: claiming that celebrities stole ideas from her, calling the owner of VICE her future he-doesn't-know-it-yet-but-he-will-be-my boyfriend; we've all seen enough examples of this practice to dismiss it out of hand. But Andrea uses the practice (self-consciously) to display the rather particular lines of power which draw out from celebrity to individual, and to conjecture the bounds of our current, and possibly future society:<br />
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"Shane Smith is letting Tao Lin, Specifically, as the Literary Writer of Highest Rank in the VICE Cotterie, get away with suggesting his Wife / GFs / Crushes for Employment @ VICE over Women of Notable Literary Talent because Shane Smith himSelf harbours a Fantasy of forcing a Literary Woman into the Position of having to Sxually please him for his Attention as an Artist, but SS cannot act on this Fantasy with the Ease Tao can as a Mere Peon of his, because what with Technology xposing People as it does, EveryOne would know about the Affair and it would reflect Poorly on SS as a Boss: so he lives the Fantasy out Vicariously, through Tao Lin, and in doing so attracts the Attention of the Woman he wants to force into this Position, who is me, the First Person to pick up on the Trend @ VICE and get Angry about it, who will subvert the Fantasy and make it reflect Well on Shane Smith and I as opposed to Poorly, by coming up with the Apology Idea: if SS apologizes for VICE’s Misogyny Generally, the Public will forgive him for taking a Mistress, and he can go on accumulating Power in CEOland with Moral Impunity. Coming to an Understanding of how Hierarchy works has been Vital to my figuring out how to subvert Feminine Xploitation : Once Hierarchal Power Relationships are made Visible, it is amazing how Much More Human Activity makes Sense, and how Much Clearer where to apply Pressure to promote Change becomes."</blockquote>
from: http://htmlgiant.com/interviews-2/an-artic-fox-interviews-andrea-coates/<br />
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What Andrea does here: proposes a conspiracy between Tao Lin (former prince-king of Alt Lit) and Shane Smith (founder of VICE) wherein the gender power dynamics of the Alt Lit scene and their respective publication through VICE are semi-credibly analyzed. She then proposes, and in fact, predicts herself to be the solution: her own brand of gender-politics and her physical self will caulk Shaun Smith's anxiety and allow for a less misogynistic publication.<br />
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This is, again, a move of empathy, twofold: first, she finds an empathetic solution to VICE's misogyny, and second, she legitimizes her own nonentity/celebrity relationship. Empathy for the self is a powerful thing and by drawing a larger obfuscated politics through her own person, Andrea manages to conceive both a potential understanding of VICE as well as a more workable future. I don't think it matters that this plan is unlikely to work; it's sorta like speculative lit.<br />
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~poetryburgh<br />
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<br />Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-36123136338581441512016-09-06T21:54:00.002-07:002016-09-06T21:56:37.293-07:00Cory in The Abyss & The Poet's Meme<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/coryintheabyssmemes/">Cory in The Abyss</a>, scrolling, gives me the sensation of a long scream of desperation; anxiety; tender moments played through a frustration so immense that they conglomerate into a cultural hellstate. As the Blackness in our culture resides in nothing; as sex is parodied long past the point of an actual sex life; these things are generally dealt with humor, to make the mixture universally palatable; but as this humor is an absurdist humor, the deeper faults of comedy come to the surface, to be solidified into meme.<br />
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I think Cory memes form a cogent narrative across the page, as compared to the general splay of something like imgur.com. "Cory" is one particular creator who does have a tone and a business; his message is pop-art burlesque, basically, carnivalesque parody of what's new, what's political, what's lightly taboo. This breaks down in some points to semi-poetic noncommentary, a collage of various cultural bright points into a dream or nightmare upon waking. It's very Lisa Frank.<br />
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Cultural significance of The Abyss = the cultural significance of Lisa Frank= image making, with the intent to market. Essentially Cory is "on blast." He's attempting to produce something relatable. Thus his memes are for their own sake. That there is a significant part of cultural commentary in the mix may very well be there just for the appeal. It seems hard to isolate.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cory in The Abyss </td></tr>
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"Cory" himself's a poet. He's going to apply to grad school for poetry. As his greatest success is perhaps in something not-at-all poetry there is perhaps a lot to be said; I would like to say that the cross-cultural connections of poets are particularly potent for being imaginative and for existing in a space where the current culture has to be entirely fled. I would like to embrace "the new" wherever it comes up and I believe that memes as combination of collage and cellular distribution are "new." As a model for poetry they, I think, accomplish some of poetry's greater goals. That being said I feel a great hesitance when confronted with The Abyss; something feels shallow. Where's the next step. A missing depth in the memes. Still searching.<br />
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<b>***POETRYBURGH'S VISION FOR THE UNIVERSAL VIRTUAL FUTURE: ***</b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1,000 people out of work will still do something and if it's not crime it might still look obscene. Let's say goodbye to the era of workmanly cause-and-effect and embrace the era of confounding cultural astigmatism where attention is everything and love evaporates in the deep-settled mines of a forgotten past. Nostalgia overflowing essentially into substance. This before or perhaps after the Matrix gets ahold of us, the dulling effect first thought practical seen to be overridden by enormous leechlike neural networks of blazing paranoia. Can culture itself be reduced to a pure, homeostatic oil? At least in the form of latticed image this seems possible.</blockquote>
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~poetryburghPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-782832438821030722016-08-27T22:34:00.000-07:002016-08-27T22:52:05.573-07:00POETRY AS COMMUNION: THE RETURN OF PBURGH; JESUS POETRY @ MWFA FREE <strike>SNAKE</strike> <strike>MONSTER</strike> JESUS POEMS ABOUT <strike>SNAKES</strike> <strike>MONSTERS</strike> JESUS LET'S DO THIS<br />
August 28th, 2016 @ Most Wanted Fine Art, 5015 Penn Avenue.<br />
Celebratory Unrelated Music Video: h<a href="ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llsiEIvvM0">ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llsiEIvvM0</a><br />
<br />
Call me an unbeliever... call me someone with MESSED UP FEELINGS... CALL ME SOMEONE WITH FRIENDS... not that good friends... essentially, after tonight, I was left with two questions:<br />
1. What is Love?<br />
2. What is Fuck?<br />
<br />
I think there's something essential about loneliness. The way it drives us... "The core of solitude is love"... that was another thought I had tonight, in the MWFA bathroom. A kind of of "romance" had taken over the evening, even a kind of "gothicism"... I wonder if rich people feel this way.<br />
<br />
I wonder if there's legitimately challenging, good music in Pittsburgh, for the rich... like the jazz artists at the Jefferson Awards, who were good... Somehow I (less rich) am stuck with this tentative semiart scene, like the art is halfway family-friendly, only occasionally strange.<br />
<br />
There are many artists in Pittsburgh, and their art has an almost economic effect: you have your artist friends and they practice polyamorous weird sex lives and art forms, they create an "intense weirdness", and they spread this to others. This can be poetry, but I think if we're being honest, as we should be, we have to admit that it's not simply poetry that we're looking for; it's a certain attitude, a certain environment, not locatable within any particular genre but answerable to the requirements of many; a series of artistic traditions, linked to a city and time.<br />
<br />
If you are like me, you want all your best friends to perform in ways that F'N WORK in an environment that goes late, and for this I have to thank Margaret Bashaar; I have to thank her and Rachael Deacon and all the rest of the people who get this done. I think, as much as it is a shaping of the environment, this art is personal, a living of a life, taking a residence within a city, among people who you have these tenebrous relationships with; kinda artsy, kinda limited; there and not there. What is Love? (What is Fuck?)<br />
<br />
The world (in Pittsburgh) is limited, and the world inside me, too, is limited, and it's all less than ideal, but at least it's practiced as poetry, which is an art form, and I've found the promise of being an artist is to have this tenebrous connection to a force deeper than yourself, a semireligous connection (art used to be subservient to religion, right?) So even the anti-Jesus poems that cropped up, like the real legitimate atheist scarred-by-Christianity poems, these poems contributed to, rather than took away from, a faith which was the blatant point of "Free Jesus Poems About Jesus, Let's Do This". Just like Snake or Monster poems before it, it was a kind of heightened semi-sarcastic semi-childish and (especially with Jesus poems) sacrilegious (but so equally, religous!) communion.<br />
<br />
I wrote about communion before <a href="http://poetryburgh.blogspot.com/2015/07/steve-roggenbuck-co-ex3bx.html">when Steve Roggenbuck came to town</a>. When Rachael Deacon did "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing" it was sort of completely sincere and I sat on the floor, and everything was in kind of in that spirit. <strike>Religious</strike> ecstasy, a more-or-less joining of souls.<br />
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(<i>Free Jesus Poems </i>was organized by Rachael Deacon and Margaret Bashaar and is part of the annual series <i>Free ____ Poems about _____. Let's Do this.</i>)<br />
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~poetryburghPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-39307335811042477622015-09-16T16:57:00.003-07:002015-09-16T17:46:18.391-07:00City of Asylum-- Jazz Poetry Concert Sept 12th<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-d5b0e5c6-d879-d324-14a3-6e1170f8ec85" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m usually frustrated by the collaboration between musical performers and poets. Often the music is relegated to a mere background role, a vamping behind the words. Much better is when the two sounds are on even terms, when they influence each other: it’s at that point when something new emerges. That “new thing” emerged a few times last Saturday at City of Asylum’s annual Jazz Poetry Concert, as it did for Amanda Fadgen, who did a sign-language reading of one of Heather McHugh’s poems. Vijay Iyer and Oliver Lake played jazz behind Amanda as she signed Heather’s poem, and the fusion of their sound and her movement, and the natural fusion of ASL between motion and language, collaborated in a way arriving at a sort of heightened dance. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">City of Aslyum had set up a big white tent next to the National Aviary for the event; a light rain drizzled outside. The evening started off with about an hour-long performance from the Vijay Iyer Trio and followed with several Jazz/Poetry collaborations. Not all of them worked; but the idea did come through for Terrance Haye’s performance, which I’d like to talk about.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Terrance understands a crucial fact about poetry: it cannot, by the casual audience member, be taken seriously. To this end follows Terrance’s masterful poetic voice- at all times when he reads he deals with a troubled sincerity, a slight leaning-back from the honesty many poets make use of, a position which matches the off-kilter images and premises of his work. When he read last Saturday, he introduced his poems as “weird poems”- a kind of warning, a humor to help the audience accept the strangeness of the liberty with language that they were about to hear. What makes Terrance great is the way that these images and premises explode into sincerity: see the aunt from Hayes’ </span><a href="http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2013/06/poem-by-terrance-hayes.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">“The Carpenter Ant”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> who knocks holes into her walls like a carpenter- strange, almost joking metaphor made into sincerity.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The jazz behind Terrance, however, functioned to give his voice from the start a credence that allowed him to shed that premise of humor almost immediately, almost completely. His voice acquired a quality of song; there was an understanding that something as complex and strange as jazz was unashamedly the focus of his work. For me that moment achieved a kind of breakout goal of poetry, to become not the poem anymore, but to instead become something hard to ignore- in the same way that jazz can stop being just discordant noise and tune everyone in into something greater.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Other memorable pieces of the evening: Aja Monet’s reading (last line: “When we were children, we were told to believe in the santuary of peace. They should have told us it was war”), some of Vijay Trio's Jazz, and the reading with some guy in a white jumpsuit standing on his head while slow-frame black-and-white videos of gymnasts played along with the jazz and some light projections. There was also a moment when the event coordinators asked us to hold up our programs, which each bore the name of a persecuted, possibly murdered, writer. At first I felt distanced, but as they photographed us holding up all of those names they played a quote from some writer, and I felt moved: “language has the ability to change the world, and it is for this reason alone that small minds seek to silence it”. Somewhat self-aggrandizing, I know, but it drove the point home. </span><a href="mailto:--poetryburgh@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">--poetryburgh@gmail.com</span></a></span></span></div>
Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-23270668770860154392015-09-08T12:20:00.004-07:002015-09-08T12:20:49.050-07:00Beat Poetry Festival Comes To PittsburghHow'd the Beat Festival go? George Wallace was good, and Russ Green was ok. Jim Deuchars hosted, he had some good stuff himself. It was two nights, first at East End Book Exchange, second at Brillobox. The second night they had an electronic artist ("allinaline") mixing music from a miniature synth to accompany the poets.<br />
<br />
Nothing seemed too surprising. I feel like the legacy of the beats lives on in more or less every poet I see in Pittsburgh, from the New Yinzers to the more formal small press people. Everyone has influences from that "beat" tradition: straightforward narration, confessional attitude, heightened examination of the brutal everyday, a casual veering between singing and talking-- pretty universal stuff.<br />
<br />
This all to say when the "beats" came out and showed us their stuff, it wasn't anything we hadn't seen before. Not that the material itself was supposed to be fresh; e.g. The Mad Muse read Shakespeare to start her sets off. In doing this she claimed a kind of diplomatic function: "at some point in my life I was trying to bring literature to the drunks." Well, all the poets I know drink, it's not surprising given the modernist/beat/man-of-the-world stereotype, which I think is unfortunate: using the self-image of a writer to encourage drinking seems short-sighted at least.<br />
<br />
So the beat poet festival: nothing new, although we shouldn't have expected anything new. The beats _are_ alive today in Pittsburgh, go drink with Baldinger et. al. if you can find the rock they're under. George Wallace of course was excellent throughout and he brought some real N.Y. talent to Pgh for those past few nights.<br />
<br />
I was able to record some blurry-quality videos of the Brillobox event. The audio should be ok:<br />
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Mad Muse reading a section from Shakespeare's "As You Like it".<br />
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George Wallace reading "Jazz is My Religion":<br />
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From the videos you can see the kind of performance value these people brought to the stage. --poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-9531045457787693182015-08-24T16:20:00.000-07:002015-08-24T16:53:43.798-07:00Worst Case Ontario*So: Worst Case Ontario is a group of poets from Canada, primarily Toronto, who will be touring around the northeastern seaboard for the last ten days of August. We in Pittsburgh were fortunate enough to see them over at Dan McCloskey's house, The Cyberpunk Apocalypse, last night.<br />
<br />
WCO is composed of four or five poets, Jessica Bebenek, JC Bouchard, dalton derkson, JM Francheteau, and Julie Mannell. They all read for about five minutes each in the back room of the Apocalypse. If you had to ascribe an overall genre to their work you could say: "bourgeoisie/hip psychologically realistic lyric poetry"; but I'm not making much of an effort here. There was a range of work, almost all of it was good, it was worth checking out.<br />
<br />
What was important: a group of young poets, all at least competent, successfully touring. They were Kickstarted, some $4000, which I heard is going mostly to gas, not alcohol. This is what is known as "proof of concept": if you have a few poet friends you can apparently tour, like a punk rock group, and distribute your chapbooks around the country, although you'll probably lose cash on it. WCO has, indeed, even received some media attention, probably because of the novelty of their trip.<br />
<br />
We went to a bar after they read and, full disclosure, I got some hugs. I appreciated the chance to reach out to some young and (perhaps characteristically for canada) friendly poets; the most notable thing I learned of was the canadian system for art grants, wherein it's possible to get funded by the state if you jump through some hoops. I have to reapply for my passport, but I'm strongly considering a trip to visit Toronto/Montreal, where I hear the girls are pretty.<br />
--poetryburgh@gmail.com<br />
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their website: <a href="http://worstcaseontario-tour.tumblr.com/">http://worstcaseontario-tour.tumblr.com/</a><br />
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*origination of w.c.o: rickyism for "worst case scenario"; ricky is a character on the nova-scotia based show "trailer park boys". pertinent to this is the fact that only one out of the five tour members has a valid driver's licence (dalton).<br />
<br />
UPDATE: I ADDED SOME NOTABLE MOMENTS:<br />
<br />
JM reading a WWE poem, about a wrestler who cut himself with a razor, who flicked the cuts to produce blood. He then compares the cuts to african watering holes, complete with tse tse flies.<br />
<br />
Julie Mannell read a short story about bad sex education, and how it lead to a vore-like imagined scenario wherein a man physically would climb up into her body, which was far more touching than gross.<br />
<br />
JC's poetry, short potent and strangely natural imagery, him "fucking the wind", growing antlers, etc.<br />
<br />
dalton had an excellent poem in the chapbook (which he did not read :`( ) investigating the psychology of men who are opposed to feminism, ending on an excellent image reversing the word "bitch":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the dogs have found the opposable<br />
thumbs sunk in the deep end of the gene pool:<br />
figured out how to work<br />
the latches in the backyards.</blockquote>
Jessica had good stuff also. Ok BYEE<br />
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<br />Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-38552484394216828822015-08-22T15:42:00.001-07:002015-08-22T15:43:53.231-07:00The Pink & Shiny Party @ Modernformations<div align="left"><p dir="ltr"><font color="#000000">I think Sarah B. Boyle flashed me the horns after she read… we were talking about how she used gumballs as a poetic image for her aborted fetus, and how she uh, provided real gumballs at her event. I think she gave me a little “devil’s horns” hand symbol when I brought up the connection. It was at this point that I thought of the word “hardcore”. I thought this whole event was actually very “hardcore”.</font></p>
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<div align="left"><p dir="ltr">Much like some kind of perverted candy, the soft, pink, & shiny exterior of Sarah B. Boyle’s poetry contains a rock-hard, tooth-cracking center.</p>
<p dir="ltr">An example line:</p>
<p dir="ltr">"The curette scrapes the uterus clean.<br>It is a parfait spoon with a scalpel edge."</p>
<p dir="ltr">The center of Boyle’s new chapbook, <i>What’s Pink & Shiny / What's Dark & Hard</i>, is an abortion, which isn’t new subject matter for poetry, but<font color="#000000"> it</font> <font color="#000000">managed that night to become new</font><font color="#000000">.</font> I<font color="#000000"> think </font><font color="#000000">it</font><font color="#000000"> was </font><font color="#000000">the</font><font color="#000000"> </font>reading: <font color="#000000">Sarah </font><font color="#000000">spoke</font><font color="#000000"> with a lilting, </font><font color="#000000">almost</font><font color="#000000"> innocent </font><font color="#000000">manner which </font>gave<font color="#000000"> an artificially to her</font><font color="#000000"> performance which, f</font><font color="#000000">or</font><font color="#000000"> </font><font color="#000000">me,</font><font color="#000000"> translated into t</font><font color="#000000">actics. </font>That seeming incongruence between center and exterior <font color="#000000">gave</font> <font color="#000000">Boyle</font>'s work power: the disastrous <font color="#000000">became</font> everyday, the grotesque <font color="#000000">was</font> cute, and even if <font color="#000000">it was </font>tongue-in-cheek <font color="#000000">it was </font>unflinching: the experience <font color="#000000">was</font> exactly as serious, exactly as humorous, as it <font color="#000000">deserved </font>to be.</p>
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<div align="left"><p dir="ltr">Boyle also read a “Golden Shovel” poem, in the style of Terrance Hayes, wherein the last word of every line is anagrammatically taken from a sentence. Boyle’s chosen sentence was an off-the-cuff public sexist remark by a Republican partisan: “I can look out in the crowd, I kinda have Fox X-ray vision, and I can see that some of you women, you don't even know it yet, but you're pregnant.” In the resulting poem, Boyle explored the rapacious reasoning behind this statement with sensual and lyrical language which had the guts to move beyond caricature. The result was very funny, sounded , and exposed a kind of crazy heart to the politician's logic, an animal romance: cutting to the bone. </p>
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<div align="left"><p dir="ltr">Margaret Bashaar also read some excellent poems and Adam Gibson, Boyle’s brother, played a few songs on his guitar. Brandt Dykstra was painting on a pink canvas on the back of the stage for the entirety of the event. Along with the gumballs a pink creamcheese-and-chocolate-chips cake was served, and was delicious. <a href="mailto:--poetryburgh@gmail.com">--poetryburgh@gmail.com</a></p>
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Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-35232178838586479712015-08-11T08:42:00.000-07:002015-08-11T13:04:09.293-07:00Girls Get Lit @ Bayardstown Social Club: Impressive & GoodBayardstown Social Club: down Penn Avenue, in the Strip District; late twenty/thirtysomething folx; lots of beards. Campfire smoke, cigarette smoke, sounds of passing trains, weird howling industrial alarm in the distance, plentiful beverage and snacks. I had no cash but I got some dogs and even a beer. We were protected from the smattering of rain by a plastic canopy.<br />
<br />
The place was packed, had to edge past people at their respective picnic tables. Host Stephanie Brea was gracious and alternated fiction readers and poets in a successful attempt to keep everyone engaged. There was a large wooden stage with a quality public address system. Reading were: Taylor Grieshober, Angele Ellis, Christine Stroud, Deena November and Jessica Simms.<br />
<br />
Well folks this was a great event. 5/7 on the Peter Scale*. I had never heard Deena November before despite my trying; she had even started a reading series at my local cafe, The Staghorn, but I could never make it (I work Saturdays!). Well the good news is Deena is a pretty good poet, probably Up There in my little personal Pittsburgh Poet Hierarchy. She read from her semi-infamous chapbook Dickwad, which codified relationships to men using things such as nicknames for their dicks, along with poems about her motherhood experience. All the poems were absorbing and rich with the stained details of life, played the field between scatological humor and deep and painful truth, just great.<br />
<br />
Scatology was a kind of running theme of the night; female authors using grotesque images to pull the audience in. Taylor Grieshober had a story exploring the more bodily consequences of a breakup: the line that got me was when the main character (who, the author kept reminding the audience, was not Taylor) was fucking her boyfriend for the last time, and the boyfriend stopped and said "that he couldn't do this anymore" and then "thrust one last time, like an exclamation point" (paraphrased). Jessica Simms of The Haven, the group that organized the event, I believe, had a great scene in her story where she described the corpse of a 5-year old who had been mauled by a wolf.<br />
<br />
Christine Stroud presented some fine poems and Stephanie read her own work, which was for the most part the same as what she read at the closing of Hem's Summer Reading Series, which I liked. Good event all around, great success, I hope there are more readings at the Bayardstown Social Club. After it was over people lit a giant stump on fire and pounded nails in it with a hammer.<br />
--poetryburgh@gmail.com<br />
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*(formerly the Liam scale or "Liam Ratio"; but I don't feel comfortable using Liam's name. Refers to the common fraction of one good poem/body of work out of every seven. In this case the fraction was closer to 5/7)Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-42088618974907775782015-08-08T07:39:00.003-07:002015-08-08T08:09:53.253-07:00Biddle's Escape: UppagusHa, ha.<br />
Having some trouble here, folks.<br />
Getting kind of disillusioned. Well,<br />
depressed. Frankly.<br />
I mean I've got some good ideas, about poetry. Same as it ever was. But still!<br />
Things are not going so well... I suppose<br />
it's up to me to change. Change it.<br />
If you wanna externalize it, you can. It's<br />
the same outside as in the inside.<br />
I'm pretty close to putting out a chapbook.<br />
Just give me a few days.<br />
I just need to purchase some paper<br />
and ink. And lay it out,<br />
I guess in a pilfered edition of<br />
Adobe InDesign.<br />
It's pretty easy.<br />
Well I know how to use it.<br />
I trained myself.<br />
Well,,,,<br />
<br />
<br />
Have to redesign some of my goals.<br />
Restructure some of my goals for poetry.<br />
Thinking about that kinda thing. Met<br />
Jenson Leonard again last night,<br />
over at the Uppagus Reading at<br />
Biddle's Escape. There were<br />
three or four readers, not counting<br />
the open mic, mostly featuring<br />
poetry I feel all blasé about, standouts were:<br />
Rina Ferrarelli who as an older Italian woman I thought was a convincing reader. Convincing, meaning, "authentic", she had poems about Italian ingredients and a skill with composition and a dignity which I think ended up dealing with issues of race and immigration. Jenson's work, being the millennial contribution, was an associational pop-culture referencing verse I ascribed in conversation with him to the Beats, probably because Jenson mentioned the Beats, along with Lil B. He read in a low measured monotone. We talked about poetry, really I approached Jenson as a kind of person who'd be willing to talk to me about "young poetry"; I keep seeing him at events and this is the first time I've known he was a poet. Anyway interesting point was that Jenson said that "Liam Swanson says that about one out of every seven poems, or bodies of work, is what he would consider 'good'" and I've been thinking about that.<br />
<br />
It's my dream to be somewhere where there's lot of poetry which "[I] would consider good." Maybe throw that out. I mean, at this point, I've figured out that place is Academia, which is not super hard to move to, for myself. Jenson talked about this too, if briefly; "Academia champions poetry and preserves it but keeps it to itself" (paraphrased). But, you know, even if there's this ivory tower, there has to be a crop of MFA's poets around somewhere, reading, I guess, they could even be poets who have studied independently enough to be MFA-quality, sure. There probably is.<br />
<br />
"There probably is" like there's not those MFA people in Pittsburgh. For the record we do have Terrance Hayes, this guy Paul Cunningham, and a bunch of the older folx around who've been reading at Hemingway's who probably have degrees too. There's also many readers who are good and talented without the academic qualifications... the new Yinzer crowd, although I guess I'm not one to say how degree'd everyone is anyway. The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, headed up by Jennifer Jackson Berry, just started up, with the intention of being "quality print journal to highlight and celebrate the best of Pittsburgh poetry and it's many groups". I've got a longstanding "feud" with JJB, my fault, because of what I wrote about her on this blog, so I may have shot myself in the foot here, as she pointed out to me, at the time.<br />
<br />
Journey of coming to accept and love something vs. create something new subtheme/only theme to this blog. Is there poetry anywhere that's acceptable (outside of academia, and maybe Pressure Press Presents)?. What I'm looking for is <u>read</u> poetry, poetry that's spoken out loud, that's cool, and that's frequent. Hopefully better than the 1/7 Liam ratio. Stonecutter Journal (and to a lesser extent, Apogee) has a better trash:treasure ratio, I've found, in my exploits... But I've got no cash so I can't buy more Stonecutters. Click the button below to donate. --poetryburghPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-57417376561527811432015-07-29T09:28:00.001-07:002015-07-31T12:35:01.915-07:00TERRANCE HAYES, J. BALDINGER, and many more of the 30-something new yinzer-ish poets in THE LAST HEMINGWAY'S OF THE SUMMERGegick, Baldinger, Silsbe, Korn, Matcho, & me, and one or two other people, drinking in the back room of Hemingway's... after everyone left, the waitress had come in, sprayed some Comet on the tables... we plugged in the dome hockey game and went at it... eventually people started talking about the syphilis outbreak in McKeesport, or some place like that... Conversations about the area of Pittsburgh outside of the "V", places you'd go to if you had a car... Later in bed, I'm too drunk to sleep, too hot to sleep... innumerable nightmares, can't stop composing everything I think into lines... immersed in lyricism....<br />
<br />
T. Hayes spoke to a group of probably 200 people in the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall. Terrance has a lot of charm and panache, and his poems are good too. Most notable perhaps was the lullabye he initially declined to sing, despite the crowd's urging; the simple song recounted the tale of a young boy killing a blackbird with a rock, and how the song of the blackbird lived on in the boy, who whistled it to himself as he went home (this last part of the song, describing the boy whistling, was the part Terrance sang). It was a startling metaphor for racial politics executed in a manner more mundane than I've ever seen from Hayes, who usually has long poems which employ a range of devices to weave often complex messages often about race; to see him do something as simple as a lullabye prefigured a sea change, to my mind.<br />
<br />
Spent about an hour tooling around in the Carnegie Library before I walked over to Hem's... I had gotten there too late to sit with any of my friends, so I had to balance myself in a chair with the back knocked out, next to some lady who started having a loud cell phone conversation halfway through the reading and had to be escorted out by the decorous Joan Bauer. This was the last Hemingway Summer Reading Series of the summer, so there was occasion for occasion... Jimmy Cvetic kept reminding all the open mic-ers that they could take as much time as they want. And he spent time honoring Joan, who played an integral part of the reading series and I think practically every poetry group I've been a part of this year... she was honored with a special award from the Pittsburgh Poetry Society.<br />
<br />
Jimmy himself had a good piece he read after all the readers, a poem in response to the shooting of one of his students from the "police academy for kids" that he runs... a poem decrying everything from guns to gay marriage, mostly just saying "no more [x], no more [y]", ending with him describing a meteor coming down and destroying the earth. Had that level of cynicism that for Jimmy is nothing less than true passion, a police cynicism that looks like cynicism but is in truth honesty. I took a moment to have everyone congratulate and thank Jimmy for running the series, which has been going for "40 years" as I said, although I'm not 100% sure that's the exact correct number of years.<br />
<br />
The readers? Baldinger, Korn, Silsbe, et. al., those "30-something" (my estimation) PGH poets who Jimmy introduced as "masters of jackoffery". Their shit's the good shit, I like to think, all that New Yinzer-era labor poetry which is often about Pittsburgh and drinking and personal pain and waitresses. Standout was probably John Korn, who full disclosure is an friend of mine (you might have seen me write a <a href="http://poetryburgh.blogspot.com/2015/05/john-korns-television-farm-poetryburgh.html">review of one his book</a>s) who had a bunch of his semi-surreal/comic poetry about such things as talking to a waitress about astronauts who had claimed to see UFOs and then digging out your eyeball, putting the eyeball in a glass of water, and asking the waitress to drink the water with the eye in it so you can see inside her. Jimmy even went so far as to bring John back up for the final reading, Jimmy saying "I recognize good poetry"; so congratulations to John for that. Other standout was Stephenie Brea who had some seriously audacious poems about an abortion and a female coal miner who had to tolerate the sexual abuse of her coworkers. --poetryburgh@gmail.com<br />
<br />
FOR THE RECORD YOU CAN GET ESSENTIALLY EVERY HEMINGWAY'S READING EVER ON THEIR SITE, EVERY READING HAS BEEN RECORDED, INCLUDING ALL THE POEMS I HAVE EVER TALKED ABOUT <a href="http://hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com/">http://hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com/</a> SEE JIMMY CVETIC'S "CHICKEN DINNER": <a href="http://www.kostany.com/hemingwayspoetryseries/2015-07-28/Jimmy%20Cvetic%20Reads%20Winner%20Winner%20Chicken%20Dinner.mp3">http://www.kostany.com/hemingwayspoetryseries/2015-07-28/Jimmy%20Cvetic%20Reads%20Winner%20Winner%20Chicken%20Dinner.mp3</a><br />
<br />Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-34925001188492957272015-07-28T14:55:00.001-07:002015-07-28T14:55:33.307-07:00POETRYBURGH IN NEW YORKWell it's true you may have heard the rumors but your good old pal Poetryburgh spent the last couple of days in the good old city of NYC. What was I doing? The New York City Poetry Festival, dear reader, held on Goverener's Island, in a big sandy field, just a ferry ride away from Manhattan. What happened there? There were 3-5 simultaneous stages of poetry, and it was possible to stand at a point in the field where you could hear all of them at the same time. The event occured 11-5 Saturday and Sunday, with 30 minute blocks of time for each registered group of readers: that's 6 x 2 x (3-5) /.5 = 72-120 differentt poetry groups, all under the same tent, so to speak (there was no tent, only: a beer tent).<br />
<br />
How was about the poetry? Well, I wasn't impressed by most of it. That's to be expected I suppose: the majority of any group isn't going to be by nature higher quality than the norm. What's significant here is that my PGH norm for poetry isn't all that different from my newly aquired NY norm, i.e. my opinion of PGH poetry in general isn't worse than what I saw in New York. In fact, the quality of the average PGH poem may be a little higher (a bias on my part, perhaps?) The other thing is that there was enough poetry a the festival to create a competitive market. People were screaming, putting on masks, just trying their damndest to be noticed and have their work get out there. This means that more people were doing schlocky things like masks etc. but it also means there was a sustained desire on everyone's part to do their best; the audience could walk away from any stage at any time and go to a different one so there was a "battle of the bands" effect. The other advantage of a teeming ecosystem of poets was that your critic could pick and choose, take sides, play favorites, essentialy have a greater selection of poetry to work with than what is offered in PGH.<br />
<br />
So the big question: am I going to move to New York? Well, I've been less excited about the idea, after visiting, than I usually have been. It's not the city itself: everyone was nice, the subways are great, etc. I think it's that my big idea of New York as a "poetry mecca" has been deflated a bit... Not to say that I necessarily saw everthing the city had to offer on my trip, just that: I wasn't so inspired, you know? It's always good to get context for your dreams not just because you can begin to make them real but also because you are able to release some of the ambition's disorienting pull, idealize a little less. Not to say that I've given up on my dreams... I talked to a lot of the festival people, as I am talking to everyone, about my goals and ideas for poetry... Some of them told me that in lieu of moving I should just start something up in Pittsburgh. The idea of a Poetryburgh review or /house or /reading series has been kicking around my head for a while... if I was a little more ambitious, maybe I could get something like that started....<br />
<br />
<br />
POETRYBURGH'S PICKS FROM NYC:<br />
Noelle Benau / Betty Red[?] .. <a href="http://soundcloud.com/derytteb">soundcloud.com/derytteb</a><br />
Tommy Pico .. <a href="http://heyteebs.tumblr.com/">heyteebs.tumblr.com</a><br />
Jay Deshpande .. [Book forthcoming From Yes Yes Press]<br />
Danniel Schoonebeek .. <a href="http://dannielschoonebeek.tumblr.com/">dannielschoonebeek.tumblr.com</a><br />
<a href="http://www.apogeejournal.org/">Apogee Journal</a><br />
<a href="http://www.stonecutterjournal.org/">Stonecutter Journal</a><br />
[not such a long list, huh?? My fault or the city's? I have to admit I find one way more likely] --poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-69626160412697826252015-07-23T14:21:00.004-07:002015-07-23T14:52:48.885-07:00STEVE ROGGENBUCK & CO. @ BIG IDEASteve Roggenbuck, of "national fame" as I keep telling my friends, read at the Big Idea Book Store last night along with four other readers- Paul Cunningham, Savonna Johnson, Liam Swanson, and Becca Cobetto. Becca, Liam, Savonna, Paul: all competent poets, although for me the standout was Liam who kept lying about the number of poems he had left, but had several great poems, including one where he describes feeling like a horse and kicking himself naked in a room in a way that did not feel at all chintzy or innocent. Common theme was either insects or ghosts: Paul sans hockey mask did his pitcher plant poems again, and Savonna and Liam both mentioned bees, Liam at length. Liam also talked about ghosts, and so did Becca; all of her poems were about Spirits and Hell and The Devil etc.<br />
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Steve Roggenbuck read at least for half an hour if not forty-five minutes; the majority of his time was not spent reading, however. Steve talked, and with his air of celebrity, we all hung on; he talked about the moon, veganism, "life hacks" etc. At one point I told him to stop talking and read a poem and everyone laughed and looked me and Steve said "you don't know what a poem is!"<br />
<br />
The environment was comparable to a childhood sleepover where, drowned with languor, you enter a space beyond what is normal with your friends; it was intimate and anything anyone said became funny. Steve took polls on the crowd over how many bananas people had eaten in one day, and whether or not we personally connected to the cookout scenes from "The Fast and the Furious"; the statement we were to rate our reliability to was "i feel nostalgic for the barbeque scenes in the <i>fast and furious</i> movies as if they were from my own life." This line is a title to one of Steve's poem's- the poem itself more of a story than a poem, is Steve's take, even though it's lineated: the story/poem follows the life of "duncan" who "is a fucker" and says things like "no, i hate your dad... he spray-painted my camper with 'WHO IS RON PAUL' during the 2008 election.. and i still don't forgive him!!" (sic.) Steve's book "Calculating How Big Of A Tip To Give Is The Easiest Thing Ever, Shout Out To My Family & Friends" is all like this, filled to the brim with internet language and memes and new sarcasm. In Steve's arms, in his persona when he reads it, it comes alive in this gripping popular way- Steve, for instance, says "hehe" a lot in his <strike>poems</strike> stories and in person pronounces it as one word, the same way, every time, for all of his different characters saying it, connoting a kind of mischievous disregard for literary/language conventions as well as whatever the phrase is applied to.<br />
<br />
I gotta ask, was occasionally during the reading seriously embroiled in the question of whether or not Steve is being intentional. In the same mold as John Mortara last week, I wondered: how hard has he worked to achieve this cute and silly brand of internet self-awareness? It seems natural... I keep using the phrases "childhood" or "popular" or "sleepover" because the wheelhouse of Steve Roggenbuck is the same humor that was popular in public school and has kind of infiltrated young contemporary poetry through the (now dead) Alt-Lit scene... It's impossible to call it "mature" because no one can be "mature" when they're giggling over a poop joke. Somewhat fair to call it "crude" because the work itself embodies definitions of crudeness: "in a natural or raw state; not yet processed or refined" or "constructed in a rudimentary or makeshift way" (to wit: the uncorrected spelling mistakes, typical of such as internet chat dialogue).<br />
<br />
But it would be a mistake to rate Steve's work as low-quality or unimportant; it is a raw and serious power involved when you've got a room full of people absorbed in your poems! Steve might call this "boost", I would claim, if I understood the term as he uses it online; and although Steve's performance was in content and format often something more like a comedy act than a reading there was a sense of something greater at work, and not just because of Steve's celebrity. Steve had a liberal politics he would bring up but I don't think this is where we ended up, listening to him; I feel like mostly what was portrayed was a voice for the young generation of the audience; Steve himself jokingly pointed this out (about viz. "Calculating How Big..."): "relatable titles- captures the zeitgeist!" During his reading I think we were all able to return to the place that voice came from- sort of an ironic hysteria, everyone laughing at the baby-like language coming out of the poet's mouth, and him, too, laughing, to the point where it was occasionally hard for him to finish. Despite the ostensible flippancy of the spirit that Steve captures, Steve heightened it to a level of communion. And where else for nuance but in spiritual experience?--poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-79068096254864925332015-07-19T11:30:00.001-07:002015-07-20T10:06:31.172-07:00Last Runaway Studios / Hay Street Reading Series ft. MeRunaway Studio's last in their monthly Verse Sessions, open mics featuring mostly young poets, happened last night, at the tail end of a full day of performances at Andy McIntyre and Sadie Shaof's studio, home, and roof. Decorating the spaces at Runaway Stuidos were the remnants of the space's last art show: plaster sculptures, photographs with holes burned in them, large plastic sheets with drawings of naked bodies.<br />
<br />
I showed up at 5:30, in time to catch the first half of Andy's play, entitled "Memories of One Night Stands" (paraphrased). This took place in Andy and Sadie's presumable bedroom, with the audience crowding the small space. The two actors in the play moved back and forth on the bed, went to the bathroom (and simulated bathroom sounds) danced to music, and discussed their relationship in broad, abstract terms. On the wall of the bedroom were written large words having something to do with the individual's context in society. It took about 10 minutes, and Andy stood in the corner DJ'ing the various musical tracks.<br />
<br />
The second half of the play was stage read, with Andy calling out occasional stage directions that the actors didn't have to perform. This happened about three or four hours later, during the Verse Session part of the evening, in the large warehouse-like space of Runaway Studios (it was previously a sign-making factory, as the equipment in the basement still evidences). In between these two halves of the play I had somewhat dangerously biked down Penn Avenue semi-intoxicated with only one working brake all the way to the Hay Street Reading Series in Wilkinsburg, where I was slated to read. Kelsey Leach and Whitney Hayes run the series, and they had produced another lively crowd of about twenty people, many of them Chatham grad students. Readings that night prominently featured Kinsley Stocum and Sarah Shotland who talked about video games and prison, respectively.<br />
<br />
Kinsley Stocum was great because she was able to pull off the difficult challenge of talking about such an ingrown subject as video gaming while still being relatable enough to perform a sincere emotional effort. My favorite line: "I lose control of the sticks, my gun's spinning towards the sky" (paraphrased). Sarah Shotland was good because she explored the somewhat taboo effects of a woman in prison, her being a jailhouse educator; she recognized the danger that she herself brings. "I'm a tick filled up with the outside and everyone wants me to land on their toe".<br />
<br />
After I biked all the way back up Penn Avenue more drunk with still one brake and only one working light, I was able to return to Runaway Studios just in time for the the poetry of the collected readers. Every performer had something to say about Runaway Studios as preamble to their work; Jacob Mays and Daniel Jones Vincent and Carla (last name unrecorded) gave particularly impassioned speeches about how the Studio was a magical place that made a huge difference, how it was even like a family to some of them. All of this was somewhat and saddingly ironic to me, dear reader, because if you've been following my blog you know that my largest goal is to find a poetic community.<br />
<br />
I've been a few times to the Verse Sessions before and was always unimpressed; and it's for that reason I haven't spent as much time as could there. I think my grinch's heart for poetry grew size or two last night, though. It was indescribably hot in the Studio and there was no AC; everyone was fanning themselves with their poems to cool down. I had stayed up the previous night to revise the work I read at Hay St and was falling asleep during the musical performances; but for the poetry I stayed up. It wasn't "better" than it usually was but I started to want to stop using the metric "better" to describe anyone's work after a while. I was rooted in my seat, slowly detoxing and then retoxing with alcohol, after midnight with 15 other people who all knew each other, and as Carla pointed out, "we all stink, and I love it." Some guy came up to read a poem by Yates, "Adam's Curse" and I was taken by the performance; he read with such a slow and quiet strength:<br />
"That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown<br />
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon." --poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-32640226774565250682015-07-13T18:29:00.001-07:002015-07-13T18:29:50.343-07:00EX3: john mortara, dan mckloskey & some guy with a hockey maskReally excellent reading, part of the John Mortara book tour. John Mortara delivered their work at first without paper in a loud busk, with almost a nervousness, and he invited the audience to applaud in order to make him feel more comfortable. John's poetry for the most part as I read it had a kind of jovial sarcasm and playfulness which when read out loud had a seriousness John lent to it, a feeling that they had spent a lot of time with what you might consider frivolous admissions. They had a long love poem which compared their love to segments of the Terminator and Alien movies. It was good, and very funny, while still being sincere and true: "Unfortunately, my love can not self-terminate, so you will have to push the button that lowers it into the lava." (parapharsed).
</br></br>
The first reader was hockey-mask guy, Paul Cunningham, who donned a custom-made hockey mask which matched the picture on the back of his chapbook, "Goal/Tender Meat/Tender." This chapbook was designed to talk about the experience of cannibalism during procreation, that of the female Praying Mantis, as re-enacted in a hockey rink. Paul wore a Penns shirt; apparently he has just moved in to Bloomfield, which is great, because he was good- the guy's an MFA from Notre Dame, and has that literary training to put together complex sound poems which have overarching and well-thought out theses played through them. I did get a sense of the cannibalism/procreation thing when he read, through a series of harsh, short, and even sexy explosive language, delivered convincingly through the mask. Masks have always had this Noh Theater thing for me where I get the sense that the point of the mask is to externalize the acting, for the mask to rule over the actor and for the actor to drive it, like a mecha; to create a pictoral representation of something other than (just) a human face. That thesis, the mask as a performance tool, played out well. Paul also had a few poems in the same fast-paced-percussive-but-well-measured manner about things like a toxic lake in china/ pitcher plants.
<br></br>
Dan McCloskey is writing Lesser-Known Predator short stories every time he is asked to read; last time he had a wig and pretended to write a letter onstage to act out his character, an old lady beset by lobsters. This time he just invited us to close our eyes, but said we didn't have to if that made us feel nervous. Like all the stories in the series this one was very good, had that gut-punch following the long drawn out anticipation that good short stories can do; it was about a woman who had a tunnel to some underground caves in her basement.
<br></br>
What made me nervous was the conversation I had afterward with Dan. Not the first, but the second, which happened after his s/o Sarah invitied me to talk to Dan about the history of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse. The C.A. house "began" in 2006, didn't start having artists until 2008. Dan invited me to start my own artist's collective, and I told him about my plans to move to New York, and that's when I freaked out. I was standing on a streetcorner afterwards, out of the rain, and cursing myself and talking to myself, and I ended up writing poems on the backs of the books I had bought, which was good. What freaked me out, I think, was just talking to Sarah and Dan about my hopes and dreams, "how I wanted my life to be about art." They got it, were understanding, and there was nothing wrong about what I said; but some invisible barrier had been crossed, for me, and now I was asking them for help. Why was that a problem? I'm always running from the things I desire most... understandable...
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R/B Mertz also read and had some excellent poems about the police, suggesting maybe the thing that they too should do is grieve --poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-3906130218900383492015-07-10T09:13:00.002-07:002015-07-10T09:13:58.783-07:00Why do I only like live poetry?Good point. I don't know.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's the personality that the physical people bring?<br />
Maybe it's the crowd which tolerates it?<br />
Maybe it's the sound? And the reading?<br />
<br />
Better yet, the question, what makes written poetry so intolerable (to me)?<br />
Ed Orchester had a poem about this:<br />
"I hate it too...<br />
The arch writing<br />
The endless self reference<br />
The obscure meanings"<br />
(heavily, heavily paraphrased)<br />
I think he was referring to all poetry,<br />
even the spoken stuff. He mentioned<br />
"open mics":<br />
"imagine the longest most intolerable open mic you've ever been to"<br />
(this in comparison to the artistic work of the emperor Niro)<br />
<br />
I think the things I like about spoken poetry,<br />
the ability to challenge me, the kind of terrifying, outspoken, original work,<br />
is not what I look for in written work.<br />
Like with all media, I need it to be absorbing,<br />
or I stop reading/watching/looking.<br />
I only trust that which has an immediate appeal.<br />
When I'm at someone's live reading, I can't leave.<br />
I can stop listening, with my immediate attention, and I can think about something else, like my ex-girlfriends.<br />
But some part of me is always listening. And there are often moments where I'm not listening and I'm<br />
pulled back in.<br />
"Hooks."<br />
Like when Ed Orchester said the quote above about Open Mics. I had to start listening.<br />
Sometimes, the whole set is unignorable,<br />
like with Jimmy Cvetic on Tuesday, who used a bizarre range of<br />
multimedia and messages within his work,<br />
spoke with such a heightened conviction that for me,<br />
who knew Jimmy, a relatively calm guy I thought at all times,<br />
I had to watch. When a poet has "hooks"<br />
I have to pay attention. I suppose,<br />
that's the trouble with written work...<br />
it might have "hooks", but because I'm not actually there,<br />
no part of me has to keep on listening when there's no "hook" and so I climb out of the pond altogether.<br />
--poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-7536945573528537112015-07-08T09:13:00.000-07:002015-07-08T09:13:29.398-07:00Hemingways: Night of 7/7, Michael Wurster, Judith Volmer, Terrance Hayes, Ed Orchester, Jimmy Cvetic<div style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">T. Hayes reads "Arbor for Butch" and a poem from <i>How To Be Drawn</i>, the one about having 192 kids with 192 women from the 192 nations of the world. Terrance, with like a wave of people behind him as he sits in the audience, seems like a celebrity, must deal with people after the event is over as if he were a celebrity. I got a chance to read in front of him, and drunk(-ish), I felt a powerful giving-over of myself while I read, as if inspired... After, as I squeezed past him to get back to my seat, I did not meet Terrance's eyes... I was able to restrain myself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was sitting in the inside corner of Hemingway's bifocals-shaped back room, unable, without leaning in front of my neighbor's presumable line of sight, to see the poets, so I mostly focused on their voices. Somewhat remarkable maybe how unimportant it was to see anyone's face; all these old men with their dead skin and fat hardly moving, but with such voices! Jimmy Cvetic, Ed Orchester, and Terrance Hayes all gave good performances. Terrance's reading was less notable for his par-for-the-course excellence, being a nationally lauded poet and all, and I don't think his 192 children poem is that good anyway. Jimmy, in a racially dubious moment, began his set by addressing Terrance, saying he had a song/poem based off a negro spiritual (I don't think he said "negro") and then he leaned in to the mic and intoned, hardly singing in the way people with about one band of vocal communication available to them sing, "no pussy for Jimmy / no pussy for Jimmy/ no pussy for Jimmy."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jimmy Cvetic's set was unbelievable in the way that good poetry can be, I believe. First off after the moment with Hayes he pulled out a CD player and played a short thirty second clip of children's vocals singing a song that sounded more or less like the opening theme to "Doc McStuffins", this, apparently, something Jimmy wrote and got some kids to record, a song he woke up with at 3 AM one morning. "No more trouble, no more snails, pails or puppy dog tails" is about all I can remember from the lyrics, the song itself bright and upbeat and well produced enough that I'm still not 100% convinced it was really Jimmy's work. But he wore a t-shirt, red text on black, that said "Dog is a Poet", a shirt that he apparently wore when buying heroin, "to [evince] a certain craziness... it's hard to describe but you needed a certain craziness out there, hard to describe why unless you were out on the street, buying heroin!" The red standing for the blood of the broken hearts of policing, and the black for chaos, as he tells us, the monologues between poems kind of slipping in with the poems themselves. He read poems about his former police life,and tells us about a program he's running for kids, a police academy for kids, "the thin gold line." I ask him about his poetry after the reading and he says: "It's a way of life for me". Jimmy, last week, talked about the "way of life" visible in the work of all the poets in the Series, that that was what made their work great, this "way of life". For me, this quality is what I find so unbelievable about Jimmy, a kind of straightforwardness and humility about experience that seems impossible, all of the somewhat insane & disparate segments of a man and his performance coming together to describe something human.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Also that night was Michael Wurster, who reads his poems with such bland monotone occasionlessness that I still haven't figured out how I'm supposed to get behind them yet. Joan Baur was sitting in the corner opposite mine and I got to look at her reactions and watch her applaud as if she were leading the crowd, sometimes, as she did I think during Michael's and maybe my reading, although she never did it without a personal sincerity. Ed Orchester had poems which were amazing and true enough for me that I'm considering buying his physical work with the hope of reading it to myself and enjoying it, which would be a near first for poetryburgh --poetryburgh@gmail.com</span></div>
Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-9715829063142483672015-06-30T19:40:00.003-07:002015-06-30T19:40:49.744-07:00Hemingways: Night of 6/30Summer reading at Hem's featuring Robin Clarke, Deb Bogen, & Robert Gibb tonight. I missed Fred Shaw's performance, as usual my place of work won't let me out in time. This reading was notable for Pittsburgh (for me) because it featured 2 surrealistic, associational, non-literal poets, Robin and Deb.<br />
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Robin struck a very dark tone, asked the audience not to applaud, brought up as introduction {someone I failed to record the name of|}, a man who "was by all accounts and measures schizophrenic" and who though the government was monitoring and mind-controlling us, but as Robin points out, was not necessarily wrong (not a joke). Her poems followed that stream of conscious, fractured style you might in passing associate with schizophrenia: "Everyone wants to live, not even Robocop" "The powerful can do anything to your family in Pennsylvania" "To Warren Bogland, heads vanish into good intentions force, soldier". There were a great deal of powerful images, often in fragments, that displayed a kind of concern with disaster: "362 ghosts relay coal into trains day and night" "Smoke & Flames pouring down the shaft" "Calling them survivors was a mistake."<br />
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There was a silence in the audience as Robin read. Everyone had a look of concern or deep thought. In the past I've attributed this kind of look to boredom, assumed that, in the presence of poetry which is obscure and cannot be followed syntactically, people listen to humor the poet. With Robin's work this was clearly not the case, so I had a chance reexamine my assumptions.<br />
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Deb's work still made use of a lot of disconnects, but was less fractured... here are some excerpts: "4 heads burnt, no, branded by heat" "beneath the gargoyles the babies sleep" "no one says these stones aren't pillows". She had a poem about a tai chi lesson composed of little metaphors as spoken by a teacher: "your arms are broken sisters... make use of that joy." Several poems were titled in the format "_____ in the space of freefall" (e.g. "You in the space of freefall") and the method of freefall may have been the composition of these poems.<br />
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As I listened to Robert Gibb, I was overcome with nostalgia... thinking of the golden age of the 60's and 70's: Terence McKenna, wisdom gleaned from psychedelics, and so forth... not because any of his poetry was along those lines, but because of his voice, which was so mellow and understated, plus his appearance, with the beard, collared shirt, and age. Robert read "unconcerned", delivered his poetry as if nothing was troubling him, almost as if he was dead, although not without a great tenderness. Following his book "Sheet Music", and a trend in the night started by Deb who mentioned Roger Humpheries' band over in the north side, Robert talked mostly about Jazz... notable for me was a poem entitled "Early Jazz Greats Trading Cards Created by R. Crumb." Crumb is quoted in the poem, when listening to jazz: "One of the few times I actually [...] have a kind of love for humanity."<br />
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Gibb's last poem had quite a kick for its last line (also about jazz): "seemingly pitched to some infinite woe/ comes the last misshapen solo." Writing notes, sitting in the side of Hem's back room, wishing there was better lighting, I felt a kind of calm descend... Did not feel pushed or pressured into listening to poetry, rather just enjoying it... There's hope I think for poetry if the poets are good, and the crowd is at least a little friendly. --poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-77492057240977803822015-06-29T13:25:00.005-07:002015-06-30T13:10:23.023-07:00Chuck Joy, Jason Baldinger, Cee Williams, and Chatham MFAs, Oh My!I finally found them... The Chatham Writing MFAs. Couched in a little house behind a school in Wilkinsburg, over on Hay Street, the coincidentally named Whitney Hayes (along with Kelsey Leach) hosts the Hay Street Reading series, a summer substitute for Chatham's Word Circus, a monthly event which hosts mostly Chatham writers. The Hay Street Reading Series is open to non-MFAs: when I got there, Amanda Collins, a local singer-songwriter, was performing. Hayes also stated that she wanted the event to be "more open to the community". I'll be reading next month, probably, and in any case, I read at the open mic this month, along with my twin and six other readers; it was a nice crowd of around twenty people, BYOB, etc. Featured readers included Ben Gwin who I sadly missed because I was over at East End Book Exchange, listening to Jason Baldinger, Cee Williams, and Chuck Joy at Chuck Joy's new book release, the book being: "Said The Growling Dog."<br />
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Jason Baldinger as usual talked about local Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania haunts including a long poem about a shitty diner called "Hagerstown Sometimes." As usual Jason was notable for his clear, local, and fatal eye: "When you're in Hagerstown, you have to ask if the sun hasn't already set." He also talked about a UPMC commerical location scout visiting, and being told to fuck off out of, Jason's record store.<br />
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Cee Williams was next, and I've heard Cee's name a few times before, although I hadn't seen him previously. He started with something memorized that seemed like slam, but then broke out the print-outs and had a few less end-rhmey poems... "You Picked a Fine Time To Spank Me, Lucille" recounted, in not particularly humorous terms, Cee's painful time in Catholic school (fraught with racial inequality). He also had a poem about Ronald Reagan... "only poverty trickles down."<br />
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Jason and Cee both had affected eading voices. Jason seems to have a kind of arch, romantic, and revelationary tone: his speech is always rising and falling in long arcs, even when he's talking about hangovers, and his poems tend to end with a defiant and concessionary exclamation from the self: 'I don't have health insurance but I told the UPMC guy to fuck off' (not a quote). Cee, as I said, is close to a traditional slam poet's voice in a lot of ways, but what I saw from him Saturday was more muted. Chuck Joy, however, the poet that everyone had gathered to see, was kind of a powerhouse when it came to affect. He had a sort of nasal blast that would accentuate his meter... the effect I thought was "Newyorkian"... He even recited a poem in series about his trip to New York. Moments from this poem: goes to a NY restaurant, repeats "house beer!" in disbelief... uses the book he is reading from as a prop: "sign here on the contract." --poetryburgh@gmail.com<br />
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now to find the CMU MFAs, please contact me if you are out there and here in PGH this summer xoxoPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-10799338039613194282015-06-24T15:52:00.000-07:002015-06-24T15:52:15.053-07:00"loser" poetryI talked to Jay of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/752488881539307/">Curbside Twist LLC</a> last night at Little Lou's in lieu of the usual Haven people, who had either blown off the night or left early with some biker chicks on a trip I wasn't invited to be a part of :( . Jay talked about his past in Trinidad, the intricacies of marketing, and argued with another guy Max about outsourcing (Jay was against it). At one point Jay made a graph illustrating various bottom lines and modes of power, using beer bottles, Max's phone, a pack of Newports, etc. Then Max turns to me, asks me what my passion is, I say "poetry" so he leans back says ok do some.<br />
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I tell him that I already thought this out, I've already looked ahead to the point in the evening when someone would ask me to do poetry, and I'd already thought about how I would say that me not reciting poetry then and there was kind of the basis of my poetry, that basis of being "a loser", not a "do-er" like these two entrepreneurial gentlemen. I've got "do-er"s in my family: my sister was focused on her future since middle school, shot up like a rocket through Ivy League and kept going, now lives in Philadelphia doing some kind of work with NPR, raising millions per year. My brother just started a business education at Pitt... we'll see if he gets as far...<br />
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Jay was selling his business persona the way some business people will do anytime they meet someone in a bar... like it's not just your full-time job, it's your nightlife too. That kinda state is my ideal goal for my poetry, to be a poet "around the clock."So what to do when someone asks you to do poetry "on the spot"? Well, I'm really into surrealism...--poetryburgh@gmail.com<br />
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<br />Peter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1204944137814950807.post-47885767631848659592015-06-23T22:22:00.001-07:002015-06-23T22:24:11.203-07:00Barbara Edelmen, Mike Schneider, Michael Smith & Ellen Smith @ Hemingway'sBarbara Edelman and friends killed it. I'm (full disclosure) a personal friend and once-classmate of Barbara's, who's name, as she brought up in one of her poems, means "Stranger", this I assume having to do with the Barbara/Barbarian etymology. Barbara's poems, issues of critical distance aside, made me look up from the crook of my arms, where I had collapsed in penitent hunger (I eventually folded and bought a Baja burger). Ms. Edelman's performative voice was excellent; she took on multiple personas, ranging from the more standard literary poet to a crazy-over-talkative drone, and never missed a beat. Her poems were also extremely good in the way that you can expect academic's to be... "The poem shudders through the ice-drawn branches." (this is a complete misquote... <a href="https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2041">I didn't buy the book</a>).<br />
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I saw Mike Schneider the night before at East End Book Exchange and didn't really pay attention to him then, but this night he stood out with his long and heartfelt (his voice quavered at appropriate moments) poems about WWII and the Boy Scouts. I admired Michael Smith, the founder of <a href="http://www.autumnhouse.org/">Autumn House Press</a>, by the way, for sort of similar reasons, he had some impassioned political appeals in verse in a style that I've been trying to evince myself lately, sort of just directly talking to the audience in broad values-terms about issues such as war while maintaining a good sound. The way Michael broached these topics made me think that I'd have to look him up to improve my own technique. Ellen Smith read a series of poems in the format of instructions on how to sell various products for advertising agencies... "how to sell catheters" and, more abstractly "how to sell sleep." These were funny and straightforward and well composed in a appealing way, and they took the time to reveal some deeper thoughts about advertising and desire in general.<br />
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I came out as "against" PGH poetry in a certain way, threatening to move to New York in a previous post, and even now I'm planning my escape... but it's good to know my dissatisfaction isn't as straightforward as I may have planned... there are good artists here, of course there are -- poetryburgh@gmail.comPeter Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13444930688876169165noreply@blogger.com0