The Best American Poetry

Shout Out to Frederick Seidel and Marc Maron [by Amy Lawless]

Why isn't ANYONE talking about the Frederick Seidel poem in the New Yorker in the January 10, 2011 issue?  Why does it have to be me?  I barely showered today.  I was at the liquor store at 3:45 pm.  I'm not camera ready!

To preface:....I know as a woman I'm supposed to be all mad and signing petitions about how there are barely any articles written by women in the New Yorker.  I totally get that.  I totally do. Women ROCK and should be featured more in magazines that sit on coffee tables but are barely read. But this poem by Seidel is fucking phenomenal.  It was brought to my attention by my friend James who emailed me because it reminded him of me and I'm a half-blown narcissist (as are we all, except those of us who are full blown narcissists).  So i read it because I'm so "busy" that half the time my New Yorkers just sit on my coffee table (especially if all the articles are written by men *wink*... So i read the Seidel poem and I love Ooga Booga.  Doesn't everyone?  If you don't, there's something missing from your life. You just don't realize you love it yet.  What's great about "Rain" is that it not only is a poem about our current world (Forget journalism! I just read a poem perfectly distilling 2010!): Greece's stone filled pocket suicide, and the obsession with Twilight. I mean that's basically last year, eh? The other beautiful thing about it is that it's written in longish lines that all rhyme, but because I'm a little thick today I didn't even notice that until the fourth and last stanza.

Here are a few choice lines from "Rain":

It's the recession.
It's very weird in New York.
Teen vampires are the teen obsession.
Rosebud mouths who don't use a knife and fork.
Germany at first won't save Greece, but really has to.
It's hot in parts of Texas, but rain drowns Tennessee, people die.
It's the euro. It's the Greek debt. Greece knew
It has to stop lying, but timeo Danaos, they're Greeks, Greeks lie.

 

I mean it's really daffy, but it's lovable daft.  The last stanza holds some of the most heavy-handed end rhymes since Daddy (LOL), but sometimes we want to end with a bang and not a whimper.  (Pour your heart out Tom Eliot!)

Also, why aren't more poets listening to the WTF with Mark Maron Podcast?  Marc Maron, a Jewish comic who is constantly in a state of self-doubt and disrepair, interviews comedians twice a week.  Wait wait stay with me.  I know you may not like comedians.  Dude i know. What's more annoying than someone who's trying to make you laugh?  But these interviews aren't really that different from talking to your poet friends.  I mean what's the point of life?  We poets create poems.  They write jokes. There's this "THING" we do that we aren't sure why we do it (we certainly aren't getting paid for it...). And comedians are the same way.  They are freaks.  They have trouble socializing.  Ahh, now the light goes on.  Yes, please listen to it.  Some of the most beautiful conversations about artistic craft available on any media are going on in Maron's garage.  And they're free.  I am still catching up to all the amazingness, but the 2 parter with Louis CK, the 2 part interview with Judd Apatow both blew me away.

Ben & Amy Read Chapbooks: Holidaze Edition by Ben Mirov and Amy Lawless

Doing last minute Xmas shopping? So are we. Here are some "artisanal art objects" you can purchase straight from the hands of their makers. Impress your friends and family with your good taste and access to independently published literature. [Note justifying poems is super "in" right now, but TypePad isn't quite on to the trend so apologies if the poems don't look exactly as they do on the page.  We tried!]

Mark Leidner’s Willie  (Minutes Books, Quarterhouse Books)

 

Poems: The titular “Willie” is a funny, funny persona poem about the kind of egotistical shit that only goes on in the heads of the Ivy League educated.  “Memoirs of a Secret Agent” is exactly the kind of sci-fi poem we have been trying to write for two years (at once the mouthfeel of James Bond and classic 60s television show “The Prisoner”).  “Things to Call Water” is a beautiful language-loving list poem that doesn’t make us want to commit murder-suicide to annihilate all list poems.

 

Construction: Hand drawn covers that look like they were conceived by a bunch of prophetic kindergarteners. Our copy has a Sharpie drawing of planet Earth on the cover with expensive lookin’ paper on the inside.

Willie

My best friend at Harvard was this really sagacious
engineering major named Willie who studied psychology in
his spare time. He’d invented a new way to analyze
personalities he’d dubbed ‘The Egypt Test.’ Subjects were
asked to clear their minds, and suspend them of all
conscious thought, then he would ask them, “What’s the
first thing you think of when you hear me say the
word…Egypt?” Most people responded, “Pyramids,” or “The 
Nile.” After the test, Willie would explain that if you said
pyramids, you were partial to artifice, geometry, and the
mind.  If, however, you answered Nile, you favored nature,
sexuality, and believed organic things to reign supreme. 
When Willie did the test on me, I took forever to answer.
Nile or pyramids, pyramids or Nile, Nile or pyramids! I
couldn’t decide. The truth is, both popped into my head at
the exact same time. When I confessed this to Willie,
thinking I’d failed the test, he said, “No. You are the third
category. You reject my simplistic dualities, and see beyond
the mind-nature dichotomy… into the truth of things.” I
wiped my tears on the sleeves of my blazer. Willie gave me
a hug. He was my best friend at Harvard.

 

Foul Feelings, Brian Kalkbrenner (self-published)

 

Reading Foul Feelings feels like someone is secretly building a lazy tunnel inside of you by using as few words as possible and dildos and body parts.  Sometimes it’s like someone’s hitting on you via Craigslist and sometimes it feels like reading hundred syllable haiku truth-bombs.

Construction:  perfect (?) bound. Most poems are justified for a clean look. Most importantly, the book fits in your back jean pocket and prominently features suggestive horses on the cover.

from  Foul Feelings

If you ever look at a picture of a
hurricane or a video you can watch it
unfold like a huge dark flower. Then
again if your town’s destroyed nobody’s
thinking what wonderful beauty. If your
house and possessions are whisked off
you’re in the midst of danger and fear
presides. But then a community comes
together and men and people share food
and create shelter. Getting back on track is
key for everybody and when you’re lucky
you haven’t been killed, nobody’s
suicidal. A good example is every year in
the Midwest, and yet the fair goes on. I
think if you saw them fold up and despair,
all of us would be disappointed.

 

 

Crystal Hard-On, Douglass Piccinnini (Minutes books). 

After an acid style flashback to borrowing The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe twelve times and never getting past the first chapter, we got into Crystal Hard-on despite the fact that there are ZERO crystal dicks, crystal dildos, crystal hard-ons (barring the title and the titular poem which itself doesn’t have a literal hard-on….), or crystal penises.  Not even crystallized urine hanging out on the little hole at the tip.  It was like a constant game of "just the tip" with this withholding slash enjoyable book.

 

Advice to the Graduates

 

for hopes this bruisling commutes

back to pigment or sins itself

toward obscurity I find

some corks are better fed

burst over admiring chests

Office Work, Jackie Clark (Greying Ghost).  

If you’ve ever worked in an office, this beautiful chapbook will appeal to you.  Even if you haven’t, you know that the definition of being an adult is doing horribly boring shit in front of computers, beneath soul killing florescent lights.

Construction: Manila folder thickness cover and green accountant paper, and even comic book pages add an extra element of the work life.  Poems are all prose poems.  This seems obvious once one asks the question, "Is there anything less 9-5 than a line break?"  

 

from Office Work

I worry about self-importance, about keeping secrets from yourself.  

I feel unnerved when office doors are open but no noise comes from
inside. Is it simply day-dreaming, is it the men on the scaffolding
across the way. Through the window in a 5^th floor classroom I once
saw a man standing naked inside his apartment across 14^th street.
I thought how bold to be standing there like that without at all
thinking, well, it’s his apartment.

*

Supposedly Fibonacci numbers govern all action. The distance between 

is the golden ratio. The direction the leaves grow off their branches.
According to The New Yorker, most people learned about Fibonacci
numbers during the summer of 2003 while reading The Di Vinci Code,
sitting out there in their little beach chairs. I’ve never read The Di Vinci
Code but I think I want numbers to be the reason why I walk on the
outside of the sidewalk on 6^th Avenue or why I see Patricia Clarkson
outside my building at least once a week. It all seems so inconsequential,
why shouldn’t it be arranged? I wonder what gets stored in that little
section of my brain where I used to remember people’s birthdays and
phone numbers.  If I am ever stranded anywhere without my cell phone
I could always call my best friend from 3^rd grade’s parents’ house. It’s a
meeting kind of morning. I have collated all the documents. I have
paper clipped them and put them in piles.

 

Nine Live Two-Headed Animals, Eric Amling (Greying Ghost) 

DRAWING A BLANK. NEED TWO HOURS TO REREAD IT AND NAP.... ....... ......... ................. Jesus. Dreamt we were in a sleigh made of beards being pulled by a bunch of faceless humanoids towards some kind of huge machine that distributes those propeller hats and bags of candy corns.

Construction: Friendly and approachable, like a dude on the street who just wants to sell you a pillowcase full of used candles and a turtle. 

 

Windmill Creeps

 

The snow was falling
like retarded little angels
‘round the hamster’s grave

Nevermind, pop the cherry
on the fire extinguisher,
put out those lawn chairs

                *

The firecrackers wacky
discharge jammed
into a screwed animal’s periphery

The jack rabbit blew its cover
behind the Sears & Roebuck
screened
ample view sun room

through a patch of fungi
like scattered dice

                 *

I swam & swam a diabolical
breaststroke
in my swimmies

Choogled with a box turtle in
the steady carbon outfields

                 *

Never a universe
without coupons

Slim Whitman & bacon

The windmill
pacing the days:

Backwoods / Golden / Gigantic

 

Customer, Elaine Khan (Glass Eye Books/Ecstatic Peace Library)

 

Poems: If we could somehow use the adjective "rapey" in a positive, upbeat manner to describe Customer, we would. Reading this chapbook is like finding a used crack pipe on the street in a moment where it catches the sun's golden rays like one of God's tiny miracles.

Construction: Someone told us this was made by Thurston Moore's press. Picture on the cover of the author sweating in a fast food restaurant or something. Looks like she's being interviewed by a local news station about an "area resident" that went on a stabbing spree.    

 

Laps 

       Else, she in the bath, she 

       watch her hair swirl like bad

       she bled on someone else's tongue 

 

In my mind you

give a glittering damn

a little penetration

of the netting

 

What I Want and What I Want, Chelsea Martin (Jerk Ethics).

 

Poems: in the front-matter, Martin writes “…but don’t worry, I’m perfectly stable and particularly non-crazy.  Ask almost anyone.”  When we saw this warning, we thought “God this is going to be really fucked up. It’s a book of poems, not a bottle of hallucinogens, right?" We finished thinking, “Wish she’d left the warning off because now we feel like we're the crazy ones. There’s no warning before Ariel. There’s no warning before The Dreamsongs.  There’s no warning before Trout Fishing in America----Oh, now we get it.  HAHAHAHA." 

Construction:  Amazing comic animal illustrations on cover and through the interior by William Schultz.

 

from What I Want and What I Want

I wanted to confront him about how there was something
wrong with his system of definitions if when I was being
selfish it was because I was trying too hard to be around
him and when he was being selfish it was because he had
forgotten my existence. I wanted to say something about
how unsettling it was that the only thing that seemed to
make him feel emotional was hiding packages of ramen
from him when he wasn’t feeling silly. And something
about how unfair it was the time he sat there smiling at a
text message from someone else after I had asked him a
somewhat emotionally-important question and was wait-
ing for a response, and how he was always doing that kind
of thing, like making me walk from room to room with
him just to finish a conversation.

 

******

Ben Mirov grew up in Northern California. He is the author of Ghost Machine (Caketrain, 2010) and the chapbooks I is to Vorticism (New Michigan Press, 2010), Collected Ghost (H_NG_MN, 2010) and Vortexts (SUPERMACHINE, 2011). He is general editor of pax americana and poetry editor of LIT Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn.

Amy Lawless is author of Noctis Licentia, Black Maze Books, 2010.   She lives in Brooklyn.

Ben and Amy Read Chapbooks

Here are some chapbooks we like.   Maybe this will make you read them.

 The End of Waste and The Harrowing Halychyna by Curtis Jensen

Self-published.  See curtisinterruptus.blogspot.com.

 

Poems: Welcome to the greatest “zine” moments of the year. The typos do not detract from the enjoyment of this chapbook. Obsessive editing can be really annoying anyway. Sandbox in Hell V1.2  is a great poem; coupled with the  visuals of cow/boar/horse/deer skulls creates a "bad-ass" feeling.

 Construction: Feels like a skate/punk/straight-edge/vegan recipe zine your little brother photocopied at Kinkos back in high school. Probably goes well with Black Flag or Gorilla Biscuits. Deer skulls a-plenty.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SANDBOX IN HELL VI.2

 You are Sisyphus,

Not pushing the rock, but in the sandbox.
Really not many likenesses except that
Whatpowers may be have doomed you here,
From now until the rest of whatever.

The trick is that there’s nothing under
This sandbox, nothing but a way out
Six inches beneath your big dumb feet,
Nothing but a change of scenery.

You’ve geen given a flat-nosed shovel.
You’re on your hands, you’re on your knees.
You’ve choked way up the shovel-handle:
You could cut through the ceiling below.

Maintaining the level sand around you,
You are diligent in senseless effort; 
You motor your perpetual doom;
You are in this eternity, youre in it
On your hands and on your knees;
You bring about your own impulsion,
You’re in the sandbox with yourself
Till all the lights at last go out,
Til maybe even after that.

Whether your sandbox surface lays plumb
Has no bearing on your place in torment.
You being you, you’re there with yourself.

 

 

State of the Franco [by Amy Lawless]

This week, New York Magazine published a list of actor-writer-film director-producer-painter James Franco’s favorite poems.

“It has been found again.
 What ? - Eternity.
 It is the sea fled away
 With the sun.”

         --Arthur Rimbaud

 I can remain silent no longer. What stirs my heart is what stirs my heart. While any attention to poetry is necessary and good and a long time a-comin', James Franco is making us look bad, my dear human race.  And poetry is not the virgin sitting hopeful in the corner.

It used to be that each man and woman did one thing apiece. Joseph was a carpenter. Left Eye does the rapping. Chili and T Boz do the singing. A guy named Mungo was a rapist. The world made sense. Each person's task was performed with love and affection or anger [Mungo]. But then there are the exceptions: Lynne Cheney, Leonardo Da Vinci. The Renaissance Man, The Renaissance woman. Sure, it can be argued that the female sex is itself Renaissance, able more easily to multi-task than those with dicks, but that's not my point.  

There are certain professions we can digest as fitting alongside another. "A poet who teaches" tilts the scales of many poetry magazine biographies. "Car mechanic-racer." "Actress-singer"  “Yoga instructor-vegan chef!”  These dualities make us nod and smile. We get it.  We live in a monotheistic society. One nation under God -- singular. Hell even the Christian God supposedly divides his duties into three so he won’t appear to be too overloaded with work.

But hey, wait, aren't our celebrities sorta/kinda also our national gods and demigods? Don't Americans look toward Jennifer Aniston still to find out whether it's OK and how to suck at romantic relationships? And don't we still check in with Britney on occasion to make sure how not to do our hair? Isn’t the whole point of Alec Baldwin’s brother Daniel to be fatter and in AA?  And so, another profession emerges "singer and mentally ill person" or "actor and philanderer." And what about those fascinating to watch because they are so grand and even talented: Lady Gaga, Oprah: the "singer-activist"  and "talk show host-humanitarian."

It’s exciting when someone steps and walks freely outside of their comfort zone and succeeds.  But James Franco, isn’t there a limit?  I don’t write this as a “hater” or “player hater” or to diminish Franco in any way.  I’m just shocked. They call him an endless hyphenate and you know what, America?  He’s making us look bad.

Here: look at me.  I’m a poet who teaches.  It makes sense.  This is what writers do.  Other writers do it. 

Here’s an entirely inappropriate and illogical analogy that will prove my point.  Look below at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

 

Well obviously, James Franco sates all of these needs.  James Franco invented this triangle.  Are you hungry?  Try some Franco!  Feeling unsafe?  Try Franco as a personal bodyguard.  Feel unloved?  Pop in Milk!  What a doll!  Don’t feel high off all that weed? Smoke this weed that Franco says he doesn’t smoke. Need some recognition? Oh – watch this film or read this story. Franco made them and they’ll make you feel like you’re part of something.  

Ha ha funny. I know that made no sense and was off topic, but I couldn’t resist. And besides, I’m a teacher who writes and there are a few things that I’m not terrible at like camel posture in yoga…..and making coffee….and ….uh…….

In May of this year I was on my way to Amherst, Massachusetts from New York for my little sister Carol’s college graduation. I took Amtrak. Amtrak is way overpriced, but it’s also convenient. I boarded the train and considered sitting next to one woman but she had a dog as I had planned on staring off into space uninterrupted for like four hours so I sat two seats back. Onto the train comes James Franco (not kidding) with his girlfriend. He lifts a smile and suddenly the woman with the dog moved back a seat [smiling like a fool as if she’d been foolish to consider that she and her dog should be afforded their own seat] and he and his girlfriend were now safely stationed within my purview until they got off in Springfield, Massachusetts.   

At some point Franco got out of his chair and headed to the loo with a copy of Robert Hass’ Human Wishes, a book I adore.  Here’s a photo of me in reaction to this happening:

<Thought bubble over my head.> Wow. What poem does James Franco like the best?  Should I have knocked on the bathroom door? My fist was clenched but I didn't move, so we may never know.  But just like a high school crush, I reread Human Wishes in the following weeks and decided without question that James Franco and I would obviously have the same favorite poem: Paschal Lamb.  RIGHT?  I even wrote a whole poem after the line “The vice president started to cry” to commemorate this feeling. Surely the concept of the sacrificial lamb would appeal to anyone in a position of societal authority. 2 cute 4 words. 

We poets are not desperate people who should just be thankful that poetry or a few poems are given just an itsy bitsy weensy bit of attention.  American Poetry is not the shy virgin in the corner.  And yet…

[This] one can’t help looking up some poems that James Franco recommends. He’s so cute.  He’s flipping it. Don’t you see, America?  He isn’t doing the expected thing that young male writers are doing.  His young American writer correlate is sitting on a filthy couch in Williamsburg high off his ass in disbelief that he’s not famous already.  His correlate, America, has had his stories rejected from magazines that Esquire readers have never even heard of.  His correlate, America, has paid some ridiculous amount of money on an MFA.   His correlate, America, is broke and disenfranchised.  And no, his correlate isn’t as cute. 

But that’s not important.  Here’s what’s important. Imagine you and I are sitting on barstools beside one another with Franco’s picks in front of us.  Are these the new poems that you’re reading right now?  No. These  are the safe picks.  Are they on the cutting edge of what so many writers are doing now? Of course not.  As a writer, aren't you just as informed by the poems of your peers and friends?  It is wonderful that Franco chose three O’Hara poems.  And wonderful for many reasons, the least of which is this quote when considered in parallel to the fact that Kerouac and Ginsberg (who Franco just played in a movie) were friends:

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac.

But what do I know? 

I acknowledge that I am giving James Franco an amount of credit as a part of the conversation of American letters. People used to shit on Bono for his ceaseless media whoring, but you know what? AIDS in Africa is a problem and the guy was using his authority for good.  And who am I to shit on Franco for being a part of the conversation?  Plus, like I said a few times already, he’s eternally cute. 

Addendum:

I'm in the woods far away from New York Magazine.  Far away from the movie theater and the magazine rack. To my left are four writers  tinker words, sip coffee.  I like this kind of influence better.

Ben Mirov's GHOST MACHINE [by Amy Lawless]

 

 

GHOST MACHINE by BEN MIROV

Here is a recommendation/email correspondence/review of Ben Mirov’s GHOST MACHINE.  It is available from Caketrain! 

 I emailed Ben because I was really excited about his book.   He loves spam!

Hey Ben,

I'm reading Ghost Machine and a review is brewing in my head because I am a reviewer now.   These poems make me so depressed! I'm so glad you found C. a.k.a. got her back! [the poems depict a heart-wrenching loneliness after a break-up] Can you email me what you were thinking when you wrote them. They sort of seem like they're written in a solipsistic manner (some are regular poems, some lonely collages of the other poems, some take lines from other poems)--that isn't an insult, I just wanted to use the word sollipsistic.  Give me a break here and help me.  Am I right?  Cuz I'm like "Wow, This is DEVASTATING."   Take your time. I know you're on vacation.  Something tells me you may have blogged about this--if so just send the blog entry and don't waste any more time and I’ll read that.  This book seems to tell the story of a devastating breakup with of course the Mirovian spin—hilarity, heartbreaking self-loathing, etc., self-referentiality... Obviously i won't write that in my review of your book.  "Hey this guy HATES HIMSELF!-- and I'm his friend so I KNOW!"  Wait don't most poets hate themselves?  So far my favorite is "Ummmm Machine" --  and I can see why the "EYE sequence" would be the most loathed.  I don't loathe it but it is essentially the speaker of the poems spinning his wheels, re-editing lines and pieces of the surrounding poems into utter ennui -- his life is rendered meaningless.  The lack of serotonin causing such pain from this breakup have turned man into Machine, he can't create, he can only edit, only spin wheels in his mind.  A ghost of his previous self.  He feels nothing anymore.  It's funny that love does this.  At this point I'm writing this email assuming it MIGHT actually be the review.   I never write emails this long  Another I loved was where you take the person out of the poem about the park.   That was one of my most favorite lines.   We talk so much about not mentioning the fact that your poem is a poem in the poem, but you're talking about what you're doing in a poem 2, 3 pages later. You're the man doing this.  I have to say, you've grown up a lot and I am proud of this work, proud of you.

Best,

Amy

Believe it or not, a day later, Ben replied!  (Grab some popcorn. This is good!)   

Amy,

I wasn't thinking anything when I wrote GHOST MACHINE. Maybe I was thinking something like, Life is essentially meaningless, but in a vague way that didn't connect to anything concrete.

I don't hate myself. I generally feel ok about  my "self," or feel neutral about who I am. I don't hate the period of my life that GHOST MACHINE came from. It sucked, but it turned into something else (a book).

I hope when people read GHOST MACHINE they see that it isn't just about a breakup. I don't really know what it's about, but I think it has something to do with the "solipsistic nature of reality" and other things I haven't tried or wanted to articulate. 

I think you accurately described "Eye, Ghost". Elaine Equi once told me she thought it might be "too long," which I think is true. But there is something necessarily "too long" about it. Like if a person is reading it and starts to feel bored or alienated by the poem, that's a desirable effect.

Here are some things I have written or said about GHOST MACHINE:

1.) interview a Scattered Rhymes

2.) blog post on the process of writing GHOST MACHINE

3.) book review at We Who Are About to Die

Thanks again. I love you.

Ben

"The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting" by Sampson Starkweather [by Amy Lawless]

I picked up an amazing chapbook by Sampson Starkweather at AWP in Denver way back in April called The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting.  I only got around to reading it two weekends ago, and it was stunning.   Daniel Magers' Immaculate Disciples Press in Brooklyn, NY produced this handmade book, and what can I say? From its poems to its layout, to its hand-sewn binding I was impressed! Each poem is titled with a roman numeral, and each poem roughly fits into  the theme of the "super hero."  

What I liked about these poems is that they're smart and yet also very near to the memories of our [we who grew up into the 1980s] now-fatal childhoods--the voice these poems are written in is familiar, casual, and smart.  The co-mingling of the near--playing with toys, fifth grade, the way power was held in our imaginations as we played with our superheroes when we were kids, and the deflation of not holding any such superpowers any more...once we grow adult and reality sets in.  My favorite poem is reproduced here (with permission of its author):

LXXIV

     

 

       Invisibility is easy; if I could have 1 super power

it would be fucking you, or maybe to be you, fucking me.

 

       I’m speaking of own(h)ership, the betweens and in-

sides, the 2 tiny indecisions of the thighs, the boundary of to-know,

sacrilege, tougher than water, another thing to be broken.

Inside, we’re all made of laughter and exploded feathers—

in the 5^th grade, Ms. Lawson pulled a crow from my hair,

which, on being found out, thrashed and cried and explained

its fear of being an animal of white snow, of disappearing

into the blank endlessness of thinking, which is why I scream

with a skull full of excrement and a wish to kiss

the livid throat, the crow that cries from being found.

 

       Super heroes never had to deal with ideas

like these, so it’s with this radio lodged in my neck

that I set my frequency to suffer, extract

in increments of night, any memory

until I’m alone with the would-be trees,

black forest of vespers and pure thought,

I resettle into someone else’s shadow

and in order to feel closer to you—

                 touch myself.

 

 What does it mean to turn green?  I can't help think of Superman and his kryptonite, but I'm sure some nerd would mention the Green Lantern,  and some other references I was too busy playing "Barbie Whorehouse" to pick up on....  Heh heh!  The final poem in The Heart is Green finishes on an evocation of the rain muse, i guess: "Rain, sing me into this ocean." And there, it ends with what can only be transformation [drown? die? blank page? growing up?]-- hell, what's the difference?

Thank you Sampson, for writing such an exciting, spellbinding chapbook!  The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting is available here.: http://immaculatedisciples.blogspot.com/ . Hurry now.  There were only 150 printed!

Belle of Brooklyn at the Belle of Amherst's House [by Amy Lawless]

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of touring Miss Emily Dickinson's house [called the Emily Dickinson Museum] in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I was fresh from nearly eight hours of graduation festivities for my sister, who just graduated with honors from UMASS Amherst, a college famed for its off campus pizza, enormous brick library, and beautiful grounds.

First we toured the gardens. Emily loved her garden, and I can see why. The grounds are sprawling and open, plenty of room to think and get lost in.  The flowers were lovely, though it seems a little early in the blooming season for New England.  It was a beautiful spring day, and even I could find nothing to complain about.  Here's an inexplicable black and white photo of me with the 'rents in Emily's garden.  The true glory can only perceived in person so  this is, perhaps, me teasing into forcing you to go for yourself!

Here's a photo of me down the road near her brother Austin's house, mocking the beautiful exhibit of Emily in conversation with Robert Frost, who oddly lived (years later) across the street, no doubt lovingly aware of  this. 

But they tore down the place Frost lived, and built a police station.  Ha ha ha! Who's the man now, DOG!  

The staff of the Dickinson house is blooming full of nerdy exhuberance. My party only had an hour to take a two hour tour and we were convinced, perhaps by the sheer economy of these ladies' salaries, but hopefully by their love of the docent's life to do as much of the tour as we could.  Jane, our lovely tour guide, talked about how Emily thought publishing was the mortaging off of the mind.  I tried to find the direct quote online, but failed. Perhaps someone has it?

In any case, i was impressed.  Despite the common undersanding that Emily was a famous recluse, she seemed quite social.  She was a famous cook - her father would only eat bread made by her hands.  Thank god for modern bakeries!  If my dad needed a baguette, I'd have to throw my hands up in cluelessness!

We didn't get to tour her brother Austin's house. I guess I'll have to go back at some point.

Anyway, thanks to the lovely Emily Dickinson museum and its people for a wonderful time!

 

 

 

Happy Mother's Day [by Amy Lawless]

Hey Kids!  I thought I'd offer a Happy Mother's Day note on my mother, or "Mama" as I affectionately refer to her, or Carol Lawless as the world affectionately and legally refers to her.  My elder sister Molly dug up this photo of our mater, matron.  (I'm not even using a thesaurus!)   In this photo Carol is preggers with Molly.  Look how pretty she is!  She is still just as pretty and interesting as she was in this photo.  In fact, if Molly hadn't said this photo had her in it, I would think the photo was taken last year.

 Despite our ups n downs (A.K.A. when I was a teen),  my mother is the reason I love poetry.  Though not a poet herself, my mother read me many many poems from a book of verses for children [with surprisingly heavy themes like Frost's "Death of a Hired Man]:

"'Warren?' she questioned.

'Dead,' was all he answered."

Mama also prodded me to write my first poem when i
 was 8, which won "Honorable Mention" in the Cricket
 Magazine poetry contest.... a one-liner about how much I hated peas... which in some 

way led me here. 

  I saw there were some melancholy postings on those mothers who are gone from this 

earth. 

I'm lucky to have my mother healthy and causing tons of Lawless commotion (heh heh) in Boston, Massachusetts.

I love you Mama!

Love, Amy

Shout Outs: GLORY HOLE | THE HOT TUB [by Amy Lawless]

I recently read a really awesome split book by Dan Hoy and Jon Leon called  "GLORY HOLE | THE HOT TUB," published by Mal-O-Mar.  

The book is a beautiful square, pleasing to hold with simple (how you say....?) colored line art on each side for each author's half of the book.   Think of a 45 rpm record, but each side is a hit, and each side is by a different artist.   Lennon/McCartney if you will, only these two guys don't have to write in the same house with the other guy's wife hanging around caterwauling..... Though that would be kind of a fun experiment... But I digress.

Most poets' egos would not allow them to split a book.  The man may want it but the ego wouldn't allow it, but these two poets are above that. Hell they're in their own worlds.  Jon Leon's work reminded me of Frederick Seidel's masterpiece "Ooga Booga" (which you have to read if you haven't already) in the best of ways.  No, it didn't cop Seidel's vibe. No it didn't steal Seidel's essence, but it served me with such a high MPH of personality and West Coast-ery, I lost my breath half way in.  Leon lives in California. No, not that one! The one in the Carolinas.   Get it, McFly?  It's called LIVING IN CALIFORNIA IN YOUR MIND.

And no, I'm not high. But I wish I were.

Here's a piece from "The Hot Tub" that explicates my point, daddy.  Lazy as I am, I chose the one aptly titled "CALIFORNIA":

CALIFORNIA

I'm standing on the corner of Martin and McDowell. I pinch
my crotch as a limo rolls past.  A bank of fluorescent lights
accentuates the whole thing.  In my head I'm rolling back the
years. I go into a vacant building that's empty, pop some
batteries into my Walkman, and dance myself to tears. When I
walk outside there's a train. I get on it.

See? This guy literally can be anywhere in the world and he's in California. Masterful.

Flip this bitch over and it's just as good!  A glory hole is when a guy is in a bathroom and there's a hole in the stall and he..... Oh [blushing], you know that already.  Dan Hoy is the guy who came up with the phrase "hate on life" and you've been following his work since 2004.  I know that's a lot to take in, so just think about that over the weekend.   Dan is intensely best friends with personae poems.  The personae of Dan Hoy.  I thought there was a difference between the narrator in his poems and Dan Hoy the man, until I became friends with him and realized how intensely honest these poems are.   Dan's poems will make you STOP hating on life, and that's the point.  Here's the titular poem from his debut book.

GLORY HOLE

I eat steak every day because
it's them or me. The masterpiece
is the frame I hang around my neck
and shove my face in. I wake up
like the night is impossible. My name
in lights and the arms of the jerk
I feel the most.  Every time I think
This is a blast and completely fucked.

If you want to know more (which you do), these two poets interviewed each other (WHO DOES THAT?) on a blog. Read it here.

Oh and here's where you order it.

And here are two promo videos for the book.  They'll make your body interested as well as your mind.

"Erin Go Braghless" by Amy Lawless

From time to time we run a couplet by a poet on a theme that rhymes with the poet's name. From Amy Lawless, here is "Erin Go Braghless":

Erin Go Braghless
by Amy Lawless

Rubenesque potty mouths spill disaster onto her face.
Wet contests seldom send one home with high marks for grace.