The Best American Poetry

Movie Moments - G. I. Jane (1997)

Oh Viggo Viggo Viggo talk poetry to me please!!! Ever notice how many leading men have cleft chins? Name the poet who wrote the lines about the unself-pitying wild thing.

 

-- sdh

"After Ryokan" by David Shapiro

After Ryokan

In my cup

In the thin snow

In front of your window

In the window sky

In the blue distance

In the scattered doors

In the pool near your room

In the shadow on the highway

In every quarter of the evening land

In the staves of the sky

I seem to hear your voice.

-- David Shapiro

Elizabeth Bishop Takes Pawn

I just received some delightful information.  I'm sure many others know it already, but I'd never heard it before.  John Koethe, poet and raconteur extraordinaire, recently revealed that in his last year or so of grad school at Harvard he was invited to Elizabeth Bishop's home.  Once in the front door he found that the entire living room was taken up by a huge ping pong table.  Elizabeth Bishop was an avid ping pong enthusiast! 

This was in the early 1970s, so Miss Bishop would be in her early 60s (she died in 1979).  It's commonly thought that Bishop was a poor reader of her own poems, but Koethe says not so.  "I remember she gave one of the greatest readings I've ever seen," he said.  She "looked like an aunt of mine" up there, but read wonderfully her beautiful poems.  "She was a great reader."

Cut to the ping pong table.  Can't you see it?  Miss Bishop is home after the reading.  Some people have come back to the house.  She loses the old-fashioned poetry-reading dress, puts on her pedal pushers and sneaks.  (Wait, it's Boston, so they probably call them "trainers.")  Someone hands her a beer; she takes a long drag off her cigarette, puts it along the edge of the coffee table shoved up against a wall.  She unzips her paddle cover, takes out her custom paddle, turns to face her opponent.  "Bring it," she says, her voice seemingly noncommital.  Thwack-thwack-thwack.  Thwack.  Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.  Thwack-thwack-thwack.  Plunk.  Point to Miss B.  She takes another swig of beer.  Pulls another drag from the cigarette, stubs it out in an ashtray.  Someone puts on some Brazilian music.  "Let's go," she says.  Her paddle flashes, her sneaks squeak on the wood floor.  Thwack-thwack-thwack, into the night.

 

Nester's Last Day (by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz)

Thanks for having me, The Best American Poetry Blog, and thank you, dear readers, for making this week an enjoyable one.  Made a lot of new email friends and reconnected with others. And thanks to Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, who sent in the above cartoon--err, graphic novel-type writing--in honor of today, my last day as BAP guest blogger (single-click your mouse on it to read in new window). She and her partner in crime, Shappy, rocked the Frequency North reading series, which I run here at The College of Saint Rose.  See you around the simulrockra, pen in hand.

Daniel Nester and Jonah Winter's proposed names of poetry books

Poet-slash-evil genius Jonah Winter and your guest blogger spent an afternoon in Pittsburgh not too long ago, talking of our lack of faith in Jesus Christ as our personal savior as well as making fun of poetry book titles. They all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness. To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would after after whatever the other participant named as the first. 

So, for example, Jonah would say “Imprimateured,” while I kept in mind the second word for the title, “Meanderings,” thus giving us a title ready for someone’s poetry manuscript, Imprimateured Meanderings. (That's Jonah in full evil genius mode pictured up on your left, reading at UMaine's reading series awhile back; do check out his books, the very un-portentously, unobsequiously named  Maine and Amnesia.)

Sometimes we would even think of the press one of our proposed books titles might be associated.  TransDarkness would fit right beside those titles published at the experimental Ahsahta Press, for example, while Tremulous Beaver might be more feasible for, say, Knopf.

Without further ado, here’s our list. Got any others?  Add them to the Comments box.

The Orchid Sac
Lunar Guest
Concrete Pedigree
Beviled Desires
Standard Flow
Leftward Thwartings
Modified Rapture
Tremulous Beaver
Uninformed Highwayman
TransDarkness
Uninformed Tomorrowings
Imprimateured Meanderings
Sluiced Regret
The Sentinel Awakes
In situ, Storms
Alarm Morningwood
Darling; Wandering
Streaked Pugnaciousness
Variegated Cock
Woman House
Descartes’ Pancakes
Fugitive Contraband
Entering Beaver
Airport Beaver
Damage Thruway
Matchstick Haven
Unsublettable You
Earning, Toward
The Felt Apogee
Technical Vulva
Tree Entrance
Veinous Miriam
Unvisited Stickerbush
Polished Lendings
Stiff Flowering
Penelope’s Nubbin

West Coast Special Report: Queer, Literary, and All in L.A. (by Eloise Klein Healy)

On the eve of BookExpo America, there were two literary events in Los Angeles separate but equally compelling. Wednesday night, May 28,  Honor Moore read at Antioch University Los Angeles, the guest of PEN USA West and the undergrad and grad writing programs at Antioch. Honor is a very accomplished poet and biographer, skills she brought to the creation of her latest book, The Bishop's Daughter, an stunningly rich examination of the double life of her renowned father, the Bishop of the Diocese of New York, the Rt. Reverend Paul Moore. Bishop Moore, it turns out, had long been attracted to men and had a 28 year affair with a man who made himself known to Honor after her father died.  The book is also an autobiography, a careful scrutiny of Honor's own sexual and emotional history, its intersections with her father's history and their long estrangement heart wrenching.  I don't think anyone in the audience went away from the reading without being deeply moved and altered by this forthrightly written book.  It will raise some hackles because of the topic, but in an age of memoir, and with all the recent arguments about "truth in telling,"  this book will go a long way to restoring standards for personal history.

Thursday night, off to the Lambda Literary Awards we went.  The program was marked with so many high points, it's hard to know were to begin.  First of all, it was the 20th anniversary of the Lambda awards and the first public gala for the Lambda Literary Foundation from its new base is Los Angeles.  So, the party was on.  Interesting to note that the award presentations were held in the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, the former home of the Lannan Foundation's groundbreaking poetry series.  So, the Lannan Series being long gone from Los Angeles, it was heartwarming to see another organization stepping in to fill some of that footprint. There was a stellar cast of presenters, among them Lillian Faderman (literary historian and chronicler of LBGT lives), and honorees such as Ann Bannon, probably the most widely read gay author living.  What brought many of the house to tears was a silent video memorial to LGBT writers who died between the years 1988 and 2008.  But the organization is not spending all it's time looking back.  Christopher Rice was honored as the new president of the Board of Trustees of the foundation, a sign that a new generation of LBGT writers is rolling out its talent and commitment to spreading the word that LBGT literature has arrived. 

Award winners and all nominees are posted on the Lambda site today.  Poets will be interested to know that Henri Cole came away with the award in poetry. 

(Editor's/"Factor" Note: Eloise Klein Healy is not just a poet and editor, she's a Los Angeles literary legend. Healy is the founder and editor of Arktoi Books (a new poetry imprint with an amazing list), a co-founder of EcoArts travel, and the author of The Islands Project her latest, remarkable book of poems. -J.F.)

Salman Rushdie videos!

These are some of my faves! Sir Salman Rushdie (wearing a blond wig) dances the Lindy in Montreal with Laura Keat, one of the very best female dancers. Salman is also really good.

Salman Rushdie sings "The Lion in Winter" with Linda Ronstadt --

"John Henry said just before he died ain't but two more roads daddy wants to ride...." Salman Rushdie performs this very powerful song. Notice the total concentration on Salman Rushdie's face.

Getting to Know: Rachel Shukert (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked now-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Let's get this out of the way: J'adore Rachel Shukert. Sassy, brassy, raunchy, smart--what more could one ask for?  Well, how about a sassy, brassy, raunchy and smart essay collection by that same Rachel Shukert? Introducing Have You No Shame? Just published by Villard/Random House this month, Shame chronicles, among other hijinks, the writer-performer-provocateur experience growing up in whitebread Omaha, Nebraska, in that city's only Jewish elementary school. It should be noted that her sestina, "Subterranean Gnomesick Blues; or, The Gnome Who Whet My Fleshy Tent," which first appeared in the McSweeney's Sestinas page, also graces the pages of The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present. We caught up with Shukert between performances as actress Pamela Ann Windchime, who plays the character of Donna Kettering in Wasp Cove,  a Dallas/Falcom Crest-type soap opera performed onstage, which she co-created and co-wrote with  Julie Klausner. And we're glad we did catch up with her!

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right?
RS: No! I’m in Sr. High!  You’d think I’d be pregnant in Jr. High?  What do I look like to you, white trash?

What are you most looking forward to?
I can’t wait until the moment the baby’s head crowns, and I can feel my labia tearing as I shriek in agony.  What kind of question is this?  I’m a pregnant teenager; are you some kind of sadist?  But also, I just want to say, if that Sex and the City Movie doesn’t come out soon, I am seriously going to put my fist through the window.  I just need to know what happens to those elderly prostitutes! 

What kind of car do you want?
What kind of car do you want to give me? 

What's your favorite subject?
Um, that should be “whom is” your favorite subject.  What are you, illiterate?  And the answer is Justin Rodriguez, 1243 Cumberland Dr. Marietta GA., 30365

Do you play any sports?
No.  I was on the swim team, but that was before “what’s his name” “accidentally ejaculated” into my “vagina.” 

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure?
They were pretty understanding.  I was afraid they might ostracize me after the preacher railed against the evil of the new “moving pictures” but it seems like they might be catching on.  Emmett Pinkerton, whose father is the hurdy-gurdy man, even asked me to keep company with him tomorrow night at the ice-cream  social, and later, we might take an amble on down to the Old Footbridge.  Of course, I’m not sure Mr. Sennett will approve, since he paid Mother five whole dollars for me, but golly, mister!  A girl’s only young once!

You have a new puppy named Ali, right? How is she?
If by “puppy” you mean cousin, and if by “cousin” you mean “sex slave.”  She’s fine.

How old is she now?
How the fuck should I know?

She's a mix, right?
No! She is 100% American Indian. 

What are your feelings about Ali?
She’s okay, I guess.  I wish she was more flexible, but I guess you get what you pay for.

Where did you find her?
At that bar Sullivan’s, on Leavenworth Street. You know, the one with all the sailors?  She was passed out on the sidewalk, in a pool of vomit, with her lycra miniskirt hiked up all the way above her waist, and I just felt kind of sorry for her, you know?

Do you dress her up?
I try to.  Sometimes I dress her up as a fireman, sometimes we put on the Richard Nixon mask, for a playful look.  But usually, I just keep her chained naked to the wall.  That’s how she prefers it, really. 

Do you try to coordinate it with what you're wearing?
Yes.  For example, sometimes when she’s playing Nixon, I’ll put on my Henry Kissinger outfit, and we’ll drive around to all the Vietnamese restaurants in Los Angeles, which is always good for a laugh.  Or other times I’ll dress up as a pilgrim.  She’ll teach me how to plant corn, and I’ll give her smallpox.  It’s all fun and games until she’s permanently disfigured. 

What is your fashion style?
Genocide.

Year 'round?
Year ‘round.

What do you like to do for fun?
I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’m kind of stalking the guy from the Mac commercials?  Not the cute one that’s dating Drew Barrymore, the other one, with the glasses and the really round head.  The other day—oh my God, it was so funny!—I actually ran into him at Baja Fresh, and I told him if he got in the car with me, I would get Zac Efron to give him a hand job, and oh my God!  He totally got in my car!  So then I drove him to an undisclosed location, and I put him in a noose, and took pictures on my iPhone, which I sent to his wife.

Was it really scary?
She was super scared!  And he kept saying how it was like something out of something called a clockworm orange or something, so I hit him as hard as I could in the face, and like the second I did that, he got the biggest boner I’ve ever seen.  Dude, it was so funny!

TV anything you watch?
Like everyone in the First World, I am obsessed with Gossip Girl. I also love Taxi.  That Jim Ignatowski is hilarious.  I just want to kick him.

Are you watching Joey?
I don’t know what a Joey is. 

So, you have to get TiVo?
You better fucking believe I’m going to get TiVo for what he’s done to me.  Motherfucker.

Do you have an acting coach working with you?
I did.  Now I have an acting coach working in me.  Touché!

Is Zoe like you?
We look exactly the same. We inhabit the same body.  And we both love soup, and Maroon 5.

How are you not alike?
I’m pregnant, and Zoe is not pregnant.  Zoe’s name is Zoe, and my name is not Zoe.  And also, Zoe loves to eat clams, oysters, and other shellfish, and I am a heterosexual.

Will that change as you get older?
I don’t know.  I’m told that it can, but the person who told me that was this lady therapist my mom sent me to who totally tried to make out with me.

Nerdy Poetry Tattoo (by Jill Alexander Essbaum)

Get it?

A trochaic foot and an iambic foot. (Tee hee!)

I'm such a dork.

It's Our Two Cents (by Daniel Nester)

In the style of Larry King's "It's My Two Cents" columns that ran in USA Today, collaboratively written by members of the English 563 ‘Selves Thinking’ Essay Writing Intensive class at The College of Saint Rose: Louis Cortina, Chrissie Curran, Beth Hines, Rebecca Lewand, Lindsay Marchetti, Daniel Nester, Vaneeta Palecanda, Esther Prokopienko, Michael Sloman, Anne-Marie Thweatt, and Scott Wheatley

___

Losing an appendage would be devastating to daily life; I’d rather lose an arm, hands down….If you receive a tattoo on your ass, do not sun-bathe in the nude….Don’t slice your herbs, crush them…if you must, use your fingers. As for broccoli, break off the florets. Don’t take a knife to it…. You should not play rugby for the singular reason that you may end up with a flat face….

Last night I saw a bumper sticker that said, “You might have come from a monkey, but I was created.”  I like to believe I’ve got monkey genes…Am I the only one who still has a hard time saying the word “duties” with a straight face?  Even at my age and in the workplace, it's still hilarious!  If you disagree, grow up!...

Does hearing the women cluck back and forth on “The View” make anyone else tempted to light themselves on fire?...What is with people who don't feel the need to have an answering machine? I understand those who don't carry around cell phones to avoid being reached at all times of the day, but no way to leave a message?... Stephen Colbert should have a bear-cooking show….

I don’t care about this so-called childhood amnesia—I refuse to stand in front of my child naked. Better to be safe than sorry when dealing with the nude human body….I love Mexico. If you ever find yourself in there, buy some coke; it’s cheap and good… Speaking of cheap and good, never let your boyfriend who’s learning to tattoo practice on you; it may be cheap, but it’ll never be good…Do not enter a mud wrestling tournament the day after being tattooed….

Getting to Know: Sparrow (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked now-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Sparrow created quite a stir when, in 1995, he picketed The New Yorker magazine, holding a placard that read “My poetry is as bad as yours.” His poetry has since appeared in that magazine, as well as The Quarterly, The New York Times and many anthologies. He also was featured in the PBS series “The United States of Poetry” and can be heard, along with his legendary band Foamola, on the poetry compilation Poemfone: New Word Order (Tomato). He writes the gossip column for the Phoenicia Times, a contributing editor to Chronogram, works as a substitute teacher, and is the author of America, A Prophecy: The Sparrow Reader, edited by Marcus Boon, as well as Yes, You ARE a Revolutionary! Plus Seven Other Books and Republican Like Me (all from Soft Skull Press), which outlines his unsuccessful run for the 1996 Republican nomination for president. Articles about him have appeared in Rolling Stone, Time and The London Times.  We caught up with Sparrow, who lives with his wife and daughter in the Catskill Mountains hamlet of Phoenicia. And we're glad we did!

BAPB: You'€™re in Jr. High, right?
S: No. I have a Masters degree, actually.

What are you most looking forward to?
Seeing a cement truck.

What kind of car do you want?
What kind of cars are there?

What's your favorite subject?
Economics.  Especially marine economics.

Do you play any sports?
I am drawn to golf, but ultimately I don't quite lift the club.

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure?
Nah!

You have a new puppy named Ali, right? How is she?
Fetching!*

*pun intentional

How old is she now?
She's about four weekends old.

She's a mix, right?
True.

What are your feelings about Ali?
She's young, she's lost, she's almost diseased.  I see her as a template for an army of out-of-work radicals.

Where did you find her?
She was sleeping in a drainpipe near Victoria Station.

Do you dress her up?
Yes, sometimes.

Do you try to coordinate it with what you're wearing?
I try to intuit what her Unconscious desires.

Broadly Speaking, I'm Un-abroad at Present

Meaning I'm in NYC, man. But only for a couple more days. Then it's off to spread mayhem HERE where, my trusty sidekick Jessica Piazza and I have schemed to spend a long weekend immersed in this sort of sassafras. In truth, it is I who is her trusty sidekick as she is truly the mistress of all people worth knowing and all things worth knowing about.

Last I informed the forum, I was off, off, off to Berlin, where I was to kick it with Mr. Cave for my last concert of the European tour. Because I am an insomniac (a fate too common in our community, methinks) I didn't sleep the night before, and so I hied to Berlin utterly schlaflos. But I survived, took a cross-town bus to my friend's place, and met her there just in time to escort her to the post office where she mailed the fruits of her own insomnia (a 20 page paper considering the Church's response to the 3rd Reich) to one of her seminary professors. That done, we had a couple hours of lollygagging before going to the Tempodrom for the show.

I won't linger over details that would only interest fools like me, but I do have to relay a wickedly bad-ass anecdote. A few songs into the show, I had turned to Eva to mention something about the quality of the sound (fan-freakin'-tastic!) and when I turned around, Mistah Cave was standing over me. He asked me how I was and I responded with some sort of enthusiastic jibberish. Then he squared up at the edge of the stage and pointed straight at me and announced "Harlot!" and then said the next song was mine. And then he played "Red Right Hand."

He calls 'em like he sees 'em, me supposes. (Insert mile-wide grin here.)

Then I flew to Chicago for the first ever Pilcrow Lit Fest. Highlights included a plethora of panels, as well as a charity auction benefiting New Orleans' public libraries, where authors were invited to "rebuild" their books into pieces of art. My own contribution was a Harlot Hotel made of the box that my w-husband's* bike helmet came in, complete with anatomically correct sex dollies hand-sewn from previously worn-by-me pantyhose (is it wrong to admit that?). ((And yes, that's a pantyhose foreskin...)). If you are looking to rid your wallet of a couple spare bucks, I would suggest visiting the link to the library rebuilding campaign. In total, $4000 was raised that night. Hot damn!

Which brings me to this night that I insomnia myself through. Fine as the night is, this not-sleeping bullshit really blows. But the day was a delight. I traipsed with the lovely Amy Lemmon to The Cloisters where we look-seed us a bunch of medieval stuff. That's a damn cool museum, and she's a damn classy lady to museum with. Tomorrow, the plan involves Jill and Jessica and permanent body art of the ridiculous and poetic variety, as well as some sushi and, likely, liquor. I will post the body art once etched. Depending how much liquor gets imbibed, I may or may not post that.

I will be posting from West Chester. So be nice to me, Formalists!**

Until,
Jill

*"W-husband" is something I came up with the other day..."w" as in "almost ex." It's probably wrong to admit that here, as well.

**I like to think of myself as a formal-ish poet.

The temptations of Mr. Snoid (by Mitch Sisskind)

Flaubert said, "Snoid, c'est moi." Commenting on this, Professor E. Compton Buzzard of Stanford University has written, "Writers are drawn to beautiful women in line with the principle that opposites attract. Thus in the Crumbian mythos Mr. Snoid pursues, zum beispiel, Mode O'Day or Angelfood McSpade. And in what we choose to call the real world, Salman Rushdie marries Padma Lakshmi."

Yes! Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi. They go together like a fish and a bicycle. I loved seeing them out on the town, but now that Padma has sent Salman a "Dear John" email, we aren't going to have many more photos like the one below. So let's enjoy it! And let's also enjoy the really great video of Padma further down. Alas, Salman! Yeats put it so well: "What else was she to do? Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

Some pictures over the years from Karaoke + Poetry = Fun (by Daniel Nester)

Karaoke + Poetry = Fun has, over the years, brought together poets from all ends of the aesthetic spectrum. 

Language poets will sing duets with New Formalists; a pale-faced Saint Marks scenester will cheer on an elbow-patch academic as s/he belts out middle-period Pat Benatar.

It's an Aaron Sorkin utopian vision of Poetryland, a place where Robert Lowell's imagained camps of Raw and Cooked poets come together to sing along to Bonnie Tyler.

Inside the simulrockrum II: Journeys with Journey (by Daniel Nester)

In an earlier post, we examine my clever neologism of simulrockrum, the idea of an imitation in the rock realm superseding its original, with Guitar Hero, competitive air guitar, and bassists who play along with records and put them up on YouTube offered as examples. Today we're going to talk about some more simulrockra, with a Journey with the rock band Journey.

Steve Perry, as many readers might know, is the former lead singer of the rock band Journey. The band was an ubiquitous presence on FM radio in the late 70s and 80s ("Faithfully," "Any Way You Want It,"  "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'). And you might recall their song "Don't Stop Believin'" was featured in final scene of The Sopranos finale.

The band broke up in 1984, reunited around 1986 after founding drummer Steve Smith and Ross Valory were thrown out, who were then replaced by two drummers and, on bass, future American Idol judge Randy "Yo Dog" Jackson on bass (that's Jackson and Perry, left).

Getting to Know: Amanda Nadelberg (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask a contemporary American poet the same questions Teen magazine asked now-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Amanda Nadelberg is the author of Isa the Truck Named Isadore (Slope Editions, 2006), winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize chosen by judge Lisa Jarnot. Her poems have appeared in journals including Jubilat, The Canary, Octopus, No, Conduit, Tarpaulin Sky, McSweeney's Sestinas, Poetry Daily, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. She currently lives in Minneapolis, and will be attending the Iowa writing program in the Fall.  We caught Amanda on a break of a reading tour in the Northeast, and we're glad we did.

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right?
AN: No, but one time I was. Bigelow Bulldogs class of ’96. I was one of the valedictorians. I think the speech was about saying hello to people. Whatever.

Inside the simulrockrum (by Daniel Nester)

Of course many BAPB blog readers have heard of those popular Guitar Hero video games, in which a player, wielding an ersatz guitar game controller, follows colored dots that mimic the guitar part of popular rock tunes. 

There's a screen capture above--notice the "Rock"-o-meter, which increases as the accuracy of hitting those pesky dots increases. Players even have a whammy/vibrato bar on their controller, which earns players extra points if whammied at the right point in the song.

It has occurred to this guest blogger--who is very much interested in rock music--that Guitar Hero is just the iceberg tip of what he has coined previously as the simulrockrum, a ham-handed portmanteu of simulacrum and rock. The simulacrum, you might recall, is a copy or imitation of something that becomes just as real as the original. "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none," the late French theorist Jean Baudrillard writes. "The simulacrum is true."

And such is the case, it seems, inside the simulrockrum. Here's some examples submitted for your approval.

eddiesinner is a bassist who plays along with songs by the rock band Whitesnake.  And we're not just talking the late 80's decadent rococo videos-with-Tawny Kitaen Whitesnake, either.  We're talkin' post-Deep Purple, bell-bottomed, keyboard-player-with-the-floppy-hat Whitesnake.

Get a load of eddiesinner playing along to the live version of the 'Snake's recording of "Sweet Talker," above.  This guest blogger has at times preferred the Whitesnake + eddiesinner clips to listening to original Whitesnake recordings; he says this not because he prefers eddiesinner's bass playing over Neil Murray's on Ready 'n Willing. No: It is the combination of the two, of female fanshriek as David Coverdale as he croons "the bitch is in heat/so you better run" combined with the decor of eddisinner's recreation room, his deep, zen-like concentration that only bassists can make. As well as the swig from the bottle and cigarette puffs.

Getting to Know: Peter Conners

In which we ask the same questions Teen magazine asked teen idol Zac Efron, star of the Disney Channel’s High School Musical movies; see original interview here.

Peter Conners is the author of the widely acclaimed prose poetry collection Of Whiskey and Winter (White Pine Press, 2008), the novella Emily Ate the Wind Marick Press. His memoir about touring with the Grateful Dead, Growing Up Dead, will be published by Da Capo Press in Spring 2009. He is also editor of PP/FF: An Anthology, which was published by Starcherone Books in 2006. [Full disclosure: a piece by this interviewer appears in that anthology.] Peter is co-founder and co-editor of the journal Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction. He served as a 2005 guest editor for American Book Review. Peter does a lot of things, so it was a miracle we got a hold of him in his Rochester, NY home. And we're glad we did!   

Age: Street Legal

Sign: PP/FF

Birthplace: Gwenyth F. Conners

You may know me because: You don’t know me.

My house is: Hovering six feet over the ground.

The first thing I do every morning is: Get out of bed, drag a comb across my head.

About my pets: Most are dead. One is living.

I exercise: Therefore I am.

Walt Whitman and the Civil War (by Jenny Factor)

Walt Whitman did not sit home when Civil War gripped the U.S. In 1863-1864 (for two long years' of days in his early 40's), Whitman passed throughout the military hospitals of Washington D.C. as a volunteer, sitting with soldiers, using his meager funds to buy them everything from ice cream to brandy, reading them letters from home, and writing letters to their loved ones. Whitman was never the same. On May 7 at the Huntington Library, Civil War scholar Drew Faust tried to make the numbers of that war real for us. There was no military i.d. system then--not even an official form of dog tag. American families often lived out the remaining decades of the 19th century never knowing what had happened to their loved ones. Whitman leant his pen at the most practical level--bedside by bedside--carrying connections and news.

Image Credit: George C. Cox, 1887 in New York.

Getting to Know: Sharon Mesmer (by Daniel Nester)

In which we ask a contemporary American poet the same questions Teen magazine asked now-pregnant teen idol Jamie Lynn Spears; see original interview here.

Sharon Mesmer is the author of Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2008), The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose, 2008), Vertigo Seeks Affinities (Belladonna Books, 2006), Half Angel, Half Lunch (Hard Press, 1998) and Crossing Second Avenue (ABJ Books, Japan, 1997). Her prose collections are Ma Vie à Yonago (Hachette Littératures, France, in French translation, 2005) and In Ordinary Time and The Empty Quarter (Hanging Loose Press, 2005 and 2000). Lonely Tylenol, an art book in collaboration with the painter David Humphrey, was published in 2003 by Flying Horse Editions/University of Central Florida. She is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry. We caught up with Sharon while she was doing time in the wilds of rural Pennsylvania--and when shes says wilds, she means "like a bear came right up on our deck last night and stuck its nose against the glass door"--with an iffy internet connection.  And we're glad we did!

BAPB: You’re in Jr. High, right?
SM: Yes, and like Kentucky I am 56.3% illiterate. 

What are you most looking forward to?
Experimenting with rideable unicorns — flaring nostrils, slaying the evil beast.  I am evil and narcissistic!  But tonight I am just contemplating the magic of dolphin elbows.

What kind of car do you want?
One with sensitive teeth.  You’ve probably heard of a narwal, who may still play a role in mating rituals or determining male hierarchies.  Narwals hate dolphins, tho.

What's your favorite subject?
The atavistic mating rituals of unicorns. We believe in One Unicorn, The Pink, The Invisible. Every day we discover new plant life, insects, and animals in humanoid form. The Giant Unicorn (Elasmotherium sibiricus) was once a massive powerful female dark elf.

Do you play any sports?
Wringing every possible dollar, pound, yen, drachma and Euro singing “Kashmir” and “Stairway” to the back rows of interchangeable enormodomes the world over.

Are kids in school treating you differently because of Nickelodeon exposure?
They wake up knowing I am putting in the work to pursue my dream, and it makes them feel alive and free.  Right now, their sensations are unfolding like the petals of a flower, and the stimulus is so overwhelming they can't be anywhere BUT in the moment.  It's like a perfect storm of "a-ha" moments. They learn more and more from my thighs.  My glutes are two vacuum hoses they LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to process. They love learning. They love to learn, and I love to facilitate their long-term goals, the path to the summit.

You have a new puppy named Ali, right? How is she?
Ali's stratagems originally emerged as mercantile vigilantism incarnate via her asymmetrical silhouette which blurred the boundaries of day/night.  Just as Nature equipped the porcupine with a means of defense, Ali wore her embattled position external to the world: ethnic communities turned into war zones once normative gendered binarisms were undone by the shock of pleated chiffon in a wearable skirt length.  Drawing on Nietzsche, Ali announced with aggressively concocted assurances the primacy of her surfaces as a navigation between the elegant Scylla of Balenciaga/Dior historicity (purposefully reserved non-flounciness) and the cheap Charybdis of Wal-Mart blackguardism (fabrics that "degrade," i.e., stretch denim).

How old is she now?
Old enough to open the floodgates to even more delish seitan dishes.

She's a mix, right?
A rock and roll behemoth.  The horsey-chested Zep frontman.