February 28, 2006

Lazy

Someone once emailed to reprimand me for citing examples of other's blog posts, which The Person considered derivative, lazy and parasitic.  That is probably true.  The comments on Kasey's blog are better than what you read here, for example — even before he has flarfed them into a parallel universe.  Gabe's discussion of the "relation of the comic mode to empathy" via Jennifer Knox's Chicken Bucket is far more enjoyable than the paragraph you are currently reading.  The text in this post is significantly inferior to Jim's comics (ka-ching, another $).  Robert's long piece on contingent difficulty is way more important than this very sentence.   Rebecca's reckless execution of horrifying airplane tragedies is far more interesting than my entire last week of posts.  News of Reb's thong auction is 135% more riveting than my comments on the weather.  On the other hand, if you are reading this shortly after I typed it, Blogger is down again, and 90% of my blogroll is offline, and I'm all you've got.

In heavy rotation while walking on the treadmill :  The Fairly Odd Godparents, Tony Little's Gazelle Crosstrainer Show, Imus in the Morning, Breakfast with Bear, Ellen, Washington Journal.

34% for Bush and 18% for Cheney.  It reminds me of that joke where the two guys are running with a bear after them and the one guy says to the other guy why are you laughing we have to outrun this bear and the other guy says no I just have to outrun you.

I like Barrow Street because they've always liked (and occasionally published) my crazy stuff.  This issue has its share of engaging, quirky material.  Here's some shorts:  Adult Love, Kirsten Andersen: "... Let them be the easy loves / with rubber fans in their brains, resounding breasts. / Please reset my circumference ...".  Proofs, Sally Ball:  "... Then they discovered a photograph: // the black swagged out the windows / for Lincoln's funeral procession. //  Also: octopi can be taught / to open jars of food ...".  She, looking fragile as a, Frankie Drayus:  "She, whose pearl-handled pistol was kept in her".  Appeal, Lauren Fanelli:  "Yes, I was called and carved. / Yes, I tasted.".  The Other Woman, Nathalie Handal:  "No, She says, / he loves only his absence, / and the rest is mine."  Kyrgyzstan, Susan Hutton: "People who choke to death are usually found / in the next room, / where they've stepped out for a moment / to collect themselves."  Aubade, Idra Novey:  "I follow a stray dog / so he'll stop following me // and a violin starts forming / in the pockets of my coat."  Love Song, Brad Richard:  "Your heart    god's rubble / Hollow water   crippled rose".  Hokkaido Photo, Matthew Thorburn:  "Me, I'm the square silver camera / that takes all this in.  Too lazy". 

Posted by jbahr at 09:13 AM | Comments (6)

February 27, 2006

A Shoe For The Other Foot

You must have those weeks when you cannot stand to read another poem.  When each and every one becomes a latticework of meaningless symbols.  Or worse, like a random page torn out of a undistinguished biography.  This is the level of blue funk with which I approached the current issue of APR, and I'll be damned if it didn't kick me out of it, particularly from poets with whom I was unacquainted.  I pretty much skipped the excerpt from The Poem That Changed America (Howl), and was taken immediately by the 4 poems by Beth Bachman, particularly Paternoster ("The word for a line with a series of hooks also means the recitation of a prayer,").  Joan Murray's The Gypsy Child provoked a smile, and Jason Schneider almost qualified for a LOL, this at the end of Jokes About Nuns:  "So, in closing, / about that time I made you walk through the revolving door / with a spear through your head, I'm sorry.  That was just wrong".  Elliot Figman's A Crisp Apparatus starts delightfully:  "Inner saddle, we in hives have stumbled.  On a lawn another lawn appears".  Three poems by Tess Gallagher, and I particularly liked The Red Devil.  An eclectic selection by Michael Burkard.  John Koethe's reminiscences were decent, and I admit to skipping (as I tend to do) three poems by Alfonsina Storni translated from Spanish by Michelle Cliff (but I promise to read them if Jonathan Mayhew shows up as the translator).  Dana Levin continues her three-part series on The Heroic of Style and Ira Sadoff's On the Margins on prose poems.  Donald Hall's four poems were predictably somber and reflective, but I refused to be sobered up.  An interesting poem, My City, by D. W. Fenza aside a photo of the quite lovely, recently departed Tori Dent.  Robert Hass has the back page with Bush's War which was competent, but I think I'm going through Iraq War Overload.

Touché:  State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children. According to Hagan, "credible research'' shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities." Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents -- just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood's (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting. Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional "harm" when they are adopted by gay couples. Hagen admits he created his proposal to mock Hood's proposed ban on gay adoption in a way that people would see the "blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive" nature of the bill. The GOP House leadership does not support Hood's proposal. .

Yusef Komunyakaa will be among the poets reading at the University of Northern Colorado on Wednesday.

I just got my copy of Reb and Molly's The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, the Winter edition of Barrow Street, and Barbara Jane Reyes' Poeta en San Francisco.  More on those tomorrow. 

Posted by jbahr at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Sad Day for Rimbaud

Thanks again to Reb for noting that Kirsten's blog had been hijacked.  Maybe it was one of those randy pirate crews over on Jim's blog.  Oops, another dollar.

Two congrats in a row to Die Cloud for two acceptances in KR.

I drove Rimbaud over to the vet's for arthroscopic de-sexing today.  The vet's assistant insists keeping on his health record under "Rambo", which should now probably be "Rambum", the neuter form.  I don't know about Rimbaud, but I certainly would never get into a car with me again.

Good issue of Time this week, with Dick Cheney on the cover together with the predictable "Sticking To His Guns" for a title.  Ten Questions for that unreconstructed scowlpuss, John Bolton, who defends his claim that "if the U.N. lost 10 floors, it wouldn't make any difference" by stating that every bureaucracy can be made more efficient.  A West Point terrorism center is analyzing an al-Qaeda employment contract that details salary, vacation time and sick-leave policies.  An extremely detailed report on Cheney's hunting accident gives us everything including an analysis of a 28-guage shotgun shell with 7½ shot.  There are lots of women U.S. soldiers in Iraq;  48 have died and 300 have been injured.  Foreign oil companies are competing to develop long-dormant fields in Kurdistan, which the Kurds would like autonomous control over (the central Iraqi government thinks otherwise).  Nuclear energy supplies 70% of France's power and faces very little activist opposition.  A 31-page second-century papyrus tractate, the Gospel of Judas, has been reconstructed to join the dozens of other early gospels that never made it into the canonical set (i.e., the Bible).  It suggests that Judas wasn't that bad a guy, because (via Sopranoesque logic) "somebody had to betray Jesus".  Greenland's ice is melting twice as fast as first thought and could raise global sea level by 2 feet by the end of the century, which translates into a 200 shoreline retreat (there's not enough melting ice on the planet to get a Coloradan's feet wet, though).
 

Posted by jbahr at 04:42 PM | Comments (1)

February 23, 2006

AWP Fever

Under the Great Poets You've Never Heard Of category, there's Richard Epstein, with his latest.  RHE just riffs these off at the pace of two a week.  There's an intelligence that just roils under the surface of each poem.

Funny stuff from The Tenured Radical regarding the "generally gawdawful, resolutely anti-intellectual, networkers-in-full-on-self-promotion AWP Convention."   I made it to my first AWP 4 years ago with Junie and Wem when it was in New Orleans.  I walked around trying to read surreptitiously the nametags on people who looked old enough to Be Somebody, like some kind of bird watcher with an unfilled list.  After a couple of days of reciprocal behavior on the part of younger attendees, it occurred to me that I was about the right age and was getting targeted as a Somebody, too.  That cracked me up, so I turned my around-the-neck-thing badge upside down, so as to appear publicity-shy.  I remember walking into Alberto Rios and blurting out:  "Alberto!  I read your poem in Best American Poetry".  He smiled and said:  "Yeah, that was me".  Another good moment was chatting with Virgil Suárez in the main lobby as he waved a big unlit cigar around like some kind of Cuban band leader.  I was better prepared for the Chicago AWP, which seemed a great deal more stately and staid (in part, due to the atmosphere of the Palmer House).  The best moments of that one were:  a) having Gerald Stern come up during breakfast and grab both my hands in a greeting as if I were his best buddy, and b) the delight of seeing Mary Jo Bang in person for the first time, as Carl Philips towered over her (and everybody else, for that matter), c) spotting a fully bearded guy in the corner of a private lounge and thinking the Palmer House might be hosting an Amish convention (it was GC Waldrep, whom I later met at the book fair and laughed with), d) running into Bob Hicok and blurting out "Christ, Bob, you look just like your picture", e) chatting up Robert S. Fogarty of the Antioch Review and finding out he is long-standing friends of my ex parents-in-law, f) reading at the Swink bash with Bob Hicok, David Hernandez and Terrance Hayes.  I imagine Austin will be quite a bit different, assuming I can figure out how to break free for a few days and get down there.  AWP is such a luxury for a civilian like me, unburdened by panel participation or job hunting.  If you're going to be there, check in with the Many Mountains Moving book fair table, which I may help man.

I just received the latest Notre Dame Review and gave it a quick look.  So far, some very nice work, and contributions by Albert Goldbarth, Ray DiPalma, Brendan Galvin, Reginald Shephard, and The Tenured Radical.  More on that tomorrow, most likely.

Posted by jbahr at 09:55 AM | Comments (1)

February 22, 2006

Slacker Wednesday

I miss the Cheney jokes.  Funny news items have such a short shelf life.

Congrats to Claudia for the excellent work in MiPoesias.  This noted accomplishment gets her an honorary membership into the Blonde Sisterhood.

From Henry:  "I liked the Franz Wright poem included in the recent Poets & Writers feature. Wish I could have written it."   If it's the one I remember, I was completely unaffected by it.  That seems odd to me, as I often enjoy HG's work.  I guess individual poetic evaluation is neither commutative nor distributive (or something).

Thanks to Suzanne for pointing me to Matthew's 100 mini-reviews of poetry books.  Janet seems to read the same blogs I do for the same reasons (though Kasey is missing from the Holy Trinity of serious poetics blogs). My buddy Patricia moves to Florida and hits us with another smile-producing diary entry. 
 

Posted by jbahr at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2006

Quick Hit Tuesday

Even as an Army brat in my youth, I never moved as many times as Jimmy.  The latest:  "Poetry blogs couldn't be more boring. I read Ron's to get mad, Jordan's to get happy. And that's about it. Poetry blogs are too nice and have generally nothing to say because this niceness informs & sublimates them. I don't expect the true inner lives of poets to be all that interesting even when they're on display on this screen: "I have a reading / thanks for coming to my reading / here are photos from my reading / here comes another reading."  ... Anyone linking to my blog or mentioning on their blog my name or something that happened here owes me a dollar. That I will collect. Do more than warehouse the thoughts and motions of others. Or sink into the current."  OK, Jim, I owe you a dollar for the link and a dollar for the reference.  Where do I send it?

As I was reading submissions last night, I came upon a number of touching cover letters, exactly the kind you're not supposed to write.  A man who teaches ESL in South America, a woman raising bees on the Great Plains.  The actual poetry wasn't that great, but I liked reading it after hearing something about the life of the poet.  There should be a litmag for people, with the cover letter facing the poem.

Claudia gives us the unitary presidency as predicted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Nice take by Bedient via Rebecca.  A snippet:  "In most of the new poetry I see, unexceptional declarative sentences succeed one another like steps, when not like stomps, on the surface of a fairly limited experience — a method of domination, even when the tone is elegiac."

Posted by jbahr at 01:14 PM | Comments (1)

February 20, 2006

Hokum

I'm pleased to see that I have a lot more friends from Europe, and at least one new reader from Colombia, Dominican Republic and Australia.   Of course, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Antarctica are proving difficult, but there must be a way to reach the whimsy lovers there.  Oh, and Greenland and Micronesia would be nice to hear from.

Seth and Ginger just announced the second issue of The New Hampshire Review!

I've finally made it through another big, fat, beautiful issue of Pleiades.  I love the fact that the volume begins with a poem by Mike White called Tentacled Motherfucker.  Sarah Kennedy contributes the beguiling Witch's Dictionary (D) and (E) with epigraphs quoting 16th/17th century investigators into magic alongside quotes by George W. Bush.  Cate Marvin introduces very  good martial poetry by Kevin Honold, a Gulf War vet (3 poems) and Louise Glück introduces Jay Hopler (ditto).   Sean Bernard reviews CivilWarLand in bad decline by George Saunders, notes the praise by Pynchon and Keillor, and instructs us not to confuse stories worth chuckling over with great fiction.  I liked the strangely effective Daughter by Sarah Baldwin Davis ("In the first scene, the women walk against the sun / so they look burning, at least / from a distance they seem to, / the mountain at large.").  Five poems, disjunctive and imageful, by Jennifer Banks, a woman who loves her em-dashes, this from Urlaur Abbey: "Winter — /    and curvature, my globe — // town not yet lit with snow, /     it rattles — after Halloween — ".  Two sonnets by Bill Teague, Zombie sleep cycles I and II, which cracked me up ("My maggot-swarm upon sleep teems / With noise and light and vibrant dreams."), as did Lynnell Edwards' All I Know About Love, which begins with the epigraph "Let's take off those pants and get into the box of reptiles!".  This issue of Pleiades has almost 100 pages of book reviews, surely some kind of record, and alone worth buying the issue.

You often hear about American's low savings rate compared to the citizens of other countries.  I was reminded by this article that we may be more frugal than first thought, as savings (as defined by economists) does not include either home price increases nor capital gains in securities.  Tens of trillions of dollars of gain have accrued in the last decade in those categories, largely due to "forced savings" in the form of mortgage payments and 401(k) contributions (and related investments).  The real spendthrift is the Bush administration, who has "spent" trillions more than tax receipts.  Their answer to the dilemma, of course, is to cut back on social programs that collectively cost less than 5% of the Federal budget, and raise military spending.

Jilly points us over to a professor rating website.  I looked up a number of poet profs and was mildly surprised.  Carl Philips, for example, whom I always considered shy and retiring, gets great reviews for being fun and intelligent.

Quote of the day by Jordan:  algebraic karma needs more than 122 mins to escape hokum.

Posted by jbahr at 08:23 AM | Comments (1)

February 19, 2006

Still Curling

Junie doesn't believe that all I ever see on the Winter Olympics is curling, but it happened again this morning.  Really, about 7:15 AM MST.  Tell me I'm not nuts.  Well, no more than usual.

I'm halfway through Wicked and it's getting darker and more interesting.  I found out last week that my son's girlfriend's cat is named Elphalba, and she (the girlfriend, not the cat) was surprised that I had only just heard of the novel. 

Jim has a good point about the dropping of the "the".  I'm not against all wars either, and I'm totally ready to wage all-out combat against those space aliens.  That reminds me that I have a poem over there, too.  Maybe I should ask it be moved to the Poets Not Completely Against War section.

Ron's hit count must be slumping, so he's taken to running pictures of babes as a lead-in.  Actually, I'm always amazed and amused by Ron's range of interests. 

Thanks to Heidi for the link to Jacket's compilation of Barbara Guest's interviews, commentary and poetry.  And thanks to Eduardo for pointing to a few new poetry blogs.

I can't tell if Mairead is serious or not, but I hope this isn't the end of her fascinating blog.

Hah!  Patricia just avoided getting on the Sleeping Kitty List.

Steve's got a new website under construction.  Check out The Shrike in the Garden of Machinery.

It occurs to me that the top 20% of income-earning households pays 70% of the Federal income tax.  That means that their share of the projected cost of the war in Iraq is at least 3 times that of the average family.  Perhaps a practical way of getting a lot of (most likely Republican) households to support the war's end is to put a line on the 1040 that says :  Check this box if you want to dedicate $60,000 of your taxes to the war in Iraq.
 

Posted by jbahr at 09:52 AM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2006

In and Out

It is -2 degrees and the sun hasn't set yet.  This is ridiculous.  I just noted on weather.com that it's 18 in Nashville.  Nashville.  So much for global warming. 

I have switched the channel to the Winter Olympics 6 times this week and 6 times I have gotten:  curling.  I don't know if curling has a much larger fan base than I had expected, or if I'm just always watching at the same time of day.  So far, I have learned a)  the thing they're throwing is called a rock, b) they aren't using brooms, like I always thought, more like one of those Swiffer mops, and c) the woman are really quite graceful as they propel those big handled stones down the alley.  I still have no idea why they are Swiffing or why they're yelling to each other or how you win.  It seems like a form of Paleolithic bocce ball.

Feeding the Fear of the Earth, the 2005 Many Mountains Moving book contest winner by Patrick Lawler is now available.  Having had nothing to do with the contest, I can say without conflict of interest that it's an fascinating book of diverse poetry about the human condition, with titles mostly along the lines of Mickey Mantle Sees Isabel Allende Holding the Head of Herman Hesse as he Dreams of Mother Eve.  MMM is currently finishing up the production process on a the next (huge) issue, in which we catch up on all the submissions accepted over the past two years.  Submission review is currently happening for the issue after that, and we've announced the winners of the poetry and flash fiction contests.

Harper's caught my eye with their lead article, The Case for Impeachment, which I found much less interesting than I had hoped, albeit well-written as ever by Lewis Lapham.  There's a long, compelling, depressing article called AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science and an poem by Anne Carson, Zeus Bits, that was originally in the London Review of Books.  In the excerpt section, they reprint a 1971 FBI report on the decadent, shameful treatment of J. Edgar Hoover by the cast of Laugh-In.  Good lines from Harper's Index:  21 U.S. counties have populations that are more than one-fifth composed of prison inmates, 10 of which are in Texas;  the total projected cost of the Iraq war is $19,600 per household; there is a 46% decrease in U.K. child injuries the weekends when a Harry Potter novel is introduced; someone paid $25,000 for William Shatner's kidney stones.

Posted by jbahr at 07:07 PM | Comments (1)

February 17, 2006

Representational Friday

This is the rack that supports the global operations of Whimsy Speaks, International.  I just put another server in, along with another 800GB of disk space.  That puts me at about 3 terabytes at this point, enough to store all of the text in about a quarter of the 28 million books in the Library of Congress, and for another couple of thousand dollars, I could fit it all in.  Even being in the business, even having advanced degrees in this stuff, even having grown used to Moore's Law, I'm still amazed at what one can do for very little money nowadays.  My 1.5 Mbit DSL line to the Internet backbone costs $29 a month and is just about as fast as the T1 we put in 5 years ago for $600 a month.  What I mean is:  houses, automobiles, dry-cleaning, a dozen eggs, a bottle of good wine, cost 10 to 30 times more than they did 3 decades ago.  What's up with ever-cheaper technology products, that admittedly have created a lot of jobs offshore, but have also sustained hundreds of thousands of near 6-figure jobs in Silicon Valley and its spin-offs?  Why isn't a Ford Mustang $4,500?  I probably know the answer, I just don't want to think about it very much.  In fact, it's probably a Boomer thing, like how we don't get rap.

Robert is riffing through another excellent discursion on poetry and poetics.  I had to laugh at his post quoting an old-school Iowa type (I write, I work, I do with a pencil. I like how the words come out of my head and travel down my arm to that sharp point.).  The sentiment comes close to my excuse that the only thing I know about poetry is, occasionally, how to write it.  I am interested in poetics, and I'm interested in poetry, but I admit that I'm not very interested in the intersection.  When I write poetry, I have a half-assed idea what I'm trying to accomplish:  use enjambment, imagery and adroit juxtaposition to startle the reader into new associations and leave an impression.  Most of my poetry is, like 90% of everything else you read, representational.  That doesn't bother me much, as poets as different as Dean Young and Albert Goldbarth are, too (in the case of Young, it certainly seems as if the words are flowing down his arm and onto the page).  I view a lot of avant garde poetry (whatever that is) as abstract art, in the sense that there is distance between the work presented and the ultimate effect created.  Because a lot of AG/PA poetry seems to be making a metapoetical statement, it provides a lot more enjoyment (or profundity or intellectual stimulation or rapture) to people who care about that sort of thing.  By and large, I don't, I just want to be moved, or at least entertained.  I hope that doesn't make me one of the many barbarians at the gate.

Emily at 6 months.  That's 3 years old in Amherst poet years.

The Google guys are on the cover of Time.  It seems as if you can't pick up a newspaper or magazine anymore without hearing about Google:  they sold out in China, they're sucking Silicon Valley clean of the best software engineers (100 a week), they're giving us satellite shots of our dirty lawn furniture.  In this (very) long article, we see engineers playing with Legos, white boards filled with zany product ideas (e.g., Google Spaceships), employees eating gourmet company meals or getting in-office haircuts or relaxing in the Train Room or the company swimming facility.  It somehow all seems too good to be true (or at least sustainable).  Prospective employees are subjected to quirky tests (what is the first 10-digit prime number found within consecutive digits of e), and tend to hire people without a particular job slot in mind.  What all this has to do with the advertising biz is that all these bright stars are supposed to "bubble up" ideas like GoogleEarth and Gmail that serve as vehicles for the prosaic goal of selling stuff.  It will certainly be fun to see how it all works out.  Other articles and items:  Air Force vet and G.O.P. Congresswoman from New Mexico Heather Wilson is asking tough questions about Administrations secrecy in her role as chairperson of a technical intelligence subcommittee.  The mostly older and conservative voters for the Oscars continue to prefer less technology in animation (e.g., Wallace & Gromit, Corpse Bride).  A group of curling aficionados have formed the District of Columbia Olympic Committee, arguing that if Guam can go to the Olympics under their own flag, why not D.C.?  Time wonders if the wildly popular Barack Obama can actually please everyone.  McCain is by far the largest money-raisers among prospective 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls.  Excellent article on David Hockney, one of the few highly regarded recent painters of representational art.  We worry about giving out our Social Security number to avoid telegraphing individual buying patterns, but a few questions is all it takes:  87% of Americans can be uniquely identified knowing only their gender, zip code, and birth date.

Funny bit by Daily Show's Rob Corddry:   "The Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78- year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Wittington's face."

After months of unseasonably warm weather, it's finally gotten as cold as it usually is in January:  5 degrees right now, and not getting above freezing until Sunday (In Eau Claire, where Junie's weather is, you could probably liquefy nitrogen).   So all of you Californians who have been thinking of selling your $550K condo and moving here and driving up our cost of living can stay where you are. We do need more poets, of course, but y'all are used to hardship and will not, in any event, making the checkout lines at Nordstrom's any longer.

And now for something topical and Completely Different ...  play Cheney's Fury!

 

Posted by jbahr at 08:41 AM | Comments (3)

February 16, 2006

Work With Your Publicists

It's tough to pick among the world's biggest stories and most challenging problems, so The Atlantic ran with a cover story called The New Science of Love, which details the "unprecedented social experiment" of Internet dating sites (which basically work from the premise that opposites totally don't attract).  The Calendar section reminds us that March 6th marks the opening remarks in the death-penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui for claiming to have plans to fly a jumbo jet into the White House, and also failing to mention the intended actions of the 9/11 terrorists to the FBI when he was in custody — actions that the otherwise self-incriminating Moussaoui says he knew nothing about (for this, the death penalty?  Well, he is both black and French).  Demolition Men describes Ariel Sharon and Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi as politicians who attacked their base parties to create popular centrist coalitions, a feat that is difficult to pull off as an outsider (such as John McCain) and not likely to appeal to President Bush.  U.S. government representatives at various levels are cautioning Taiwan against declaring independence around the time of the Chinese-hosted Summer Olympics in 2008, fearing the promised military response from the mainland.  The Congressional Research Service warns against "over-reliance on quantitative indicators" measuring war-on-terror success, noting that two-thirds of their senior leadership could be wiped out with little effect on terrorists' effectiveness.  In The Checkpoint, Ted Conover relates his experiences along the Israel-Palestinian border, and how checkpoints have become "emblems of Israeli arrogance".  T. D. Jakes, founder and pastor of the Ft. Worth The Potter's House Pentecostal church (with 23,000 members) and popular television ministry, may be the most powerful black man in America.  Kenneth Pollack states Seven Steps Toward A Last Chance In Iraq, which advises making protection of the Iraqi people and infrastructure the highest priority, shifting to a defensive military posture, centralizing the U.S. command structure, bringing in the international community, and encouraging the decentralization of power and oil revenues among Iraq's regional governments.  The #2 best-selling nonfiction book in Germany is The End of Fun, which recommends that "Society will be healthier when we all stop laughing and grow up".

I'd always thought that Ron's notions of SOQ mainstream hegemony was a bit overstated.  Then, I read this list of the top ten best-selling poetry books.  Yikes.  Three Mary Olivers, three Billy Collinses, Bukowski, Kooser, Maya Angelou and Brian Turner.

Franz Wright's serious, angst-ridden face graces the cover of Poets & Writers this month, coupled with an article/interview called The Son Also Rises (groan).   Wright says that it's "nothing short of a miracle that he's alive", having overcome mental illness and substance abuse a decade ago to attain his current status as Pulitzer Prize winner and the nation's foremost author of angry letters.  James Cummins and David Lehman have collaborated on a "comic adventure" collection of sestinas called Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man.  Literary MagNet mentions the debut of Fairy Tale Review, dedicated to the aesthetics and motifs of fairy tales.  Fiction writer Lan Samantha Chang, newly appointed director of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, will succeed Frank Conroy, who passed away last year.  How Authors Can Help Themselves lists 8 ways, including Work With Your Publicists (oh, sure), Do Simple Interviews, and Any Ink Is Better Than No Ink. 

Posted by jbahr at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

Blogwalk Wednesday

The final issue, Death of Melic, is up.  Kasey managed to convince Kent Johnson to join the Blogosphere.  It's getting hard to keep up with Jim's blogsite swaps.  Paul Hoover has had a blog for four months, and I didn't know.  Josh echoes my sentiments about Kasey's blog.  Ange recommends James Longenbach's The Resistance to Poetry.  Steve extends the 10% discount on Digerati for another week.  Of all the "images so clichéd, so thickly coated in gardenia-scented schmaltz, we can hardly look in their direction", Danielle has sympathy for the unicorn.  Steve made it into Poetry Daily last week.  Jordan reminds us that everybody looks for names.  Good stuff at Hannah's joint:  Per Aspera Ad Astra.  Caterina on the dangers of oligopolies.  Nada as snow angel.  Kirsten on fear of poop.  TT summarizes what's in the second Fascicle.   Joshua speculates on the life expectancy of rock musicians.  Professor Roy wants to know what movies made you cry.  Kristy is sending free copies of The Archaeologist's Daughter.   Henry contends that "Many well-meaning poets are writing rhetorical texts".  Claudia informs us why Starbucks' latte will soon be worth the $4.  Two things on Paul's desk:  The Best of Liberace and  The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.  Johannes has some audio feeds of Action Books poets, compliments of Matt Shindell.   Great-looking breakfast, Tony.  I'm always heartened when I hear a physician say "I sometimes think people don't really die."  Wendy's still on sabbatical.   HarperCollins will be publishing David's first novel, Bastards of Young. 

Worth's lead article is on Hurricane Katrina and the redistribution of wealth that will take place by the inevitable increases in taxes (actually, non-renewal of Bush's tax cuts) for the affluent (horrors!).  The Republican Chairman of the House Resources Committee and the executive director of the Sierra Club give opposing views of the Threatened and Endangered Recovery Act of 2005 that replaces the much tougher Endangered Species Act.  A very interesting article about the steps that Saudi Arabia is taking to build up their petrochemical business, so that they may in the future sell plastics, fertilizers and other high-margin petroleum-derived products instead of just oil.  This month's alternative investment is meteorites.  Interesting specimens bring from $5,000 to $20,000, significantly down from prices a decade ago, due to large-scale prospecting in the Sahara by the locals.  There's all the same high-end advertising:  high-end stereo equipment, luxury vacation homes,  yachts and watches.

I managed to show up twice in the list of donors to the Academy of American Poets, in their annual report, in one case only a few lines above Mary Jo Bang.   The group of chancellors, who nominate and vote for the Academy's awards, has been joined by C.K. Williams, Susan Stewart and Robert Pinsky.  And as for awards, the big one (The Wallace Stevens Award, $100K) went to Gerald Stern, with lesser (but still substantial) honors going to Claudia Rankine, Anne Winters, Mary Rose O'Reilley (joining bloggers Tony Tost and Joshua Clover as this year's Whitman winner), and Barbara Jane Reyes (Laughlin second-book prize).

This just in the inbox from Fran Santiago / BA Education / Admissions Office (no university name mentioned):  It has come to our attention that you may now qualify for a diploma from a prestigious non-accredited university based on your present knowlegde [sic] and/or professional experience.  If you qualify, no required tests, classes, books or examinations are required.  Just think about all those pesky exams I could have avoided.

Tomorrow:  BizWeek and Pleiades.  Also, The Atlantic, even though those rats have discontinued the Puzzler by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon from their print issue (it's still online).

Thanks to Reb for noting that Kirsten's blog has been hijacked.

Posted by jbahr at 02:03 PM | Comments (2)

February 14, 2006

Just In Time Tuesday

There's been lot of talk on the blogroll about Poetry's plans for their millions, including this delightful meme proposed by Jordan, and Joshua's suggestions.  Well, it turns out that the Bush administration has spent $1.6 billion in the last 2 years on what amounts to propaganda for their various policies and proposals, which amounts to about $16 per household.  I'm thinking they could have just sent everybody a year's subscription to their favorite literary journal, but there's about as much chance of that as there is law enforcement taking Cheney's guns away from him.  News Flash:  Some of the birdshot that "peppered" Cheney's hunting partner apparently moved to his heart and he suffered a "minor heart attack" (I can't wait for Seth's take on this one).  Iraq, Libby, Delay, Katrina, Cunningham, Abramoff, NSA revelations, and now this.  If Clinton had had this much baggage, they wouldn't have impeached him, they'd have lynched him.

As expected, the new jubilat was eclectic, with a lot of work I'd probably refer to as mildly strange.   A number of the poets struck me as one degree from mainstream, a sort of Billy Collins played by Steve Buscemi, to wit:   Dolly Gibson's Are We There Yet?:  "You only have to make her one grilled cheese / in the suffocating heat of summer / while still wearing your wet swim trunks / to know what it's like to truly be in love", and Rick Snyder's Poem Beginning with My Beard:  "It hurts me more than it hurts you. / I feel it grow as the face shrinks.  / I'm sorry, Mikhail Bakhtin, / this is not a novel way", and Suzanne Buffam's In Which I Am Attacked: "I thought it was Spring / and went out without my hat, without / my hatchet.  Wrong again.  It was Fall / and the swans were eyeing me coldly", and Max Winter's On The Rails:  "It was on the faster train / on Tuesday, in the middle of the morning, / when I should have been working, / that two men began to talk to each other".  So much for in media res.   There's a fair amount of gimmickry, as well, including poems in word columns, poems that wander, list poems that read like recipes, poems like Sean Thomas Dougherty's All You Ask For Is Longing:  "Y not that year empty with strangers.  Y not the silence of wanting. / Y not when we laughed with rain with something, lounging high, touching / your bare shoulders, when I was born".  Rae Armantrout shows up with four multipart poems of short stanzas, even shorter lines, some interesting imagery, and probably a much deeper meaning than I was able to get my head around, this from Results:  "Click here to vote / on who's ripe / for a makeover // or takeover // in this series pilot // Votes are registered / at the server / and sent back // as results".  Marta L. Werner contributes a scholarly and surprisingly interesting essay called Emily Dickinson's Futures:  Enjambment Degree Zero.  A half dozen of the pieces are translations from French or German, including the unusual Expenses for Dear Fritz Which Are Not To Be Deducted (From His Inheritance) As Long As He Remains Obedient, translated by Jahanna Christina Hölderlin, which lists how many florins for this and that:  "Tuition for 2 years  2fl. 4 x / ... / To the famuls  1 fl.  /  ...Sent on Jan. 19, 1785  2 fl." and so on.  I like Mark McMorris, and he draws me in with from Letters to Michael:  "The time of light comes back, the vapor / from water that makes the throne / comes after the light, and the book is empty until it is not a book at all / but a garden of exquisite statues."    In fact, I rather liked the whole of jubilat, with its wacky juxtaposition of prose poems and laundry lists, narrative and avant garde. 

More tomorrow.  I have to get this posted to answer the critics who rightly state that I have been a lackadaisical blogger.

Posted by jbahr at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2006

Bad Whimsy!

Oh, I know.  I almost put myself on my Sleeping Kitty List.

I am famously impatient and easily bored, which accounts for the channel hopping I do as I walk along on a motorized contraption in front of my television (Junie, by contrast, actually looks forward to peaceful introspection while on the treadmill).  People are always saying that there's nothing to watch on the 100+ channels that everyone seems to be subscribed to nowadays, but I find that I can be mesmerized by almost everything I tune to:  Kramer vs. Kramer; bowling tournaments from 1986; Whose Line Is It, Anyway; Spongebob Squarepants; Mythbusters;  old war movies (The Fighting Seebees), old mystery movies (Charade), old westerns (Comanche Station), old samurai movies (The Blind Swordsman); That's So Raven; Outer Limits.  There are few new shows on at 6:30 in the morning, but that's the reason I've discovered The Wiggles and The Doodlebops, not to mention The 700 Club.  That Pat Robertson seems to have an opinion about everything.  When he's not calling for the assassination of foreign leaders, he's commenting on diet plans ("you have to find your body's set point"), telling us which Christian pop artists we should listen to, and instructing us on how to avoid sinful behavior.  Speaking of which, I watched the 2002 World Series of Poker last night, and it was like watching a black-and-white sitcom from the 50's:  there was no "pocket-cam", I didn't recognize anybody but the perennially irascible Phil Hellmuth, and the winner only made $2 million (next year, the winner takes home $10 million). 

There are lots of things I don't understand, like why lamps cost so much, and why they put expiration dates on pickles.  Another phenomenon that bewilders me is the widely different pricing for picture frames.  I visited two shops yesterday to look at frames for a 3' x 4' oil painting:  the young lady at the first shop looked me in the eye and quoted $500 for a nice frame, "after their advertised 50% discount";  the second shop had the identical frame for $225.  I noted the manufacturer and found it on the Internet for $122.  So much for the leveling power of free enterprise, and take that, Milton Friedman. 

I've seen and heard a lot from the various media about how the U.S. is losing its technological edge.  Part of the chatter links our "science decline" to the current administration's 15th century views on everything from the ecology to physics, and part of the problem seems to be that the rest of the world is growing up.  Time's cover article is "Is America Flunking Science", for example.  One article notes that the Union of Concerned Scientists (with its 49 Nobel Laureates) is, well, concerned about the "pervasive and systemic" intrusion of political objectives into scientific policy.  Another article highlights the flight of noted scientists to foreign research sites, and that both government and industry in the U.S. have largely abandoned the kind of basic research that produced Teflon, Scotchgard, Krazy Glue, and the Internet.  Other pieces include: All Democrats and a minority of Republicans are demanding information on the domestic spying program, and threatening a constitutional amendment to rein in Executive Branch powers, in response to the administration's claim that "the pursuit of national security cannot be constrained by any laws passed by Congress."  Prior to Bush announcing the largest defense budget since the cold war, the Pentagon was giving PowerPoint presentations to policy groups warning that "the failure to stop [Al Qaeda] would have the same consequences ... as appeasing the Nazis".  Four of the five Oscar nominees for best picture cost less than $15 million to make (a pittance by Hollywood standards).   ExxonMobile's $36 billion in annual profit is the largest in history (and exceeds the GDP of Luxembourg, Cuba and Libya).  Federated will be converting Marshall Fields, Filene's, Foley's and Famous-Barr stores to their trademark Macy's store brand.   The closure of Gordon Clark's surfboard core business (they produce 80% of them) seriously disrupted surfboard supplies and doubled prices.  "Controversial" psychologist Steven Hayes says that happiness isn't normal, embrace your pain (that should be easy for us poets).  Kelly Clarkson has shed her "Idol" persona, and Harrison Ford makes another boring picture where his family is held hostage.

I'm going through one of my periodic hand-wringing sessions, trying to decide what anti-virus software to use, and which systems to put it on.  Since I have over 20 Windows machines (which doesn't include another half-dozen Linux and Solaris systems), it can get pricey to outfit all of them.  Maybe I can just protect the servers and assume that the workstations won't catch anything nasty?  Anyway, I've tried just about all of them at one time or another — McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, Bit Defender, Panda  — and none of the companies do a very good job of helping you install and manage anti-virus software from one place for all your systems (Symantec, in particular, is a nightmare).  I was just trying out Sophos, an anti-virus product from the UK, when I remembered that my poet buddy Jon worked for an anti-malware company that was recently acquired by Microsoft.  Poking around the Internet, I found what I expected:  Microsoft has announced that it will release anti-virus and anti-spyware software Real Soon Now.   The Beta version of their anti-spyware software is available from Microsoft now, so I installed and ran it.  It did a pretty slick job of detecting my spyware, knowing just what each offender was and which company makes it, and recommending action (remove, quarantine, ignore). 

While I'm waiting for Microsoft to release their antivirus product, I might help myself out by reducing the number of machines in my home office.  I've used VMWare in the past, but now I'm trying Microsoft Virtual PC.  So far, it's easy to install and seems to "just work".  With MVPC, you can essentially create a new computer that lives inside a large window on your desktop.  Initially, this window (and the underlying virtual computer) is black (or off), but you can boot it (by virtually turning it on) and load any one of 600 operating systems just like you would with a real machine via a CD or DVD.  On one machine here in the office, we have Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, and 6 flavors of Linux running.  I don't know what other practical uses MVPC affords to non-professionals, but it's a great way to avoid having lots of removable disk drives (or worse, separate machines) for each operating system that you need to test software against. 

Wired leads off with "The Lego Army Wants You", which details how obsessed fans are contributing ideas that take shape as new robotic toys.  Honda has an inexplicable ad with a zebra in a car frame.  The London Aquarium debuted three robotic carp as a new attraction.  Malcolm Gladwell got a million bucks for the rights to make Blink into a movie, but nobody can figure out how you'd do that.  They just found out that an African butterfly has wing structures that are virtually identical to the latest high-efficiency LEDs (you can thank evolution or The Almighty, according to your POV).  A Silicon Valley firm is selling miniature telescopes that are inserted into the eye to overcome macular degeneration.  The Europeans have almost completed the world's largest particle accelerator in hopes of detecting the Higgs boson AKA The God Particle.  The Top 10 Geek Fests include LDRS (Large Dangerous Rocket Ships) and World Champion Punkin Chunkin (the record pumpkin flight is now over a mile).  Online donation for disaster relief has grown steadily, totaling $3 billion for 2005.  The Sony Vaio XL2 Media Center has a jukebox handler for 200 DVDs.  For about $10 a month, you can get dozens of channels on your cell phone from Sprint TV, Verizon VCast, GoTV or MobiTV.   A New York production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler will have over half the leading roles played by robots.  Venture capitalists are beginning to look at Dot-Com era business plans, now that four major factors are no longer obstacles (broadband access, consumer buy-in, search technology, Web advertising).  Amateur spotters regularly track secret U.S. spy satellites with sophisticated tools like binoculars and stopwatches.   General Motors has a chop shop in Michigan where they tear apart Lexuses, VWs, Chryslers and Hondas to see how they're made. 

Tomorrow:  Notes on the new Pleiades and jubilat.

Posted by jbahr at 11:50 AM | Comments (2)

February 03, 2006

Ice Bats

Anybody who actually lives in Austin probably has a well-defined idea of what the town is about, but if you visit for only a couple of days, I think you appreciate the iconoclastic strangeness of the place more strongly than if you reside there (the same is true, of course, for Boulder and countless other places).  Austin feels only a little to the right of Boulder, and about the size of, say, Colorado Springs, but it's inexplicably bigger, maybe 700,000 people.  It's the state capital, but even so, it doesn't feel a lot bigger than San Jose, which weighs in at 500,000.  The semi-official motto for the town (it's even on a sign at the airport) is "Keep Austin Weird", which is certainly a good start.  Still, there's that Texas mythological patina to everything.  You stop at a KwikStop gas station and all 40 of the ballcaps on sale have something to do with Texas.  Even in Austin there are plaques, flyers, and pamphlets that remind you that the King Ranch is bigger than Rhode Island, that Texas was the only state admitted to the Union by means of a treaty between two sovereign nations, and that "The first word spoken from the moon on July 20, 1969 was Houston".

I worked until late-ish yesterday at one of the many high-tech companies that fuels Austin's upscale economy and couldn't get a flight out until this afternoon, which left me plenty of time to walk down 6th Street, cruise up to look at the capitol, and generally drive around and stop at interesting places.  All the time, I was listening to the Republic Broadcast Network, which is roughly equivalent to the Patriot Radio Network that I listen to here in Colorado:  far-right antiglobalists decry the rise of the New World Order and have sponsors selling gold, survivalist-oriented water and air filtration systems, and vaguely Christian herbal remedies.  The difference with RBN is that they also have 2 or 3 program hosts who remind us that because of some irregularity or other in the 19th century, Texas is still actually a Republic and not a part of the USA.  Like the Patriot Radio folks, RBN folks uniformly hate the Bush Administration, the Patriot Act and most of the scoundrels in Congress, proving again how close the far right is to the far left on most issues.

I'd already read the motel "book" that outlines the amenities that Austin has to offer.  Austin appears to be incapable of taking itself seriously, which is a refreshing difference with Boulder.  They have a professional hockey team called the Ice Bats.  They have stores called Lambs-E-Divey ("outfits the best-dressed children"), Groovy Dog Bakery, Feats of Clay (offering affordable stoneware), Mud Puppies Self-Service DogWash, Juan in a Million Tex-Mex restaurant, Tear of Joy Hot Sauce Shop -- all alongside the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, Guided City Segway Tours.  They also have the largest Whole Foods market on earth (it was founded in Austin) with a 25,000 square foot roof garden and 12 in-store restaurants.  I did my shopping at the local H-E-B supermarket that seem to be a cross between Wild Oats and Safeway, where I bought freshly made TexMex tortillas, hot off the machine, and a nice bottle of Guigal Côtes du Rhône.  In fact, even the 7-11's sell wine and beer, which confuses my recollection of how dry Texas was if you didn't join a private club (there's a fast-food place at the airport that has cookies, sausage and beer).  Yeah, definitely a good place for an AWP. 

It's interesting to consider that half of the people on my blogroll will be watching the Sunday Extravaganza from noon to night and the rest don't even know that this is Super Sunday. 

I finished P.D. James' Lighthouse, which was pretty solid, and I realized that I should give Baroness James a little slack, as she's writing this fine mystery novel at the age of 85.  I started Ian McEwan's Atonement, but it's slow going.  I fear I might just not actually be a literary guy.  This is not like reading Gravity's Rainbow, that for sure, or for that matter, Moby Dick.  I took a break by starting Gregory Maguire's Wicked on the flight home, which is a lot more fun.  I'll catch up on mail and see what my blog buddies are doing and get back to you. 

My hit count has doubled since I appeared on Poetry Daily.  I find this a rather strange phenomenon, head-shaking silly.  I am reminded of the winners of the World Poker Series who intone in their advertising for PokerStars.net, "same guy, nicer watch". 

Posted by jbahr at 07:56 PM | Comments (6)

February 01, 2006

KM

I just caught up on reading by blogroll. I am struck again by level-headed eloquence of Kasey Mohammad. I think that if I were allotted only one other blog to read, it would be his.

Austin: The map is not the territory. For example. I drove back and forth on Route 71 AKA Highway 290, which at the point where I spotted and blew by my motel, was a 6-lane freeway elevated above the various Home Depots, Outbacks, and Catfish Parlours on the periphery like a giant monorail in a Texan Disneyland. The address of the Holiday Inn was 4298 Highway 290, which is a little like having an address on the San Diego Freeway. The motel was actually on something like a service road, but they don't call them service roads here, and the 3 exits that I took attempting to actually get to the motel I could see eventually threatened to send me to San Antonio, and then, worse, to Waco. As you can see, I did actually get here, but only after calling the motel front desk and threatening to drive myself and this Avis pickup truck they gave me off a bridge. They must know how ungodly difficult it is to navigate in what is, after all, a relatively small city, as the front desk person immediately gave me a hand-drawn map indicating how to get to local establishments and (more importantly) how to get back, which included the plea that I DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT getting back on 290, just take the side road to West Gate, avoid the left lane, take a left and wander back until I see their sign. And I thought DC was a tough place to get around.

Posted by jbahr at 09:12 PM | Comments (2)