Bembo's Zoo!

(Thanks to J. Bushnell's Raccoon for the link.) Cubicle warning: with sound.

January reads

Enjoyed all of these. Niedecker is really fascinating. I'd only read her in drips & drabs before. I think Dan suggested he figured she'd be in my top five femmetheon & since spending lots of time with her short poems, I'm almost getting the feeling that I anticipated her influence while writing Down Spooky (if that makes sense at all). Murakami's new to my favorite novelist list and I'm "saving" the new one to make the love last. Am working on a review of the UDP chaps, so more about those later. Particularly recommend Guess Can Gallop and The Babies; each exudes its own fresh energy. Verbal pops absolutely crackle in GCG & a Grimm's-tales feeling spooks up SOMark's narrative sequence with hypnotic repetitive loops. The three collections I didn't quite get to stay in the stack for Feb.



Note: After the end of December, I moved the December reading list to the last day of the month, so each month's READS can viewed at the top of each archived month, going forward. If yer interested.

Do You Eat The Spooky Last?

This new toy is fun. (Thanks to Greg at Grapez for the link.)



Others:



I'm Stuck on Spooky, 'Cause Spooky's Stuck on Me.

Give That Man a Spooky.

Simple, Impartial Spooky.

Bookmarked these photos a while back

But forgot to show them to you. (By Carl Corey.)

Note to self:

There are a lot of things--real things--that make me angry, jealous, spiteful, catty, bitchy, rude, dismissive, anxious, depressed, revolted, feel helpless, feel pity, feel sorrow, itch to revolt, crave revenge, wish for religion.



But poetry is not one of those things. I will not let poetry be one of those things.

Finally catching up with these essays...

over at the Academy of American Poets site. Like this one by Stephen Burt on Frank O'Hara. That conspiratorially friendly open style was a revelation to me when I started reading O'Hara. That's exactly why I found him so appealing, even though (don't freak Dan), I wasn't really drawn to confessional poets like Lowell. The TMI poets. They made me uncomfortable. And the girls in my undergrad classes who wrote urgently about their periods or oddly dispassionately about the loss of their viginity made me uncomfortable. Frank I wanna call up and invite to the Four-Faced Liar. Yes, please do tell me everything, Frank. Then let's write some poems.



And then at the end, in the last line, Burt throws in Albert Goldbarth. Even though I had some minor complaints about Pieces of Payne I really dig Goldbarth. And you know, he also reads the Fortean Times. Right on. AND he's not above singing for KPF.

More like it

Ok, sent out two packets and three queries yesterday. Should be able to get a few more things out there today.



Also, some of the books I've ordered to begin researching the new project have arrived. That's right kids: Miss Frequentist Frivolist is embarking on a long poem, a long historical poem. Wish me luck. February's reading list will likely give clues.



SOFT SKULL POETRY STATUS REPORT: Totally signed off on Jerome Sala's Look Slimmer Instantly! & Maggie Nelson's Jane, just waiting for the books to arrive! CAConrad is reviewing his edits on Deviant Propulsion and then we'll go to design. Wait'll you read that one! Ron Palmer's Logicalogics is next and also stellar. I just wish Ron came with the book so he could perform them all in your living room. Then Jen Knox's A Gringo Like Me & Danielle Pafunda's Pretty Young Thing, two rockstar ladies for sure. We've also got a book of hilarious sestinas by Jim Cummins & David Lehman with a forword by Denise Duhamel and guest appearances by Beth Ann Fennelly & William Wadsworth--Jim & Dave Defeat the Masked Man. Then there's a SUPER collaboration anthology, Saints of Hysteria, coedited by Denise, David Trinidad & Maureen Seaton. Oh, and Clayton Eshleman's translation anthology is March too. (That one's deep-image Chris Connelly's baby.) SSP 2005 poetry totally rocks, dudes. And we're also doing a hands-on handbook with Gary Mex Glazner, How to Make a Living as a Poet. (I'm not working on that one either.) We made him a blog. He should be online over there soon.



Finally feeling better, too. Thank goodness.