AS/IS 2

the interview of Stephen Paul Miller by Thomas Fink at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

   "A Pæan for Pessoa"

Is it over yet, Fernando?
Your statue shrugs still waiting at your · table on the square
If it's you that waits, Fernando,
And not another effigy of absence you declare
As the pigeons gravely bob
And the first few lamps · of evening griffins throb.

Nothing ever ends, Fernando,
Though attention flags and humans have to · give it up for lost
You were not afraid, Fernando,
Yourself to scatter like the crumbs · the lazy tourists tossed
This is not a night of masks
But a day of tanks and buzzards circling · slowly down to roost.

There was something in the stars you saw
You could not draw, Fernando:
Crazy patterns to the way we turn
Your eyes discern, Fernando
Even as you float away
And try to say
If I had a name and origin
I'd render them, Fernando.

Now the Internet, Fernando,
Has come along to rescue us · who never could before
Leave our words like you, Fernando,
Bronzed a thousand ways and read · like driftwood on the shore
I can hear your voice in each
Perverse soliloquy · and parody of speech.

There was something in the stars you saw
You could not draw, Fernando:
Crazy patterns to the way we turn
Your eyes discern, Fernando
Even as you float away
And try to say
If I had a name and origin
I'd render them, Fernando;
But I have no name or origin
To render now, Fernando.

10 26 05

tentacles

deep inside where you bleed
the tentacles choke your being
and you've lost the mystery
of unflinching belief

belief in love
came crumbling down
you will of faith eroded
the way it is
the lust of the day
keeping you satiated
so I scream with a whisper
my words mean heresy
I won't leave again in september
though I have nothing
just silence and madness

as I see
the tentacles
suffocates you
where you bleed
deep inside your being.

copyright(c)2000 Billy Jno Hope

with K. Silem Mohammad at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

Via Abu-Lughod:

The Ghinnawa is a 15 syllable couplet divided into units: 1234/56789.

But it is unspooled thus: 78/78/789/78/6789/78/78/6789/78/78/781/1234/78/78/56/56789 sixteen lines).

An example given in the book:
    'Tears increased, oh Lord
    the beloved came to mind in the time of sadness'

which unspools into:

in the time
in the time
in the time of sadness
in the time
beloved in the time of sadness
in the time
in the time
beloved in the time of sadness
in the time
in the time
in the time tears
tears increased oh Lord
in the time
in the time
beloved came to mind
the beloved came to mind in the time of sadness

One of mine is here.


m.

"...we are continually assaulted by unending cycles of woes and degradation. Politics has been downgraded to war in its very lowest form, and we cannot talk of the political field without wincing with disgust. The political field has become a veritable theatre of disaster and cannot be spoken of without embarrassment...In a situation where a long established tribal culture is under assault from colonialism, new beings, discourses and commodities emerge from the transitional phase. And this transitional phase, with all its swift and sudden cultural reversals and rapid upturning of established tables of values, creates room for the most pronounced kind of opportunism, a situation where anything goes."

is up at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

Check out my Interview with Crag Hill.

my most recent poem was an e-lipogram, double sestina in "rime" (number-rhyme).
instead of twelve stanzas of twelve lines each, i divided it into nine poems of sixteen, in 8-syllable lines & four-line stanzas.

(i also made one of the sub-poems a secret ghazal.)

m.

Fly in a Zeppelin.

m.

make a cento from a poet you like

make a cento from a poet you don't like

m.

The Wiki

http://www.lewislacook.com/wiki/

Collective Writing

borrow someone else's blogroll for a week.
 
better still, borrow their poetic idols.
 
we will not be remembered for our good manners.
 
m.
 

Seeing as this group weblog has, ahem, stalled somewhat, I've been think of some ways of making it more interesting. Now that I have a new job, with far fewer hours and more free time, I've been thinking of someways to liven this weblog up a bit now that I have the time to do so.

With the advent of audioblogging, I see no reason that we could not regularily conduct short "mini interviews". You have five minutes to record a post - so what if someone contacted, say, Louise Glück and did a five minute interview with her to be posted on the weblog? You could do a three-way conference call.

I'm also considering a radical makeover of the template, so anyone with ideas please contact me.

Anyone who has any ideas on how they think that this weblog might be made more relevant and interesting to a larger number of people, please let me know.

Must include the word 'vapid.'

After reading the inept journalism about the inane writing referred to on Silliman's blog, a few thoughts:

• People's endless capacity to lump things together that don't belong together. For example, just try calling an Irishman an Englishman. They nearly come from the same part of the world, don't they? The same way people lump "free verse", or for that matter, Silliman's "School of Quietude", together. The map is not the territory. What sort of taxonomy lumps the writings of Lyn Hejinian together with that of Carla Harryman? There is no such thing as free verse - not because "no verse is truly free" but simply because it is a convenient, and often incorrect, label.

  
  

• Free verse did begin in the fifties... of the last century, with the publication of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855. We are still trying to play catch up with Whitman.

  
  

• If "Idle keyhole / Terminal door / Tilted table / Cast from shore" is offered as an example of the relevance of New Formalism, I'm not quite certain what battle has been "won". This is scarcely better than Ginsberg's latter-day doggerel, to my ear.

  
  

• "the hard battle... has always been and will always be to write magnificently," Thank you Mr. Gioia. Clearly the NEA is in good hands with wisdom such as this.

Last quarter I submitted some stuff to the undergraduate literary magazine at this campus. I figured it was one of those 'You wrote it? It gets in' type of deals and, unsurprisingly, two out of the three pieces I submitted were published. Yesterday I got an email from this guy asking if I would like to come in and read some of my work and be interviewed.

So.. I will be reading on the radio tomorrow.

eeeeeeeeee!

On the one hand I'm flattered that he liked my work, but on the other I'm petrified. Is he kidding?? I've never really published outside the web; I'm not a writer. I just.. write, for no one in particular and with no hope of ever getting anything out of it.

All I know is I will be mentioning As/Is. I will be mentioning Malcolm. I will be mentioning Tom. I will be mentioning Mark. I will be mentioning Sheila, because I've always been faintly in awe of her work. I will be mentioning just how long-running my website is.

In other words, humiliating myself on the radio.

As/Is 2... 2?

1) What sort of ideal anthology can you envision, if budget & resources were unlimited?

2) Is there anything that is neither over- nor under-rated, but is rated exactly as it should be?

3) In what ways can you re-imagine the act of canon formation?

4) Describe your ideal day job & how it would interact, or interfere, with your writing activities.

1) What inspires you to write poetry in both the short- and long-term? In other words: what gets you started, and what keeps you going?

I keep going because it's what I do.

Honestly, that's all there is to it. I'm an underconfident sort of girl, but I've written my whole life. I used to write short stories and so on but I have no head for fiction. Poetry is the way I make sense of the world. It's where everything crystallizes.

As for inspiration... God, it could be anything. I'm a foolish 21 year old college student and I write like that. Boys, girls, parties, booze, music, term papers, loneliness, squirrels, scrub jays, shoes, t-shirts, sorority girls, shows, Australia, California, the tree outside my window, the excruciating slowness of time, how difficult it is to get out of bed, dreams, pine trees... everything. Sometimes life seems so full I can hardly stand it. Otherwise it feels echoingly empty. The usual.

2) Is poetry the primary genre that you work within? If so, why? If not, why?

Yes, but in terms of volume I write far more research papers than poetry. It's the primary genre I work within because I feel most confident there. I'm trying to push myself to write fiction but I've yet to find my, I don't know, groove? Caught the correct train of thought?

I also take photographs. Photography is different. Photography is about being unafraid to press the shutter button. When I'm behind the camera I fall in love with light. When I write I fall in love with space.

3) Do you believe that a poet has any special sort of social responsibility?

Yes, but no more than anyone else. I'm a feminist and sometimes this imbues my work. I can't help but think about gender and sexuality and the way our society works. Sometimes poetry is the best way to express this.

4) What does writing poetry do for you? Why does poetry matter?

Like I said before, poetry is how I make sense of the world. When I'm really going what I write seems realer than anything else. Poetry bears witness to my life.