david antin (INTRODUCTION/CONCLUSION)

A reflection on English 288 & this final project.

after david antin:

david antin wrote a really long poem on a private occasion in a public place and i really think that this class has been like that for me i mean, i feel like the majority of my wreading posts were about how these poets related to my life as opposed to the poetics and theory of it feeling versus thinking, you could call it but in any case it was really exciting at first then, in the middle, starting with ashbery i think i started to really struggle i just didn't "get it" i remember how myles didn't get creeley and i loved creeley so naturally and was like "what is there not to get" but after ashbery and grenier i didn't "get it" either and i started to get frustrated but i managed to get myself out of the rut at the end and definitely so with this project my general life philosophy has been that when you really get to know someone/something you can't help but love them during the class i felt like i just vaguely liked the poets and strongly resisted some of the others (like i was so angry at baraka at first but then after class i liked him a bit better and then after writing a poem after him i could understand what it was like to write an angry poem too and how that doesn't make me a bad racist person just because i am angry)

during this final blog poetry project i seriously re-read all of the poets and i was at home or in china so there were no distractions of penn during the semester i felt like it was hard to concentrate just because i felt like penn kind of kills the poetic, human self and replaces it with evil wharton genes (maybe i need to hang out at kwh more but i feel like it's so hard to really get in with the crowd there) but anyways, i really focused and regained some of that soul and then learned to love every single poet because like i said when you really get to "know" someone you can't help but love them just because they are human and so am i, you know? there is that thing in common and you can't help but fall in love all you need is the tiniest bit of spark and i couldn't help but admire some of the poets that i had really disliked before like i didn't like rothenberg i guess because i'm sensitive and i thought he was just too damn graphic now i still think he's really graphic which is weird because he is old and old people are conservative but now i admire him there is a newfound respect that came from me struggling to imitate him and i didn't do all the poets in the end i only chose fifteen because i wanted to do ones that would be the most meaningful to me learning so i chose both poets that i loved and poets that i had hated after re-reading all the wreading posts and poems and this is the end product i hope you like it i am really unsure about my own poetry especially since it's being so closely linked to these amazing people but like antin said poetry is a private occasion in a public place these are private poems here in a public place the end

ted berrigan

after ted berrigan:

dear andrew, good morning

it is 14 : 26.

two couples, uneasy besides

for sport we speculate on

whether or not

they are married

Across the world my friends

are together. they call it a reunion

but I am not there, and I am far from home.

My lens I have so many heavy

in my bag. How red the earth is!

A woman came up to me with laminated

photographs of foolish tourists in

garish costumes. No, I do not want to buy

14 : 29 we are leaving Kunming

the earth is red in Kunming

small figures in green, there are

toys dedicated

Love, love is on the tip of my

tongue.

I'll never talk again.

amiri baraka

after baraka

From the rooftops hefty bunches of bananas

hang in long threads of yellow, beneath a red sun.

The tunnels are endless. Roundfaced hotel girls ask me how much

school is a year. Ignorance is prevalent with Poverty. I am

ignorant too in my own way. There is no logic. Where were you

born? And to whom? The words I recognize are "shi jie." They mean

world. There is only one but you are in the saddest third. Her eyes are

big and she speaks softly. Unable.

I heard you killed yourself at your own party.

I was awake. I was out. I could have been there, but I wasn't.

I have not wanted to die for a long time. But now I must choose

between poetry and sanity. Lust, and reason.

I hold back the dam for if it spills I will be flooded and

all will be lost. But my poetry will be excellent, then.

Will there be new flowers after the rain, or will the desert

be drier than ever before? At McDonald's we order the

McGangbang, because it is the best deal. Don't even blink.

The tunnels are endless.

allen ginsberg

after allen ginsberg

Mother, the red dust everywhere

on sliced cliffs and terraced plateaus

white pain on bony brown trees

I hold my hand out, again

for more

You called this home, I call this wilderness third-world,

as if there were many worlds and we didn't all live

on one earth. You guessed that she was not from here

because her cheeks were rosy. Small walls rise

up slowly and divide until there are so many

pieces that you can't hold any of them

in your hand or in your heart.

Mother, I am not, I am not, I am not

from here. Mao is dead and the playing cards

still have his pictures and I cannot look

at his golden statue of his horrible image

It is sunny upon the brown fields and when

i was young -- one time I came to you

crying with a thumb sliced open by

daddy's razor and you scolded me

until I feel in desperation and utter

loneliness.

Mao is long gone. I was born free maybe.

Maybe none of us are free. But I know for sure

that I am not starving.

Mother, I see your double chin as you

sit in the front of the bus with

dark glasses and I contemplate

the obesity of prosperity.

keith & rosmarie waldrop

after keith waldrop:

The pain. In a twisted

neck. Even the slave of

a warm burning takes

time. It is warm tingle.

You don’t look thirty-four.

I need to look in your

mouth. Where does the truth

lie? Healthy, you are, cough

don't worry i won't hurt

you. Sometimes it can be

small and close.

There is some redness.

I can see it. Oh, yeah.

The miniature Christmas

tree next to a tropical parrot.

Go, play for a while as the buzz

drills or the drill buzzes I'm not

quite sure which anymore.

There is a mask and I

can only see your dark eyes.

Perhaps these lives are too short I am

thinking of how text translates into type.

One older brother - is he in the archives?

Cuaderno, the last name sounds

familiar. You are so small as you play

beside me and the pieces interlock between

your chubby child fingers.

She remembers him, ten years ago

he sat in this chair and kicked and

screamed. She remembers.

after rosmarie waldrop:

1. to explore the nature of rain

To explore the nature of rain behind dark eyelids I see the flash flood and the drops of wetness, rub them between my fingers. All of a sudden the sun abandoned the earth. We were heavily drenched in sky's outpourings. Lately the sky brought crystal flakes forth which landed upon the glass and for the first time I found out what a snowflake was and it does not look like paper cutouts of childhood. All things decompose, melt, wither. No matter how beautiful. In fact, beauty is even more fleeting than ugliness. Its decay, even more atrocious and devastating in wonder. The streets are on fire with shimmer as I walk home and I wonder why all things must die.

2. the body is useful.

The body is useful. When I return to golden lands it soaks the sun and when I am in grey ones it whimpers and begs for mercy and I know I am not home. I am drinking a bottle of orange juice above the ocean and envisioning you between me. Shameful sin biological but I can't help it. There is so much noise. To be loud does not mean truth. I tried to hold the pointilles of sun between our interlaced fingers. Instead I dug my teeth into your soft pink flesh. Love, but what is? My heart once burst at the seams but now it quivers and sits timidly afraid. I look for differences in the redness of cheeks and make my judgments from there.

robert grenier

sunday evening

I wake up very suddenly

started. it is five p.m. to

greatest dismay. the

curtains drawn

afternoon sun already

waning.

what was last night

a blur of sprayed champagne

in subzero weather

my fingers were numb

as i turned the bottle upside

your small head. it ran down

your hood and all over.

it was frigid.

the police came only to laugh

and tell us, "carry on."

to live is most vivid

nocturnal, to waken

as the sun sets with

blurry memories to

begin yet another drunken

stupor in which I am summoned

as my young ones hold my hand

and look up at me with bright

red faces and tell me

i am their everything

bob perelman

a narrative experiment:

speeches to a city no larger than the reach of a single voice

One says: My method involves waking up every morning and slamming the fridge door after pulling out the pb & j for breakfast. The rain outside is causing my impervious bucket to overflow in frustration at the gloom in a very real way. I miss the ocean, the feeling that descends on my soul to enter a particular wave, in a particular place. And sometimes I bring my camera JD, adjust it so that the aperture admits exactly enough water to fill the interior, to paint the sensor with light. I can see this bucket as sentence, my frustration as words on a page, with the handle, handle as readership. I no longer want to be chained to the benches of the galley, stuck in the Phillies dugout as hope rises once again tonight only to be possibly crushed by the indomitable beasts that are the Yankees. By my earlier terminological conquests, I have noted your terminological inexactitudes - actually, I am no Churchill and you are just straight up lying. Of the formerly merely wet ocean I am soaked, now charted, drawn & quartered.

The other says: how are you always managing? How are you always getting by? I have no method, I say. I wander alone, I merely undress in the powerful moonlight. Surely this is an act of delighting the wretched few, with my only audience as the birds who cover their heads with wings in the night, eyes clenched shut waiting for daybreak. As they fall from the branches sometimes they are above the water; they fall and plunge in and drown each time.