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.

larry eigner

after larry eigner:

adrienne rich

after adrienne rich:

Before leaving, we perched together on the balcony rail,
wondering if the sun would set the same, tomorrow.
I packed everything
I could think of, but still I wanted
to claw the carpet like an angry cat, did not
want to leave. The camera(s) were
loaded, guns waiting to fire on
a scene. I could only imagine an
unbearable winter cold and staring
downwards in order to hide my face from
the bitter chill winds, the
dirty concrete treaded over and over, with the
tracks of over a million.
There is a way out.
It is always there, but when shall
I grasp it? The fear of the battle
leads to drawn out failure and
inevitable disaster. And so we go.

We fly.
Mile by mile, thousands by the second
and I still feel like I'm going to explode
from being closed in. The air tastes
stale and burns the insides of my nostrils,
sterile. I want fresh earth.
We fly. I'm about
to throw up. I can't breathe and
my legs are restless with the energy
of days spent motionless, trapped.

What is life? Some days, it feels like
the undulating pull and push of the
tides. Deceptively
the same, day in and day out.
Now, almost
carried away by the undertow,
I must fight for breath,
and refuse
to let the ocean take me where it will.
I have started to see that
that the sand beneath my toes
changes every time the
water recedes.

jerome rothenberg

a homolinguistic experiment:

two from mexico:

1:
the youth are immortal here,
blind, senseless they are named
the-lost-generation
- glassy looks, weak muscles,
limp bodies -
they run in circles,
deep fertile soil of
the earth streak their skin and bones
oh, 失明的老人 (shiming de laoren)
seated upon luxurious pillows,
toes curled from bindings, the
loss of circulation


2: san cristobal
the youth are immortal,
rising,
scarring the breasts of the mothers
who suckled them,
first they were dust
& now,
they are ashes,
they are ashes & were
burnt by the
sun

james schuyler

after james schuyler:

a young man in lavender

Under the blindingly clear blue skies,
a young man with a lavender dress shirt
is tugging on his black peacoat
with toggle fasteners. He is thinking
about writing poetry as he leaves
Starbucks, grande in hand, no cream and
most certainly no sugar. It is
just slightly too early to be
seriously contemplating anything all
especially after a sleepless night
awake and alone in a rooftop lounge. He
was reading a letter from an occupant on
her adventures, in solitude of wilderness
or perhaps imprisonment, the casual
observer can't be too sure one way or the other.
If you really think about it, his face could have lied,
the letter could have been from next door and not from
around the world.
Oh, what an
unhappy birthday, that should have been
spent
asleep. And now, the morning after.

john ashbery

after john ashbery:

The frown was academic and gray.
It crumbled, the chips and the color
Mahogany beneath clear cellophane
Can you see, that yes, I am a photographer
Somebody burned two wires so that
they would be soldered together.


a mad libs experiment:

the tennis court oath
What had you been thinking about

the football studiously dirty

heaven blotted apple

I go on ambushed you like wound but

there is a fluffy bed in the way all of this

your were not elected inspector, yet won the hospital

All the way through wintry mix and sleet

When you cried it was wet the failures

stammered with unintentional cow the

panda bear strains fatigued I guess . . . the calls . . .

I tumble

the caterpillar pinkie

why of course reflecting all

then his redid you were fail

I thought going down to lit this

of the rice cooker you ran as easily in the Appalacian Trail

you come through but

are yellow the lovely eucalyptus

mystery you don’t want surrounded the real

you dance

in the winter there was umbrella

The wankster approached in the hall—the

lettering easily visible along the edge of the THE DAILY TAR HEEL

in a moment the kitten would play but there was time

for the daffodil laughed here are a couple of “other”

to one in yon house

The taximan and Susan had come over the library

Turning in toward the corner of the wall his purple socks on

is it exhausted as if to tell you your fears were long

the beer shifted you know those awnings

snow off the pluto had made him escape

silvery an oboe now the old

were there there was sour patch kids

to decide the sweet edge of the underwear

like a particular cry not intervening called the arctic wolf “he’s eating! he’s eating” with an emotion felt it sink into peace

there was no turning back but the end was in sight

he chose this moment to ask her in detail about her family and the others

The person. pleaded—“have more of these

not plaid on the tunic—or the armoires

will teach you about men—what it means”

to be one in a six mauve stripe

and now could go away the three approached the Africa

the reef. Your daughter’s

dream of my aunt understand poverty

darkness in the hole

the publisher finished

They could all go there now the hole was pink flowery

Parsley blowing across his foot glad he brought you

frank o'hara

after frank o'hara:

It is 7 : 59 in Philadelphia a Tuesday
this morning I plowed through the hazy fog
and I did not know whether the line
for my latte would be long. hey,
remember that time? we stole
the oranges from the
dining hall and I made you
carry them in your pockets, one in
each, and also an apple in hand. at
9 : 30 we walked back to VAN PELT
because it is finals and we must

imprison ourselves. I tripped on the
bricks that stuck out, LOCUST you
are indeed the greatest of pests. in
WEIGLE we let our spirits slip through
the slit windows and forgot what
daylight was and how the dappled
shadows look or the tingling of
warmth on our bare skin because
we are never bare anymore, haven't
you heard that it is winter?

at 2 :00 in the morning it was raining,
we were soaked, soaked. my shoes filled
with puddles and I squelched my way
home to MAYER and thought of
summer in the country, in CALIFORNIA,
while you held the black bending umbrella
against the wind and murmured pity,
as I complained incessantly. really,
you should have been saying, "someone
call the waaaaahbulance,"
a wise adage often repeated by my colleague
Zachary Wasserman during the times when I
am going on and on, yes, like an ambulance. I
have heard that at times I am a fabulous
example of the Doppler
effect.

but tonight I am quiet, and indoors, and there is
the vanilla latte, no line necessary, with all the
sugar and foam and milk nothing missing, I am
reading ROBERT CREELEY
whom I especially love, especially
THE LANGUAGE, which hits me
right where I need it

*******

this place is crowded, i almost forgot my
passport on the conveyer belt and
i think about buying a book for the ride
but always remember that i have brought
my own but, the pretty inane
covers just look so appealing and new.

to be dragging our lives around on wheels - have
you tagged yours? because i have, i'm
afraid of it getting lost/stolen.
i think at some point after
you keep going back and forth you
start to realize that
you're going and never
returning. sometimes you just want to ...

and as i step on board over the gap and see
the far away asphalt below i remember that oh
flying makes me seasick

robert creeley

"Creeley's first principle is that you find out what you have to say in the process of saying it: poetry becomes a way of making not representing."

"A poem is the fact of its own activity: it exists in itself and for itself so that we can relate to it not just as "expression" but as enactment. This is not so much an objectification of the poem as a placing of the poem in the world as a thing requiring not mute appreciation but active response."

Charles Bernstein, on Robert Creeley

after robert creeley:

he broke free from the

flailing arms, flailing legs, and flew

brown bird soaring

for the recognition and cheers, see

the clear path,

foot smacks court, foot smacks court,

foot

smacks

court

dribbling hope,

a prayer for the neon red

numbers to change

and he leaped

arms outstretched

where’s the crowd?

it roars, and holds its breath

but in slow

slow devastation

he falls

ball slips from his fingers and he crashes down

into oblivion and disgust and disappointment

the bitter taste of failure

again

and,

i. here, crowded room. noise and chaos,

windowless.

pixels blinking in constant change,

making the photo(graph)

telling his defeat, again

sadly immortalized.

i sigh and pry

the last remnants of color

from his yearning skin

color,

when i was(am) a child,

wander through tangled tall brush of green eating

a tomato, red orange juice and seeds bursting

dripping down my arms

in the mess that is childhood and tomatoes

the deceit. i thought it was an apple. and silly, how

things aren’t always how they appear, and how

the skin gave so easily to my infantile canines and how

it felt like a r.ip of flesh and not the crisp earth of apple

robert duncan

a reverse line order experiment:

bending the bow

From which it sprang:
to the trembling daylight
recall the arrow or song.

And I would play Orpheus for you again,
inconsolate,
having something of sister and of wife,
the quick high notes. You are a girl there too,
the deep tones and shadows I will call a woman.

You stand behind where-I-am.

Sweeps the string, can illustrate
my hand
that sleep, only in the swift fulfillment
of the wish, the bow and the lyre,
there is a connexion working
in both directions, as in,
at the extremity of this design.

Ghostly exhilarations at thought of her,
of an inner anticipation of...? reaching to touch
there shakes in the currents of...of air?
The day is hers. My hand writing here
Who comes close in to my thought so that
in the course of a letter - to a friend,
in the course of a letter - I am still
what I would take hold of.

I'd been current disturbing composition of
surfaces, leads into the other
carnations painted growing.
Upon whose surfaces,
the whole of coffee cups and saucers,
the presst-glass creamer, the pewter sage bowl,
the litter of coffee cups and saucers.
Where the cold light gleams reflecting the window
upon the surface of the table,
with the sending.

Reveries are rivers and flow
til the end rimes in the taut string
bend back the bow in dreams as we may.

We've our business to attend Day's duties.

* * * * *
a poem beginning with a line from pindar

But the eyes in Goya's painting are soft,
into the deprivations of desiring sight.
By dimness, up from blind innocence, ensnared
is carnal fate that sends the soul wailing
falling upon the brown boy's slight body
bruised by redemption. The copper light(s)
have a hurt voluptuous grace.
In Goya's canvas Cupid and Psyche
torso-reverberations of a Grecian lyre,
notes of an old music pace the air,
where I see your quick face.

Who is it that goes there?
quick adulterous tread at the heart,
god-step at the margins of thought.

The light foot hears you and the brightness begins.

charles olson

"Projective Verse"

The physics of poetry:

Energy of a poem = several causations -> poet's energy input -> by way of the poem -> reader

must be, at all points, "energy-construct" and "energy-discharge."

energy which the poet puts in = energy which propelled him in the first place = energy which the reader receives.

"FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT."

"It is my impression that all parts of speech suddenly, in composition by field, are fresh for both sound & percussive use, spring up like unknown, unnamed vegetables in the patch, when you work it, come spring."

after olson:

all,

right!

And I am asked - ask myself, constant -

ly if

the ice is

too rough, the mountain is

too steep, to where

are we going and in

which

direction? can we still

artery heart blood plasma the almost

closed door does not

hide their kisses but

you emerge once again

useless piece of mind

all

wrong