Frankenstein vs. the World

Check out Joey Yearous-Algozin riffing on Bob Grenier’s Sentences, alongside Jena Osman and Bob Perelman, in the current issue of Al Filreis‘ PoemTalk. Here’s a snippet:

JY-A: They all look very, very similar. But when you start going through all 500 of them, they are doing some radically different things. There’s some that aren’t even words. Or, I think there’s one that there’s Ds just spalyed out, almost like a concrete poem, that’s just sitting in there. Which doesn’t seem to fit with this other sort-of very . . . we’ve kind of been talking about maybe domestic, or ‘throw-away’ words.

AF: The celebration of young Amy learning to speak . . .

BP: Bits of household conversation . . .

JY-A: So there’s all of these different moves. And I think that he keeps it various enough that our tendency to fix on wondering whether or not that one suffices — ’cause there’s 500 of them, right? And they all sort of sit in that network of the 500. So in a weird way it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the individual card as you experience it. But then taking away that pressure as it sits in that network. And so as you start to isolate it and remove it, in different contexts, then I think you can say ‘I have a liking for this.’ Which is really subjective. And really wonderful that you are able to say . . . like, “Walking down Washington Avenue.” Every city has a Washington Avenue, and I remember the first time I was walking down Washington Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin, and I realized, ‘I’m Walking down Washington Avenue.’ Walking down Washington Avenue. And you know, you repeat it to yourself, and you have an experience with it. And the poem has sort-of that strange existence.

JO: Until you come to Philadelphia and walk down Washington Avenue.

AF: Get hit by a trolley!

Tags: joseph yearous-algozin.

My favorite conceptual poet, Chris Sylvester, is now blogging: http://sisteract.tumblr.com/.

Here is a tremendous video of Cap’n Jazz playing my favorite song “Que Surete!” at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago in 1995. In a moment of clarity last week, Chris and I realized over some sunny afternoon mint juleps that Cap’n Jazz might be our greatest mutual poetics influence.

Tags: chris sylvester, super mario brothers glitches.

I have the inclination and the need to connect to all the ages of my life, past or future. From my childhood until today, I don’t see those sections, those famous stages, that all normal men go through, each time denying and forgetting the age that came before. I slip inside myself as if along a river that you can travel up- or downstream; I rediscover and am in harmony with myself wherever I am. As for old age, I was very unhappy at the beginning of adolescence because two-thirds of life seemed to be spent in withering and dying (real death was nothing but an insignificant corporal formality at the end of another interminable death). I’d send feelers, images, in the direction of these future years. And it is only when I was able to live, to feel, for example, like an old queer sucking off brats (and had foreseen, worked out what I would be in that situation, as well as an infinite number of others) that I finally began to live what was left of my youth without too much apprehension. Such fancies certainly have little to do with what I’ll experience; but they take in hand the difficulties of the future, sketch out the tactics I’ll use to survive there as I do elsewhere.

– Tony Duvert, Diary of an Innocent, trans. Bruce Benderson

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When I watch this video the walls melt a little bit and the spirit hits me and I fall down.

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“Chesapeake Bay Crabs are Making a Big Comeback,” The Washington Post. April 15th, 2010:

Full story here!

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I just mailed several consignment copies of Satellite Telephone to the sparkling oasis that is Ooga Booga in LA. If you’re in the area, look out for the new issue there soon.

Tags: satellite telephone.

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