Plugging away at Appearances, my "novel" in 365 fragments. The goal is to have a first draft at the end of the year. I'm struggling though. After six months I've written 96 fragments. So I'm definitely off the pace I set for myself at the outset.

Good News Today

from Eileen Tabios, my much loved publisher and poetry comrade. Two of the Zombie poems from Unprotected Texts are going to appear in Horror (CLOSE-UP) a themed anthology which will be used to teach English to 8th-10th graders in Denmark. Hoo-ahh!

Headshots

Over the course of the last week I've had two requests for headshots. Normally I go to great lengths to avoid appearing in photographs. Decided to bite the bullet and face down the self-consciousness demons:



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NOTES

The physicality
Of attention

A series
Of recognitions.

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After attraction
The sense

Of two
Opposing strains.

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Clouds might
Roll through

A repertoire
Of hammers.

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The space
Defined by

An alchemy
Of complications.

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The most
Unsettling things

Are themselves
Precisely arranged.

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The weather
Is detached

A picture
Of sensation.

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Displacement gives
Way to

The ways
In which.

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Fragments of
The world

Look at
A world.

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The interests
Of objects

Involved with
A figure.


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History of
The by-products

Of choices
Made, abandoned.

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The subject
Has changed

For no
Apparent reason.

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Specific images
Of them

Appeared in
Confrontational mirrors.

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Two bodies
Four hands

Lost in
A forest.

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OK. Barring something unforeseen, it looks like I'll be reading at the Kent State Library on the main campus in the fall. Details to be posted as it becomes more official.

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This is a piece of something I wrote today:

Fragments of
The world

Look at
A world

Perspective is always more partial (in all senses) than one knows.

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Reading:

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young

Love in a Dark Time and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature by Colm Toibin

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

How Should a Person Be? is a great title, isn't it?

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I'm making a big batch of my legendary spaghetti sauce. Otherwise known as "Magic". It's a three or so hour process:

crushed tomatoes,

tomato paste,

garlic,

basil,

oregano,

bay leaf,

zucchini,

mushrooms,

carrots,

ground beef (or sausage),

red wine

It's all about a long slow simmer. And if you don't like meat, leave it out. Just don't leave out the other stuff.

I'm making it now not so much because I want it as that I want to make it. We'll surely eat it for dinner tonight but then I'll pack a bunch away in the freezer to pull out when needed for us or a relative or friend.

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I was really happy to see the Miami Heat win the NBA Finals last night.

I'm a fan of the NBA. Having Lebron play in this area for awhile was great. Was sorry he left, didn't like the way he left, but understood why he left. And I do love that Wade/Bosh/Lebron trio. Seeing Miller streak with the threes incredibly beautiful too.

Now I can't wait for next season. When I'll get back to the basics of rooting for the Cavaliers and watching the Heat on the down low.

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Clouds might
Roll through

A repertoire
Of hammers

Etudes

To be
On the margin
Of content

Unlikely
To acquire
A wider context

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The spaces
Of exposure
Are penumbral

A compost
Of images
And words

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Entwined bodies
Laid bare
In a mirror

Habitual slippages
Within sensation’s
Areas of concern

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The essence
Of presence
And memory

The condensation
Of matter
Language and circumstance

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Space called
Subconscious mind
Distends eyes

The skin
Of capability
Is a picture

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In a picture
As meaningless
As a nightmare

Desire and
The static
Are recidivist confusions

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Intimacies alter
The perception
Of parallel lines

Doors blur
And distort
Critical approval

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Convulsive notions
Attach to
Uncomfortable experiments

Everyday life
Of inner states
In retrospect

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The sleeping
Figure is
A labyrinth

Mimes moving
In and out
Of mannequins

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An echo
Follows a
Blind spot

A mouth
Retains
Decomposing narratives

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The pulse
Within the frame
Of emphasis

Pressed between
After-images
And recognitions

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A specific
Umbrella lost
Under erasures

Hollowed-out
Associations repeating
In photographs

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The recurring
Window is
A consequence

A mouth
Is open
And screaming

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The space
Of a body
Under revision

Curtains become
Entangled in
Disturbed impulses

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Confusions of bending
Forms bind
Viewer and subject

Unclear images
Inflect
Potential armatures

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The spectacle of
Completion overlapping
Sexual asthma

Myths inured
To breadth
Composed in isolation

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Difference makes
A residual narrative
Out of feeling

A phrase
Becomes full-bodied
In application

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An intensity
Of loss
Angles the road

Only
Interesting things
Are problematic

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Repeatedly throughout
The release
Of exhibitions

Haunted by
Those bodies
Detailing exception

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Made in
Textures of
Mounting concealment

It’s the way
Into an
Unknown mirror

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That would
Executed during
Continue this

Obsession with
Translation
Through appearances

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Presence of
Its purpose
Was format

Container of
A treatment of
An image

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It’s basic
Apprehensions of
White briefs

Ridiculous
Acrylic forms
Of musculature

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Titles occasion
Spent butts
And acknowledgments

Shadows concentrate
An accumulation
Of obsessions

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Interlocking spaces
Of bodies
And thresholds

Having the presence
To have been
Imbued with inevitability

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Sexual extent
With events
Follows a substitute

Than engage
In what
Doesn’t heal

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The rest
Of to
Discern insistence

That cluster
The working
Witness pavement

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Overwhelming
The reworking
Of occurrence

Out of
The despair of
Conjunction and depiction

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A wave
Of background
Saturation against

Square of
Figure derived
And nervous

What's Been Happening Lately?

Read Buddy Guy's memoir, When I Left Home, in a couple of big gulps. Recommend it.

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Started reading Badiou's In Praise of Love.

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Still moving on with Zizek's Less than Nothing. Clearly I'll be reading it for another few months.

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Trying to reimagine how to write poetry by experimenting in a lot of different directions.

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Trying not to despair.

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Thinking about the work I've done so far and the work I want to do.

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Wondering about ASK/TELL and if I can generate the types of interviews I want in order to continue the site. Am seriously looking for poets interviewing folks from other disciplines about the poetics of what they, those other folks, do. As poets we need to not just talk to ourselves.

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I'm thinking about buying a guitar and an amp.

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I'm thinking about Rebecca Loudon's new tattoo. I like it. I like JBR's angel of history tattoo too. And Kirsten's THREAD.

I suppose if I were to get one, it would be this word near my heart: DIFFICULT.

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for Jim McCrary

Less might
Be more.
It depends.

More's more.
Unless it
Is less.

As a writer I tend to focus on my frustrations,tend to focus on what I can't seem to do. I try to focus, that is, on what I'm struggling with at the moment. I'm worried about what's happening now and in that potential next moment.

Occasionally I look back at work I've done previously and it all looks strange. Sometimes lovely strange,sometimes ugly strange.

I'm in a looking back moment now since I might be doing a big (for me)public reading soon. More about that as things firm up.

fragment from a work in progress

Open and subject
Between things

Contingent as
I am and
You are

Punctuation gives
False hope

The mind
Makes connections
Where there
Are none

I am
Not one

I am
A hole

Open and subject
Between things

Pronouns are partitions
And signs

Now you’re
Being asked to
Assemble yourself

Now I’m
Being determined
By you

It is
Something else

We is
An abstraction

Contingent as
Things are

First or
Last things

Cut and
Bruised things

Mirror image
Half empty

Mirror image
Half full

Hat full
Of emptiness

Punctuation is
The Little Other

One of
Dogma’s siblings

The one
Who breathes
Most deliberately

The one
Who sees
Purpose everywhere

The one
Who lives
An allegory


The one
Who will
Never die

The mind
Makes connections
Where there
Are minefields

Mind is
Mostly noise

That being said
No ascension, attention

An event
Cannot be planned

A concept
Cannot be repeated

Poetry writing is
Not information

I am
Not one

I am
Not you

I am
To all appearances
An object

I am
Under erasure

I am
An intersection


I am
Whose projection

I am
A hole

I am
Your data dump

Please Support Allen's Project

a story of
family, love, expectation and disappointment

The will to change may not change, but change can be pretty difficult to effect.

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I read with interest Nada Gordon's post promoting a workshop she'll be teaching in the Fall which celebrates a baroque, fulsome approach to writing where "more is more."

It's the sort of thing I'd love to sit in on. Simply because it goes against all of my instincts as a writer.

There are types of writing I despise. There are also all those texts which I admire but that are so removed from the ways in which I attempt to write. Nada's work falls into this latter camp. There is a luxuriousness in her best work which I can only admire with open eyes and open mouth.

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I'm at a point in life where I'm wondering if I done anything that's worth a damn. I'm honestly not sure.

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