Poetry isn't about, to my mind, anyway.  It's an evolving collage of linguistic and sensory layers.  Scratchings on a dirty, dirty mirror.

Buffalo Poetics List

Ron Silliman's post about the passing of the Buffalo Poetics List is worth perusing on a number of levels.  For what it's worth, there is mention of yours truly in the post.

I'm exhausted.  3 stints of snow shoveling so far today.  It's in the twenties  which feels like a heat wave after yesterday's 2 below zero.

I'm stressed too. A couple of crises in the extended family--turmoil, drama, expenses, tears, lawyers and driving through white out weather to help.  Ach.  Cold and stress not a good combo for a 60 year old tall guy.
Also... NB: after playing Legos on the floor with grandsons for an hour and half, find something to lean on before you try to get up.  Just sayin'.

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Good news though...Thomas Fink has received the first  copies of the new anthology of criticism he co-edited, Reading the Difficulties, which promises to be an important and exciting book.  I can't wait to read it.

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Guitars are sensitive to temperature changes.

Robots are just sensitive.  Period.

Instruments of our desire have feelings.  OK?

Just wrote fragment 280 of Appearances.  If I've learned anything from working on this project for the last two years it's that I'm not a linear thinker.

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Listening to Buddy Guy.  His blues are the news I need.

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So damn cold here.

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"The only way
I know what's real
(I go by feel)."

Buddy Guy

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Morning Operations Report

for Eileen Tabios


"Madam President...
They are not
programmed
to do so,
but the Robots
are crying.

And they
just won't stop."

Rebecca Loudon on work.

Reading

Here I am talking about my reading at Eileen Tabios' great new blog.

Not feeling particularly poetlicious these days.  Definitely not too sexy for my shirt.  Cover me in sack cloth and call me ________.

Robert Downey Jr singing with Sting.  Pretty great.  Check it out.

I've linked to this before, but I do love this segment from my ongoing project Appearances.  Writing this book is kicking my ass.

Listening to The Rides and the wind outside.  My writing brain isn't working.  Slipping into a bit of depressive fog.

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Starting to wonder if I should end this blog and start another with a different focus--or maybe get more serious about reinvigorating Ask/Tell.  I'm not sure, at the moment, what to do.  So I'll let things steep.

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Each of these sections is taking an embarrassing amount of time to write.  Read each "bullet" as a significant pause.

"Read each 'bullet' as a significant pause" strikes me as a pretty good line.

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Now I've started listening to Mole City by Quasi.

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I've been trying to listen to lots of different kinds of guitar music, hoping that some sort of inspiration or insight will take place.  Sigh.

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In terms of guitar practice, the book Zen Guitar by Philip Toshio Sudo has inspired me and given  hope.  It's a book that would be interesting even to people who aren't torturing their fingers like me.  A taste:

"Through the frustrations of learning a new skill, we learn humility--how much we don't know.

Through the exploration of knowledge, we learn openness--a willingness to try new things, to see things from another person's perspective.

Through playing with others, we learn generosity--how to share and contribute to the good of the group."

(100)

Those things seem really important to me.

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Yesterday I wrote a short piece about what I'm reading for Eileen Tabios' new blog Eileen Verbs Books.  In thinking about it today I realized how much I left out: the book I just quoted from, for example, not to mention the stack of books on the floor by my bed.

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Here's another Zen Guitar quote I like:

     "The Way of Zen Guitar requires responsibility and truly giving of one's self.  Only through accepting our debt to the world and giving something back does our song have any meaning.
       The Japanese language is again instructive here.  The very word for human being, ningen, suggests a connection to the surrounding world.  Nin means person, while gen means 'space.'  In other words, we only become human--a ningen--in relation to the space around us."

(98)

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Thanks for listening.  I feel a little better than when I started this post.

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Robots
keep calling
me. Fucking robots.

When I woke up this morning it was 10 below zero with a windchill factor making it feel like 32 below zero.  It's been one of those stay inside and don't go anywhere kind of days.

You know it is really cold when there are big stretches of unbroken snow.  Even the squirrels are saying "Fuck it, I'm not going out in that shit."

I can't go a day without looking and looking again at Lynn Berhendt's collages.

My favorite guitar pick is light blue and it has a raised surface which makes it easier to hold onto.  I hate it when I drop a pick inside of the guitar and have to shake it out.

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Today I practiced while watching the movie Thor.

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Yesterday I played pool and drank wine with psychologist friend Branton.  He kicked my ass.  But it was fun and, at one point, he said: Well, you're an introvert.  He didn't say that in reference to the pool games but in response to something I'd said about my difficulties negotiating things like public poetry readings.

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My guitar practice today felt good in a way that it hasn't to this point.

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There's some scary weather ahead of us the next couple of days, if reports are to be believed.  9 below tomorrow?

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Reading Bruce Wagner's The Empty Chair: Two Novellas.  It's a brilliant diptych about spirituality and human folly.

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Am on the verge of a new collaboration with my friend Thomas Fink.

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Tomorrow I'm hoping to get back to Appearances.

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Happy New Year, everyone!

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This is the cover image of my Marsh Hawk Press book.  Coming this Spring!

Newsweek on Timothy Morton's Hyperobjects.

The weather is treacherous here today.  This morning I went out with the intention of running a few errands.  I made my first stop but then turned back and went home.  The streets were too dangerous.  People were sliding all over the place.  I narrowly avoided being run into 3 or 4 times in the course of a two mile journey.  I'm an experienced winter driver.  I've been driving in this clime for a little over 40 years.  But, still, it was scary out there this morning.  When I got home my heart was pounding.  When it returned to its normal rate I took a deep breath and went outside to shovel for 40 minutes.  Winter: my least favorite time of year.

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Listening to Neil Young Live at the Cellar Door, a concert recorded in 1970.  Spare, lovely music.

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Just finished watching a documentary about Sartre.  He was a thinker who meant, and still means, a lot to me.  From the phenomenological investigations in his philosophy and fiction, to the activism and engagement with his times, he exemplified the public intellectual.  It's difficult to imagine Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze without there first having been the example of Sartre.

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Have no idea if the "selfie" poems I've been posting are connecting with anyone, but it's an interesting exercise for me.

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Sweeping, lifting and pushing snow is getting back into the daily routine.

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I like it when Keith Jarrett vocalizes a bit on his recordings.

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Need to get back to Appearances with a vengeance.  At the moment, though, am at a loss about how to proceed.  Need, I know, to wait.  But that seems like all I do--wait--I mean.  And that's where the homonym "weight" comes in.  A heaviness enters one.

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