poetrill
― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 21 November 2010 22:53 (thirteen years ago) link
I wrote a poem today and while I was writing it a dude in a yellow speedo ran by towards the ocean holding flippers and I was like man I should do that instead but I kept writing
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Sunday, 21 November 2010 22:55 (thirteen years ago) link
ur a tru bro
― pro EVOO sucker (acoleuthic), Sunday, 21 November 2010 23:04 (thirteen years ago) link
Lately…
Maggot - Paul Muldoon. Read through about a month ago, didn't leave a huge impression. Liked that first combat/cancer sequence, but overall I'm feeling a bit worn out by the Muldoon music: that rhyme game again, verse always twists into the same patterns of unexpectedness. A step back from that big poem at the end of Horse Latitudes maybe? Anyway, he's interesting, always distinctive, etc etc but I don't really like his verse that much. Which reminds me
Oraclau/Oracles - By my bedside, not reading quickly. I dunno. I sort of like prozac comeback Geoffrey Hill, that odd dense/garrulous texture he hits a lot, the urgency, & I remain a sucker for his canonical sonics; but feel like I'm still sitting outside it a bit. Maybe I'll finish it tonight, report back a bit more concretely.
Waiting to start Hot White Andy by Keston Sutherland. Intrigued; said somewhere before that I wasn't wild on Antifreeze, that I'm a bit sceptical of most stuff that's Prynne-marked (Like he, his style seem a cerebral revolutionary cause, probably the only one in British poetry at the moment; the non-Prynne stuff I've seen mostly doesn't really feel the allure or power of lyric, memorable speech, any trad or popular def of poetry); but I liked the youtube of his reading, & I guess I think more interesting stuff will come from the stony ground of Cambridge poets than the damp pastures elsewhere.
Get that impression because I've been reading Identity Parade to catch up on British poetry (my current loo book). F'k me, what a shower. Hit rate feels far worse than the old Bloodaxe New Poetry from 93 (previous thing of this sort), really meh intros to the poets and the volumes. But k.i.p., k.i.p., so of ppl I hadn't read before quite like Mark Waldron, Melanie Challenger, a few others.
― portrait of velleity (woof), Thursday, 20 January 2011 16:28 (thirteen years ago) link
Like he, his style seem a cerebral revolutionary cause, probably the only one in British poetry at the moment
ronggggggggggggggg
― vampire weekend fan (acoleuthic), Thursday, 20 January 2011 16:32 (thirteen years ago) link
get thee some sean bonney. lovely guy too. and then check out chris goode, jennifer cooke, o god so many others...
lol @ me pimping my irl homies
― vampire weekend fan (acoleuthic), Thursday, 20 January 2011 16:33 (thirteen years ago) link
also jeff hilson, as said above. wau.
I'm a bit sceptical of most stuff that's Prynne-marked
So am I. But when it works it can be scorching. Mate of mine, Ian Heames, is progressing towards this end. When it fails, it's so many discrete images flashing by at lightning speed for no apparent end.
― vampire weekend fan (acoleuthic), Thursday, 20 January 2011 16:35 (thirteen years ago) link
oops, double use of 'end' - also erroneous use of it at all - poetry doesn't have an end, it participates in a wider flow
:(
but still, Prynnian wank is egregious and barely listenable, barely fun even, so you gotta hit your marks
― vampire weekend fan (acoleuthic), Thursday, 20 January 2011 16:37 (thirteen years ago) link
fair enough, I do tend to be a bit undiscriminating when it comes to that side of things, so call anything that's in the difficult British Poetry Revival line (Barque stuff, all that) Prynne-y. That's v lazy of me, journalistic, so yes fair enough. I'll have a look at those sorts you mention; Bonney seems alright on first glance.
God i don't know though. Touch of the perpetual manifesto writer.
― portrait of velleity (woof), Thursday, 20 January 2011 17:01 (thirteen years ago) link
i been digging james richardson's 'by the numbers' esp the aphorisms:
137. Out walking, I think of that face I love or some scene of awfulembarrassment and stop dead in my tracks, as if I had to choosebetween moving and being moved.
― "crut" copy (diamonddave85), Thursday, 20 January 2011 17:58 (thirteen years ago) link
ne1 have any opinion on foer's 'tree of codes' ? i usually tend to enjoy palimpsest and experimental book forms (i just picked up this one in fact) but the die cutting seems and the resulting flimsy-ass-these-are-soo-gonna-tear pages seems clumsy and put me off
― "crut" copy (diamonddave85), Thursday, 20 January 2011 18:06 (thirteen years ago) link
sheen's korner y/n lol
― acoleuthic, Thursday, 10 March 2011 23:46 (thirteen years ago) link
saw louise gluck read last night.http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Oi3ehb2uRrc/TKsgIOPpCnI/AAAAAAAAB0I/eDk4awT-_MM/s640/gluck1.jpg
― bnw, Friday, 11 March 2011 21:44 (thirteen years ago) link
i am reading a copy of mark halliday's jab, pub. 2002. it was in my amazon save-for-later list and i have no memory of what led me to place it there. i am having trouble with it, mainly because in register/idiom he is v. close to yoni wolf of why?, which means i keep hearing everything half-rapped for a line or two and then get lost when there's no rhythm to make work
viz.
if you were standing frozen in sweated confusionat the Personal Furnishings rackin a giant department store five days before Christmaswearing a woolly jacket that belonged to someone long goneand trying not to seem dangerousunder silver and scarlet decorations with no conceptionof adequate reply to tremendous departures
― thomp, Monday, 5 September 2011 11:37 (twelve years ago) link
This, though, I like, although it is a bit ILMish I 'spose
Trumpet Player, 1963
When Jan and Dean recorded "Surf City"there must have been one guy—
I see this trumpet player (was there even a horn section in that song?Say there was)—
I see this one trumpet player with his tie askewor maybe he's wearing a loose tropical-foliage shirtsitting on a metal chair waitingfor the session to reach the big choruswhere Jan and Dean exultTwo girls for every boy—and he's thinkingof his hundred nights on his buddy Marvin's hairy stainy sofaand the way hot dogs and coffee make a mud miseryand the way one girl is far too much and besideshe hasn't had the one in fourteen months, wait,it's fifteen now.Surfing—what life actually lets guys ride boardson waves? Is it all fiction? Is it a joke?Jan and Dean and their pal Brian act like it's a fine, good jokewhereas this trumpet player thinks it's actually shit, if anybody asked him, a tidal wave of shit.
― thomp, Monday, 5 September 2011 14:58 (twelve years ago) link
tho' it occurs to me that "actually" is functioning, in my head, the way chris addison or stewart lee might use it: that this switch in register is occurring largely in my head to the particular mode of comedy that isn't quite good enough to justify how bound up it all is in the self-presentation of every British male I know under thirty.
Which is probably irrelevant. I don't know. I half-like this guy. But "what life actually lets guys ride boards / on waves" almost gets to something, & that could remedy this poem, except that it falls so flatly there, is so bluntly stated, that it just kind of sits in the middle of the poem and gets in the way.
― thomp, Monday, 5 September 2011 15:07 (twelve years ago) link
I like Halliday a lot, especially his first book Little Star, which was embarrassed/confessional/honest in a funny way. He has a kind of casualness that may have been fresher in the world before blogs and message boards.
― reggae night staple center (Eazy), Monday, 5 September 2011 18:25 (twelve years ago) link
Just started reading lots of Anne Carson which has been consistently blowing me away.
― Michael_Pemulis, Monday, 5 September 2011 22:50 (twelve years ago) link
There's something about his assumption of a stance of resignedness that I find weirdly offputting: that might be part of it.
Meanwhile, today the British poet laureate told us that "poetry is the original text messaging" -- also that "If you look at rapping, for example, a band like Arctic Monkeys uses lyrics in a poetic way."
― thomp, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 10:43 (twelve years ago) link
Has anyone read Philip Levine, the new U.S. laureate? I didn't realise they had such sharply defined terms for the job, over there.
― thomp, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 10:44 (twelve years ago) link
He's one of the 1928 poets (also Merwin, Ashbery, Kinnell, and more. This one and this are representative of his work. Depending on the poem, reads like bad Whitman or great Whitman. Easy reading, in terms of flow and clarity.
― reggae night staple center (Eazy), Wednesday, 7 September 2011 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
i never mentioned on this thread that i'd read lynn emanuel's noose and hook, which i thought was kind of fantastic
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Monday, 20 February 2012 22:28 (twelve years ago) link
Maggot - Paul Muldoon. Read through about a month ago, didn't leave a huge impression. Liked that first combat/cancer sequence, but overall I'm feeling a bit worn out by the Muldoon music: that rhyme game again, verse always twists into the same patterns of unexpectedness. A step back from that big poem at the end of Horse Latitudes maybe? Anyway, he's interesting, always distinctive, etc etc but I don't really like his verse that much
is this the one with the sort-of sonnet-sequence with the repeating verse? yeah that sucked
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Monday, 20 February 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
I need recommendations! The last poetry I read was a collection of (Dante Gabriel) Rossetti sonnets.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 20 February 2012 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
Then you might like Charles Sinker's poem about, actually to Parkinson's. Mark's context becomes poetic too, under the pressure of communicationhttp://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/02/music-poetry-parkinsons-disease/
― dow, Monday, 20 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
I'm a poet, you guys should read me. Google "crucial spawl"
― Raymond Cummings, Wednesday, 7 March 2012 05:47 (twelve years ago) link
Read a fair bit of Hugo Williams's Collected Poems; always found him sporadically impressive but a bit footling before, then read that poem from a few LRBs back, 'From the Dialysis Ward', and thought it brilliant. Reading the Collected, felt I was closer to right the first time, tho' I underestimated him a bit - gifted, first collection terrific, but really rapidly slides - fairly dull poet of domesticity, prosy line, and a removed/poised patrician thing that grates. Also half his poems are about his dad, he should let that go. Feel like his most fertile territory is poetry about being quite handsome, this is an unusual topic.
― woof, Saturday, 23 March 2013 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
Hey I'm a poet too, read me, google "yeah right"
― donald nitchie, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 01:07 (eleven years ago) link
You seem to speak sarcastically, as if being a poet were some unattainable height. On the contrary, a poet is just a person who writes poetry. There are great poets, good poets, intermittently competent poets, rather bad poets and horrible crapulous poets. btw, writing one poem is not enough to qualify as a poet. At a minimum you have to work at it and care about poetry.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 01:36 (eleven years ago) link
just finished Charles Bernstein's latest, Recalculating. never read Bernstein before; found the book bracing, challenging, and (ultimately) wonderful. what else should I read?
― underused emoticons I have gotten confused (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 01:48 (eleven years ago) link
Agree with you Aimless on all points. Sarcasm intended, though I thought Raymond's post was like a poem worthy of pointing out (though I didn't google "crucial..." Did you?) I also think every poem written is implicitly saying Hey I'm a poet read me, and is greeted with (and rightly so) Yeah right
btw, Charles Bernstein is, I think, a waste of time as a critic but an an intermittently competent poet. Read Girly Man
― donald nitchie, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 03:52 (eleven years ago) link
I also think every poem written is implicitly saying Hey I'm a poet read me
An interesting critical stance, but not one I expect to take the world by storm.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 04:29 (eleven years ago) link
DOES ANYONE HAVE AN OPINION ON PATRICIA LOCKWOOD oops capslock
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 7 April 2013 14:37 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/two-poems-by-patricia-lockwood
bernstein is pretty good at both criticism and poetry but girly man is maybe his worst thing ever, get a copy of 'all the whisky in heaven: selected poems' (been remaindered i think?), have a flick through 'attack of the difficult poems' and 'content's dream' if you have access to a library with that sort of thing, particularly 'recantorium' in the former
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 7 April 2013 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
one of the poems in the new book is a list of the words in girly man, in descending order of frequency
I got the selected, haven't done more than flip thru it yet tho
― Emeralds should have definitely done this before they split imo (bernard snowy), Monday, 8 April 2013 18:33 (eleven years ago) link
more patricia lockwood, sort of
http://www.thingx.tv/articles/mad-men-poetry-recap-season-6-premiere-2335/
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Monday, 8 April 2013 18:54 (eleven years ago) link
Sorry guys
I suck at self promo
― Raymond Cummings, Sunday, 14 April 2013 04:07 (eleven years ago) link
i flipped through the new bernstein the other day in st marks bookshop and it didn't really "click", unfortunately, but i want to return to it at some point. i really like the poetry of ben lerner, and have read two of his collections: the lichtenberg figures and angel of yaw. they touch on theoretical questions, and in this way show the influence of the Language poets (i suppose), but for the most part work really well just as lyrics. There is a lot of humor in his work, and an everpresent mood of sublimated melancholy... the prematurely resigned sadness of the precocious artist. Here is a link to some poems from the Lichtenburg Figures (2004): http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/248/ifrom-i-the-lichtenberg-figures-ben-lerner Lerner's 2011 novel "Leaving the Atocha Station" is very enjoyable too.
― Pat Finn, Sunday, 14 April 2013 05:56 (eleven years ago) link
Hey, a good friend of mine has an essay in today's NY Times about the influence of Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts on a new generation of American poets.
― cougars and sneezers (Eazy), Sunday, 14 April 2013 13:50 (eleven years ago) link
that is a good essay and i should probably read some of those poets
― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Sunday, 14 April 2013 16:27 (eleven years ago) link
that lerner poem upthread is really good! that is all
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 01:28 (eleven years ago) link
or 'those lerner poems', i'm not really sure
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 01:30 (eleven years ago) link
they are separate poems. the lichtenburg figures is a sonnet sequence actually. but thanks, yeah, he is one of my favorite contemporary poets. if you liked those you should check out his novel too, which had me laughing out loud at several points.
― Pat Finn, Tuesday, 16 April 2013 03:11 (eleven years ago) link
Damn!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KBK1sjr-MT8
― Public Brooding Closet (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 14:22 (eleven years ago) link
I said, damn!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBK1sjr-MT8
― Public Brooding Closet (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 14:23 (eleven years ago) link
not watching that
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 15:38 (eleven years ago) link
was it a requirement of the form that they address their damn poems to famous women, what's that about
certainly it was totally normal for people of my grandparents generation to be able to recite poetry, often people with little literacy skills.
And i remember attending a wedding where a friend was getting married to an australian guy and his family was pretty baffled at how all the irish people kept insisting on making speeches and incorporating long passages of poetry (often written by non-professional poet friends!). I'm not saying this happens at every irish wedding but its not incredibly unusual either. the speeches thing is pretty universal though!
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
Oh absolutely, and I only really talk about the US because my knowledge of non-US poetry and literary communities isn't large...I know a good deal about Vancouver and Montreal, but that's still so-called North America. The only poets I know personally in the UK are white dudes, for example, which is clearly not representative...
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:33 (two years ago) link
i would say the 'hottest young thing' is ak blakmore whose work, to me, is simply "i went to oxbridge and then i got a septum piercing" but thats probably more uncharitable than it needs to be
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:42 (two years ago) link
my sex
enter breakfast truck, the bluebottlesperforming obsequies to marbled bacon
enter girl with manacles. enterso damn adorable. he likes small fuckdoll.
girl who looks plaintively at porcelainsalt and pepper shakers shapedlike kittens sleeping, intertwined. enterdesolation beside a pinstripe spider-plant enterknowing how to dress your pear-shape historyhistory, and after you follow, with a bucketand a mop – or words to that effect.
enter girl who applies the cooling gel.enter the Tate Modern to see Yayoi Kusama’sI Am Here But Nothing which please youcannot photograph like wheni found out there was a fetish for everything sexualityseemed like a great leveller. enter nothingtoo weird to enter, biking, amused savagetender repetitions of toilet cubicle graffiti.
enter Fathers in the Clouds (’99)enter my sex like act not gender and other songsthat make me cry my sex sometimes ballet shoesboth the stones in the pockets of my coatand the welcoming cold river.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n11/a.k.-blakemore/two-poems
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:44 (two years ago) link
i guess
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:50 (two years ago) link
lmao that is rank
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:50 (two years ago) link
replace that with the lyrics to 'my sex' by ultravox for infinite improvement
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:56 (two years ago) link
Yeah that isn't quite good. Most of what I know is from SPAM and Face Press and Critical Documents...so perhaps similarly situated in the Oxbridge nexus, but more students of Prynne and that kind of thing..."difficult" poetry lol
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:58 (two years ago) link
i was loosely in with the Prynne crowd at the tail-end of university...there was some good stuff but it often came off as way too obscurantist and aloof for its own good
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 20:00 (two years ago) link
― imago,
my first thought when I saw the title
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 20:23 (two years ago) link
Imago, I admit that I am a huge fan of Prynne's work, but for the most part, I don't find his students' work as compelling.
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:00 (two years ago) link
i feel almost bad about posting that blakemore one. i feel like the first thing i ever read by her was really good and i've never been able to remember where it was but yes that particular one is like the lyrics to a bongwater song except too full of itself and not as funny
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:32 (two years ago) link
also i can't say i've ready anything by prynne is there anything you would recommend? i read a thing about him online just now that says he is influenced by olson holderlin celan and o'hara which is quite a mix and very intriguing
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:45 (two years ago) link
Plax, his collecteds (there are three editions, with timely additions in each) are worth looking for, but the one that gets most people into him is 'The White Stones,' which was reissued by NYRB a few years ago. The book is an outlier, in some ways, as the density and hermetic wordplay of his later work is not as foregrounded, but it's a lovely book, with some absolutely devastating poems in it.
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 22:23 (two years ago) link
lol all of white stones is on genius.com for some reason!
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 30 June 2021 12:43 (two years ago) link
Ha, brilliant
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 June 2021 13:17 (two years ago) link
I bought an actual physical copy of "Walkman" last week, at a bookstore in Cincinnati. I like it.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 6 July 2021 23:04 (two years ago) link
😬 https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/jia-tolentino/
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link
I have been enjoying the twitter reaction to that incredibly bad poem today.
― emil.y, Friday, 6 August 2021 20:52 (two years ago) link
I agree with the magazine's slogan: whatever that is, I'm against it.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 6 August 2021 21:22 (two years ago) link
.
― No Particular Place to POLL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 6 August 2021 21:41 (two years ago) link
jesus
― flopson, Saturday, 7 August 2021 05:49 (two years ago) link
, conditionally,
― jmm, Saturday, 7 August 2021 12:31 (two years ago) link
lol i was wondering if that would get posted here
― plax (ico), Saturday, 7 August 2021 16:54 (two years ago) link