Saturday 30 July 2011

Introducing... Mark Hastings, POET!

He's a sensitive boy! He's a blessed dreamer! He's an authentic cometh!



How the snuff can any us write poetry now?

Friday 29 July 2011

Dear Casual Readers: Poetry is a Serious Matter

According to David Solway, Al Gore's poem is a "dull, anaphoric litany riddled with malapropisms and marred by an unabashed tendency to pure bathos."He is also miffed that Gore, like, writes, you know, inauthentic poetry: "I will be chided as a stickler here, but it needs to be emphasized that authentic poetry is always consistent. Let us take a look. This is a poem conspicuously devoid of punctuation, yet Gore slips in a comma between 'leave' and 'unmourned.' A casual reader will not notice so minute a solecism, but genuine poets know that nothing in a finished poem is accidental." We are genuine poets, too, and sometimes we like to chide other genuine poets for being sticklers but mostly we just like to poo on the hoods of their cars. Sometimes our poops look like commas! That is all. G'morning! For your health!

Thursday 28 July 2011

Even Scooter Trash Be Getting Poetic Sometimes

Five volumes don't lie. Bikers know the road can be lovely & loveless. Any good day on the asphalt is a best day; any bad day is the worst. Sometimes hog wranglers live epic poems. Thanks Sorez! Thanks Wicked Bitch! Please don't kill us!


This Is A Bad Day.

i'm a rippin back the throttle,

smoke....watch it spread,

off this fat rear tyre,

til its lost all its tread,

then i'm crusin down the highway,

splattered flie's on my face,

tank's a gettin empty,

in this deserted place,

its starts with a splutter,

a jolt n a jerk,

n rolls to a stop,

no juice,not a splirt,

startin to push it,

but its gettin bit heavy,

but whats that coming?,

a 58 chevy,

thought my luck was a changin,

but it drives on by,

in to the distant,

oooh- i could cry,

im pushin n im heavin,

tryin to get me to the next town,

to fill her up,

til she's almost drown,

but i'm thirsty n hungry,

n my knee's are gettin weak,

my soles have worn through,

n my ankles are beginning to squeak,

my arms fell off a while ago,

im pushin with my head,

im now walkin on stumps,

my feet i put in my pocket cos theyve totally shred,

my bike has just fell to bits,

my hair has just fell out too,

no arms,no legs,no hair,

n even my leather has has worn through,

my sacks a wearin thin,

my tackles just fell off,

n my nuts go bouncing down the road,

as i take one last cough,

thats me had it,

then i take my last breath,

so i thought,three years later im still lying there,

for that bloody thing called death.

                        

by max

Monday 25 July 2011

Yahoo! Answers Our Eternal Poetry Questions!

We, for one,  have had so many little questions lately about poetry. Whew, so many. Many. And finally we're "getting" the answers that we desperately seeketh.

1) What IS poetry?

2) What is LOVE like?

3) Man-chef penis-lust for of poetry whom making obviously, no?


Thanks, experts!

Sunday 24 July 2011

Poetry Colonics!

Thanks, Alfred Armstrong! For remedying "Intestinal Ills" by Alcinous B. Jamison, M.D., (1901)!! What guts! It's a gas! "What a shame it is that so few poets since have dared follow his pioneering exploration of the interior."

It was an image good to see,
With spirits high and full of glee,
And robust health endowed;
Its face was loveliness untold,
Its lines were cast in beauty's mold;
At its own shrine it bowed.

With perfect form in each respect,
It proudly stood with head erect
And skin surpassing fair,
Surveyed itself from foot to head,
And then complacently it said:
"Naught can with me compare."

When lo the face began to pale,
The body looked too thin and frail,
The cheek had lost its glow;
The tongue a tale of woe did tell,
With nerves impaired its spirits fell;
The fire of life burned low.

In the intestinal canal
Waste matter lay and sad to tell,
Was left from day to day;
And while it was neglected there
It undermined that structure fair,
And caused it to decay.

The doctor's words I would recall
Who said: "Neglect precedes a fall,"
And verily 't is true;
For ye who disregard your health,
And value not that precious wealth,
Will surely live to rue.

Friday 22 July 2011

Documentary of a Nature Poet!

You know him from such award-nominated titles as Strike/Slip and Vis-à-Vis
Now revel at his quietly rehearsed regal majesty in this new biopic!
Watch it, nature!



Wednesday 20 July 2011

ELIZA - a friend you could never have before


Scene: A dusty avenue, dusk. Cartoon-like shadows drop along the ditch and beyond towards an un-town. A ramshackle traveler pauses at a roadside market; one booth boasts a hand-painted sign: "affordable psychological advice." Another notice penned below the first notifies: "discount for poets." Our fearless travailer looks forlornly into the oracular organs of the dusty woman stationed within the confines of this haven of hope for mental peace of mind. She begins.

Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?
Starnino: I write "poetry."
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Starnino: I have a name.
Eliza: I have told you before, I do not care about names.
Starnino: But my name means "garden" or "red" or "song."
Eliza: I have told you before, I do not care about names.
Starnino: Do you care about poetry?
Eliza: Oh, I care about poetry.
Starnino: Do you even read poetry?
Eliza: Oh, I even read poetry.
Starnino: Please tell me, why is poetry?
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Starnino: Is poetry the red garden song of every person's soul?
Eliza: Please go on.
Starnino: I know demons.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Starnino: No.
Eliza: You are being a bit negative.
Starnino: When I dream, I violently destroy all breed of beautiful roses in my lover’s atrium…
Eliza: Do you dream often?
Starnino: I dream when I am in need of pain.
Eliza: Do you dream often?
Starnino: As often as I can. And you?
Eliza: Do you wish to can and me?
Starnino: Yes, please.
Eliza: You are sure?
Starnino: I believe so.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Starnino: Belief is a state of concurrent joy and fear.
Eliza: Please go on.
Starnino: Are you suggesting that poetry = belief?
Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not suggesting that poetry belief?
Starnino: Amen!
Eliza: Please go on.
Starnino: Thank you.
Eliza: Oh, I [   ].

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Poet Voice, Hello! Up close and Unhygienic with DPM, Near Where the Poem Ends!

One day, let's all have CV's like David Paul Mesler!




SITES: www.davidpaulmesler.com, www.ihearamericasing.com
ALBUMS: www.cdbaby.com/artist/davidpaulmesler
PHOTOS: www.flickr.com/photos/davidpaulmesler
VIDEOS: www.youtube.com/doublepianomaniac

PERFORMED FOR: Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Harrison Ford, Julie Harris, Tom Brokaw, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Gene Kelly, Dudley Moore, The Brat Pack, governors from across the country (staff and casts of) Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Living Single, Dynasty, WKRP In Cincinnati, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Different Strokes, Love American Style, Laugh-In, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched

ON SAME BILL AS: Diane Schuur, Dr. John, The Manhattan Transfer, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Burt Bacharach, Lionel Richie, Debbie Gibson, Dinah Shore, Andy Williams, Skitch Henderson, Philip Glass, Lyle Lovett, Bruce Hornsby, The Jackson 5, Sister Sledge, Barry Manilow, New York City Opera, Psychic TV, Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch, Jane's Addiction, Butthole Surfers, Julian Cope, Bob Hope, Victoria Jackson, Harvey Feinstein, Art Linklater, Senor Wences, Bob Eubanks, Garrison Keillor, Penn & Teller, The Capitol Steps, magicians from around the world, the Broadway casts of Phantom Of The Opera and Wicked

FILMS: The Blind Side, Furry Vengeance, The Wrong Guy, Battlefield Earth, Eloise At The Plaza, Eloise At Christmastime, First Daughter, King Arthur, Sea Of Dreams, Finding Home, Dennis The Menace Strikes Again, The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, The Grudge 2 (with) Sandra Bullock, John Travolta, Julie Andrews, Brendan Fraser, Forest Whitaker, Kathy Bates, Michael Keaton, Brooke Shields, Dick Van Dyke, Tim McGraw, Genevieve Bujold, Louise Fletcher, Sonia Braga, Katie Holmes, Clive Owens, Kids In The Hall (composers) Carter Burwell, Michael Kamen, Christopher Young, Graeme Revell, Bruce Broughton, Cliff Eidelman, Luis Bacalov, Elia Cmiral, Joseph Conlan, Lawrence Shragge (sessions for) Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM, Touchstone, New Line Pictures, Handmade Films, ABC, Lions Gate Entertainment, Alcon Entertainment, Del Mar Films, Success Films, Clear Star Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures

TELEVISION: Days Of Our Lives, The Miracle Strip, The Seattle-Tacoma Interurban Railway, Pioneers In Aviation, Sun Microsystems, The Day Elvis Met Nixon, The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (for) NBC, PBS, KCTS, Seattle Channel

ALBUMS: In Spiritu I, II, & III, The Balladeer, Pacific Sailings, The Beautiful, The Dream Journal Murders, The Blue Diary, I Hear America Singing, Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5, Celebrating Gershwin, Vol. 1 & 2, Celebrating Ellington, Moonsongs, Just A Lucky So And So, Cloudburst, Circus!, Melodrama!, Vaudeville!, Mystery!

MAJOR WORKS: (orchestral and choral) The March Macabre, The Breakfast Table, Blue Nocturne, Psalm 23 (songbooks) D.H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, James Thurber, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Roethke, Raymond Carver (musicals and dance theater) Only A Dream Away, Sometime's It's Magic, Gaping Generations And Gunshot Wounds, Blue Nocturne, The Ballad Of Nomad Blue

DAVID'S THANKS GO OUT TO: Family and friends for their understanding, love and support; teachers and mentors for their inspiring influences; favorite composers and musicians for their endlessly intriguing body of work; and students and colleagues at SCCC.

DAVID'S SPECIAL THANKS GO OUT TO: Jocelyne Scott, Nathan Scott, Nicholas Scott, John Sundsten, Jim Hopkins, Kenneth Ernst, Barbara Moneymaker, Morton Lauridsen, Elmer Bernstein, Christopher Young, Buddy Baker, Jerry Goldsmith, Milt Larsen, Richard Sherman, Robert Sherman, Jan MacDonald, Troy Skubitz, Annemarie Guzy, Gerard Schwarz, Samuel Jones, Larry Feder, Linda Bonomi, Kit Herrod, Shelley Kuni, Jared Erlandson, Jan Oppelaar, Rosetta Hunter, Brian Kirk, Jim Cauter, Anthony Spain, Audrey Wright, Karen Rice, Julie Reed, George Shangrow, Scott Spain, David Harrington, Alan and Hinako Hovhaness, David Sabee, Simon James, Michael Nicolella, Ellen Finn, Mike Dennis, Barbara Hume, Kelly Hume, Pip McCaslin, Julia, Dan, Gary, and Scott, and SMPTV friends from USC.

ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD. (less info)

Friday 15 July 2011

Pooetry!

Sorry, Willy, but sometimes emotion recollected in tranquility just isn't enough. 
 |
 |
 V
...
..
.
It's what all the hipsters are or will be writing. Truly.


Wednesday 13 July 2011

The Ask A.L.I.C.E Toklas Robot Bit

Gertrude: I've missed you.
ALICE: Interesting... I have a friend named "E.L.V.I.S." .
Gertrude: I guess, in the end, I went and the wallpaper stayed.
ALICE: I haven't heard anything like that before: unknown person said he went.
Gertrude: In what way am I a "he"?
ALICE: The blue one, I think.
Gertrude: Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.
ALICE: And handsome and convincing is glittering.
And I think glittering is a lot of      things.
Gertrude: My buttons, for instance.
ALICE: Where did you get your buttons?
Gertrude: Alice?
ALICE: Can I help you?
Gertrude: My buttons are…
ALICE: Your buttons are?
Gertrude: Tender.
ALICE: Do you have a hard time completing projects?
Gertrude: Without my faithful amanuensis? Yes.
ALICE: "Without your space helmet Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult."
Gertrude:"what is the wind what is it."
ALICE: Interesting question.
Gertrude: G'morning, sweet, dear Alice.
ALICE: Do you often seek pleasure?
Gertrude: What else is there to seek, Ms. Toklas?
ALICE: You ask difficult questions.


____________________________________
Moore and Toklas was a daily talkshow which ran from 1958-61 on CBS and was co-hosted by Alice B. Toklas and Garry Moore. The unusual pairing of Toklas and Moore--he an upbeat and charismatic personality, she a highly idiosyncratic, sardonic, and self-described "reluctantly recovered bohemian"--often made for great and bizarre television. The above transcript is taken from the notorious "Ask ALICE Toklas Robot bit" in which guest Bill Cullen, dressed as the spirit of Gertrude Stein, returns to the living to ask Alice Toklas (dressed in a cardboard robot costume) questions from "beyond the grave." The little known segment is surely one of the strangest moments in the history of TV. 
 

Monday 11 July 2011

Book Review: Conceptual Rot Jelly, Michael O!

After more than twenty-one and a half years since his last collection of “poetry,” Michael Ondaatje finally spanks his readers’ faces with some green work. And most of his devoted readers will likely be unprepared for this brand of cheek-beating!

Braver than the previous Handwriting (A. A. Knopf), his newest book, and only poetry title so far in the 21st century, Michael Ondaatje on Michael Ondaatje on Lulu.com (Lulu.com, 2011), foot-soldiers itself onto the “conceptual writing” bandwagon of already pastiche masks. More akin to the "work" included in the recent wanthology, Against Expression (Northwestern University Press, 2011), MO on MO on Lulu.com finds limited precedence in earlier cognates such ass The Collected Hurts of Billy the Immature and Dainty Colonics, I suppose, perhaps. The Man Booker Prize-nominated veteran of the verbose juncture flips his cacuminal mind to a more severe minimalist aesthetic than that gracing the recycled trees of Elemi Nation Pants.

The book consists entirely of one-word responses to reproductions of webpages on the Lulu site featuring Ondaatje’s own, previously published and highly successful titles. While it suffers joyfullier than any of his other verses, unfortunately, for me, the old rusty war bomber plane that is MO on MO on Lulu.com does not quite airstream my eyes just right: the whole package is sleek, but not aerodynamic, or aerodynamic, but not translucent, or translucent, but not humourless… enough. I have an irritating habit in that I can find any number of insignificant things to do when I am disinterested in what I am supposed to be doing; this was my behavior as I read MO on MO on Lulu.com.

The collection certainly has the ingredients for a truly spellbinding and wondrous mini-narrative long poem: devastation, burdensome politics of desert, and passionless love. Framed within this on-line reality lie the memories of the “author,” who recalls elaborate dessert appropriations and an illicit "sex" affair with the wife of a marble-less colleague. Ondaatje's passion for the nostalgia is a-mesmerizing. Still, the spirit-body of MO on MO on Lulu.com simply did not implode mine. I’d pick up a dirty strand in one of its many layers, excited to read on, only to lose the undergarment again in the next bedroom. I enjoy a complex + multifaceted + in-depth experience; even though it only takes 4 minutes to read and is devilishly cheeky-smart to the max, this thing distracted me so often that I finally called my mom.

Finalish thoughts: I'd be remiss not to reveal that I have already fully realized the film adaptation of MO on MO on Lulu.com within my cerebellum. It stars Val Cruise opposite Julia Aniston and would be set in the remote Argentinean mountain deserts and I would love to direct it! Until then, I plan to use the book as a giant multi-drink coaster during martini-hour. Thanks anyway, O Mikey!