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So yeah, I’m tweeting away these days. Tweets of exactly 140 characters (including spaces and line breaks). They’re on the side of the page and on my Twitter page. I’m not sure if these are poems or just stupidity, but I’m bored and I need some other outlet for my energy.
Let me know if you enjoy them or hate them. I’ll let you know if you’re awesome or a dumb dumb head.
I first became aware of Scantily Clad Press in March when Chad directed me to Stan Apps’ chapbook Grover Fuel. I didn’t take much notice of the press, as the chapbook was up on Issuu and I wasn’t too curious at the time to look any further.
The chapbooks in their catalog, though, testify to a fairly radical/edgy editorial aesthetic, far more interesting than most of the poetry you can get in journals these days. If you’re looking for poets-with-names (in post-avant/flarf/whatever circles at least), you can read some new work by Nada Gordon or, if you haven’t yet, Stan Apps. But there’s plenty of work from poets you haven’t heard of for you to discover, too.
I’m sending them a manuscript today, so maybe there’ll be another unheard-of there to read soon.
Cross yer fingers.
Carl Andre, Equivalent VIII (1966)
You can read my current poetic project, The Same, currently being published serially at Gnoetry Daily. I might be pulling five or six of them soon so I can send them out for publication in print journals, but for now they’re all available to read, even the ones I’m not going to include in the final edit.
The poems are all written using the Gnoetry 0.2 program. There is currently a pool of 19 source texts, of which I more or less arbitrarily select three for each poem. The source texts are mostly from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century, and focus on islands, continental philosophy, religion and scientific discovery. The form I have chosen is three eight-line stanzas in blank verse. As a further constraint, I have barred all personal and personal possessive pronouns to the best of my ability. The titles are taken from each poem’s first two words, which are “the ______.”
As each poem develops, stanza by stanza, several themes arise from the beginning object (“the ______”) and are explored semantically and/or aurally and brought into relationship with each other. Syntax is broken or twisted to suit the building of these relationships, with the hope to creating an impression or understanding that rises above – while dwelling within – the words and ideas.
Currently the project is being influenced by Jean Baudrillard’s The Transparency of Evil, whose themes and perceptions seem to be eerily in line with my own. What is meant by “the same” in this project is meant to be multiple, but I think it is something that is wrong, perhaps the “profound indifference” of contemporary consumer culture; and possibly a solution, already present, ubiquitous, secret. Are these poems definitions? The opposite? What is the opposite of a definition, and would the imposition of anti-definitions be a meaningful act? These are the questions I’m working through right now.
In any case, enjoy the poems!
Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn
Tomorrow I’ll be flying to New York City for a 10 day visit. Besides going to see a saxophone orchestra, the Greg Osby 6tet, and possibly the Colbert Report (cross your fingers) the Vandermark 5, I’ll be visiting Adam Parrish’s Digital Writing with Python course on its final day. Afterwards, there will be a final performance of their digital works, Strip, split, join, print. Love the title.
Check back for some pics and updates.
