My poem "Hushed, Quadrophonic" appears in the new Colorado Review and is featured on the magazine's website. Have a look here.

Two poems from last summer, "Lenya to Weil, 1928" and "Didymus," are up at The Offending Adam, along with an introduction by Ryan Winet. There's a link to the poems on the left side of this page or you can get to the poems here.

David Shapiro, David Lehman, and Haiku

Over the past few months David Lehman has been putting up haiku-based poems that he and David Shapiro exchanged over the last few years. They've been lovely to see, and I'm constantly amazed by how surprising and breathtaking Shapiro's work is, no matter how often I return to the poems. "Summer Afternoon" provides a wonderful example of what makes Shapiro's work vital in the way he moves toward describing the physical qualities of the day in his first four stanzas:

     Today was unbear-
     ably beautiful like a
     bear walking thru school!

     Today was amaz-
     ingly cool and calm like fish
     rushing to the knife!

     today the sun hit
     the bricks as if a painter
     added more yellow!

     today supremely
     lucid and blue like bluejays
     imitating sky! 

Stanzas one, three, and four all include that basic structure of a gasp of surprise between line two and and the unexpected shift that occurs in line three--the shift in line three of stanza four particularly appeals to me, where the potential cliche of "blue like bluejays" is transformed by the bluejays' imitation of sky, beautifully complicating the simile whose function is itself a form of imitation.

While this structure of a surprise in line three might become expected just from its strong presence in the first stanza (where no concrete image appears until the surprise itself appears), Shapiro is not simply inventing--which itself might well be enough!--but is moving into a description of phenomenal qualities of the day: the temperature was cool, the air was calm, the sun was bright, and the sky was powerfully blue (presumably no clouds). While an unsympathetic reader might read the lines as purely fanciful, they are, in fact, the opposite of fancy and instead use the tools of a postmodern rhetoric to grasp toward a depiction of the physicality of the surrounding world, grasping line by line toward the world's physicality in a similar to William Carlos Williams or Theodore Roetke.

The poems are filled with exciting moments like these, and David Lehman just put up their first haiku exchange from back in 2003.

First Exchange (Shaprio and Lehman)
"Summer Afternoon" (Shaprio)
"One Plus One" (Lehman)
"L'Shana Tova" (Lehman)

The site also includes a related poem by David Shapiro, "After Ryokan," which writes from the work of the Japanese poet Ryokan.

"After Ryokan"

Shampoo 34

Following quickly on the heels of BRJ, I have a couple of poems in the new issue of Shampoo. The issue includes some great work, including a poem from my friend Patrick Duggan. Take a look here.

Black Robert Journal Issue 2

I have new poems up at Black Robert Journal, Issue 2.

The Idea of the Alien in Jack Spicer's Dictated Books

Wow. I just found something wild.

Excited about Kevin Killian and Peter Gizzi's new collection of Jack Spicer's poetry, I've been reading everything on Spicer that I can find--Spicer's poems and writing about Spicer's poetry. During one of my searches for writing about Spicer, I found a very large PDF file.

The file comes from Simon Fraser University. Apparently, when John Granger was there in 1982, he wrote his Master's thesis on Jack Spicer. Robin Blaser was part of the committee, and someone took the time to scan all 172 pages of the thesis for digital documentation.

I haven't read the text yet, but I'm delighted and excited, since it's so difficult to find critical writing on Spicer. If you're interested, the file can be found here.

Cannot Exist 3

I just received my copy of Cannot Exist 3 in the mail, which includes a couple of my poems. It's a nifty journal, and delightfully Andy Gricevich included the previous issues, including lovely writers like Andrew Zawacki and Lisa Jarnot. (This reminds me: if you haven't read Andrew Zawacki's Anabranch, go get a copy--it's one of the best recent books of poetry I've read this past year.)

Take a look at the lineup, and submissions are open for the next issue.

Issue 3:
Alex Burford
Mark Cunningham
Carrie Etter
Lawrence Giffin
William Gillespie
Kevin Killian
Mark Lamoureux
Bonnie Jean Michalski
Sheila E. Murphy
Andy Nicholson
Dirk Stratton

Cannot Exist

Taylor Mead

I'm crying quietly to myself because I'm in Las Vegas and this Friday (September 19), Warhol's film Lonesome Cowboys will be playing in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I've been dying to see the film for years, and it's shown practically nowhere. To make it all the more painful (or wonderful, if you can actually go), a discussion with Warhol Superstar and underground film legend Taylor Mead will follow the film.

So, in an attempt to pretend that I'm not envying the citizens of San Francisco, I've been watching a few You Tube videos of Taylor Mead this week. Highlights include...



Taylor Mead reading his poem "Song to Jake Gyllenhall" at The Bowery


Taylor Mead remembering Jackie, Candy, and Hollie. Apparently they all went to poetry readings back then. My week is made.


An interview with Taylor Mead.


A preview of Excavating Taylor Mead, a documentary about Taylor Mead that will be shown at the Yerba Buena Center on Sunday, September 21.

BlazeVOX Raffle and Bake Sale

The small press publisher BlazeVOX needs your help! (And my help!) According to Geoffrey Gatza, their publisher, the press is $4000 in debt. And the solution? Bake sale and raffle!

BlazeVOX is a wonderful little press, and I would like to see them hang around. Let's say you and I go buy some food and raffle tickets: http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

Monday Night Lit

My poem "Waves" has been published in issue 8 of Monday Night Lit. The website for Monday Night Lit can be found here, but issue 8 hasn't been put up on their site yet.

Review in Galatea Resurrects

The newest issue of Galatea Resurrects contains a review of Oranges & Sardines from Eileen Tabios and a wonderfully long consideration of the Editor's Letter. Read the review here, and if you haven't read the first issue of Oranges & Sardines, read a copy online here.

America: a Prophecy

Early this month, I read Blake's America: a Prophecy. With the fourth of July arriving and the war continuing, it seemed to fit the moment.

I've loved Blake since my mid-teens: The Book of Urizen was the first of the prophetic books that I read and it was a major text from that time in my life. The prophetic books attracted me as someone entering writing, I think, as Blake's vision enwraps like a dream does, and they attracted me spiritually, as the demiurge styled Urizen--a vain Old Testament god--was unlike anything I had come upon in conventional Christianity and Blake's rewriting of Genesis gave myth a life I had never before experienced.

Since Urizen I've read a number of other prophetic books, but I hadn't gotten around to reading America before. I'm not sure why--it's one of the more famous prophetic books, it's a quick read (so time is no excuse), and from second-hand accounts, I expected it to be a powerful text. It might be that the text connects to Blake's work about the other continents, and reading across the world is a more daunting task. Or maybe it's that I'm nervous about historical prophecy.

But if historical prophecy has, in the past, kept me from reading America, this month it urged me toward it. I've been trying to think through a segment of Robert Duncan's essay "Changing Perspectives in Reading Whitman":

The oracular mode enters poetry and history where profound contradictions come
into play. In the widening of what we call the credibility gap, incredible
transformations may come into the statement of truth. Oracles are to be read
many ways or both ways.

I take Duncan to mean that there are specific historical moments when it is possible to make truth statements that don't function like traditional truth statements--one cannot say that they are either true nor false. This may be possible through the traditional Hegelian dialectic; when there is conflict, war, a strong pull between two established designs for the world (thesis/antithesis, north/south), it is possible for a third voice to make an oracular statement. As in the Hegelian synthesis, this third voice neither affirms nor denies the prior voices and this third voice is not even possible (or at least comprehensible) without the passing of the prior voices. The third voice is oracular, insofar as it imagines the whole of the conflict and imagines beyond the conflict; the statement moves toward its own possibility and into its own comprehensibility.



America does imagine the whole of the conflict. The necessity of rebellion is affirmed and argued for, but the violence of rebellion appears as a dangerous fire, a fire that consumes and continually threatens to rage beyond any control. Orc, the figure of rebellion, arrives as demonic, and while Blake champions the desire and freedom of Hell, here he recognizes the danger that can/will come (historically, the even bloodier French Revoloution).

Does America imagine beyond the conflict of the American Revolution? I think it does, but I'm still trying to understand how. America isn't purely about the American Revolution--Blake is trying to describe the action of control and resistance and show the Revolution as the enactment of a type of movement. But I'm sure there's more. I might still be at a loss because I haven't seen the movement, the motion in it's entirity: it's preceeded by Africa (in The Song of Los) and followed by Europe.

I'm continuing to consider Duncan's thoughts on oracle. I wish that more writers were thinking about this mode, either in Duncan's conception or in some other manner. I remain nervous about oracular claims, as the obvious danger of hubris and moral superiority sit with such statments. I imagine these dangers put off other poets as well.

But fear doesn't mean the oracular mode shouldn't be considered (just as the consideration doesn't mean a blank check should be given to all fortune telling). As a way to engage with the world, with events in the world and as a way to engage with history through a full imaging of possiblity instead of simplistic moralizing, the oracular mode shouldn't be abondoned, even if it needs to be radically re-envisioned for contemporary society.

Superflat (with Takashi Murakami)

When I was at the Toledo Museum of Art a couple of weeks ago, I saw this scupture--"Mr. Wink (Oval Sitting atop a Cosmos Ball)." The piece, as I'm sure is evident, is plastic, and the Cosmos Ball includes a CD by the band Zak Yumiko.


Murakami is best known as the prime mover behind Japan's Superflat movment and as the artist who created the cover art for Kanye West's album Graduation (oddly enough, the only of Kanye's albums I don't own). I've come across Murakami's work a few times via internet, and while I may have seen an exibition of his in San Francisco--it was either Murakami or an artist related to Superflat--it was seeing this piece in person that got me thinking about his work.


"Mr. Wink" falls in with a number of Murakami's plastic figurine work. Some of these pieces follow "Mr. Wink" in terms of being child-like, intentionally comercial, and blindingly colorful:

But then, other work of Murakami's takes the most vapid elements of anime's style, and rather than ephasizing their commerciality, deforms them into the grotesque, the overly sexual:

I've been wondering if a similar aesthetics is possible in writing, and if it is possible, what it might look like. The closest that I can think of is the twisting blank narratives of Daniil Kharms and John Yau. Both are nearly as colorful as Superflat, both are nearly as sharp, but I can't think of a writer whose textual surface nears this plastic.

I'm uncertain if work like this could be done in writing. While commercials and movie dialogue may be as financially dependant as the style Murakami works from, I can't think of a type of writing that is displayed in housholds, that could hold the status of decoration.

Ideas, anyone?

Stan Brakhage

I discovered the films of Stan Brakhage by complete accident. A few years ago, when I was living in San Francisco, I read that Bob Grenier was going to give one of his "readings" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I write "readings" with the quotation marks because Grenier doesn't present his poetry in the usual format--stand behind a podium, read poems off a sheet, etc. This is, at least in part, because Grenier's poems don't fit the usual format. Years ago, he gave up typed, black and white poems and started to handwrite his poems in ink. Years ago, he gave up typed, black and white poems and started to write this:

Instead of reading his poems, he shows slides of poems like the ones above and tries to talk about them, focusing especially on the process of reading or deciphering the handwriting itself. I had heard about Grenier's presentations of his poems, but the "reading" at Yerba Buena was my first opportunity to see Grenier in person.

I went with a few friends from graduate school--I think I was the only one there who knew Grenier's work, it was my idea to go--and when we got there, we discovered that the other half of the night's bill was a showing of some of Stan Brakhage's films. I had never seen them, and I didn't know who Stan Brakhage was.

The films were something of a revelation. In their refusal to give narrative, to give a static image to hold on to, they made me aware of time in the way that Gertrude Stein's unfolding grammar made me constantly aware of the present time. In both there is no place to rest, so the "now" of time is insistant, is constantly asserting itself.

And in both there is a depth of emotion. While much "experimental" work falls away from me and is forgotten, work like Brakhage's films remains with me, close to me. More and more, I believe it is because of this emotion and this care on which Brackhage's abstract films are built. I do want work that pushes and breaks the norms of genre, but I want it to retain a fullness of humanity. Brakhage's films are beautiful.

San Francisco Reading

Next week I will be in San Francisco for a wedding and a poetry reading. If you're reading this, you're in the Bay Area, and you're free next Monday, why don't you come out and see me? There will be music, there will be my poetry, and there will be the wonderful poetry of Joseph Lease.

Details: here.

Moria

I have five poems in the brand-new issue of Moria. I'm happy to see that Bill Allegrezza decided to keep the poems in their original larger, airier formatting. Link to Moria

Name Checked, Yo

I've been name checked at Brooklyn Copeland's blog:

here

I need a friendly looking dog to put on my blog.

Poems, Poems, Poems!

I have poems in the new Ocho 19. Zoom: Ocho 19.

Black Robert Journal

The first issue of Black Robert Journal is up, and it contains a few of my poems. The journal is being edited by Alexander Jorgensen, a poet who has been living in China the past six years. It's a good looking journal. It's got some great work. You can find Black Robert Journal at: http://www.black-robert-journal.com/ And you can find my poems in the journal at: http://www.black-robert-journal.com/AndyNicholson.html

Review of Earthlight

A few notes on the edition itself before talking about the poems. The edition's title Earthlight is something of a misnomer, as Earthlight is the title of a 1923 collection of Breton's poetry, while this translation contains poetry from 1919 to 1936. Breton's book, the original Earthlight, is included in the translation, but it is only a small part of the entire book.

Coming in at nearly 300 pages and starting with Breton's intentionally abrasive Dada poetry, this might not be the best place to start reading Breton. (Mary Ann Caws' book might be a better introduction.) However, if the size is uninviting for an unfamiliar reader, it is the opposite for a reader who is already interested in Breton's work.

The poems and sequences are here in their entirity, a rarity in the world of published translations, where shortened sequences and fragments of books are usually preferred.

The trajectory of Breton's writing and the range of Breton's writing might be discussed in a full review of this book, but in these few short notes, I must be selective.

What made me sit down and write about this book was my experience rereading the sequence The Air of the Water. This sequence of fourteen untitled poems startled me with their vitality:

   I dream I see you endlessly superimposed upon yourself
   You're sitting on the high coral stool
   In front of your mirror always in its first quarter
   Two fingers on the water wing of your comb
   And at the same time
   You're returning from a journey you're lingering the last one left in the grotto
   Streaming with lightning
   You don't recognize me

For all the poets interested in film techniques like montage, Breton's subtle understanding of how film techniques can be applied to poetry remains without peer. In this selection, for example, he uses the simultaneity of superimposition to make montage coexistant with narrative and then contrasts the multiplicity of superimposition with the singularity of the speaker's voice.

These poems as exciting as the current poetry of David Shapiro and John Yau, and a reader could gain a lot reading the three poets side by side. With this book in stores and a reprint of Mary Ann Caws' and Jean-Pierre Cauvin's Poems of Andre Breton in circulation, hopefully Breton's poetry (as opposed to his pronouncements, essays, and novels) will garner more attention.

Now if only someone could convince David Antin to collect his translations of Breton...