the unquiet grave | "adding insult to inquiry"

2009-06-16T18:57:00.001-04:00

We have moved shop to here, America.

2008-12-05T20:31:00.003-05:00

Perhaps I am rounding the bend on completing my third full-length manuscript, called Consequence.This is the picture that I've been using as a front piece for the document, from Andre Leroi-Gourhan's Gesture & Speech:These are the epigraphs I've used as I've written the manuscript, though it's never certain whether they'll remain:Between a culture of touch and a culture of thought is the culture

2008-11-15T17:20:00.001-05:00

Tony Tost's Winter Soundz 2008hereorhere1. Yes, "Beyond and Before"2. Daryl Hall, "The Farther Away I Am"3. Fleetwood Mac, "Sentimental Lady"4. Dennis Wilson, "River Song"5. Bee Gees, "Melody Fair"6. Buddy Miles, "That's the Way Life Is"7. Kevin Coyne, "Marlene"8. The Beau Brummels, "Jessica"9. Bob Dylan, "Gospel Plow"10. Tom T. Hall, "That's How I Got to Memphis"11. Guy Clark, "Instant Coffee

2008-10-23T20:47:00.003-04:00

I scrolled through some of my posts from '04, fer shits and grins.What the hell happened to that guy? I kind of dig that guy.Who replaced him with the twirling academic gargoyle that sporadically pops up on here these days?Duke, where have you hidden my soul sauce?What else of I have you bent over in your politically responsible gloom?

2008-10-21T16:57:00.001-04:00

My dissertation is centered on the poetry and poetics of Ezra Pound (1885-1972), that troubling impresario of what we now call Modernism. His profiles are manifold: poet, translator and critic; composer, editor and discoverer of geniuses; gadfly, Fascist and would-be whisperer to kings. Although Pound – who lived most of his life in exile, and who was tried for treason after WWII and committed to

2008-08-07T11:49:00.002-04:00

I hope Rod Smith doesn't mind that suddenly I have a vague urge to play a game of chess with him. Rod used to play chess with John Cage, who cut his teeth on the game by playing with Marcel Duchamp. I don't know how to play chess. And thus this parable on genealogy and tradition comes to an end.

2008-07-29T15:38:00.001-04:00

Great, generous, warm-spirited look at three recent North Carolina, Lucifer Poetics Group poetry titles by fellow Lucipoer Brian Howe -- he takes a long dip into Chris Vitiello's Irresponsibility, Ken Rumble's Key Bridge, and my Complex Sleep. It's over here, at Fanzine.

2008-07-20T08:06:00.003-04:00

Tony Tost's Summer Soundz 2008(Update: I recommend clipping the Roches song off of the mix: it works better w/o it. )1) Maria Sabina, "Na Ai - Ni Tso"2) Dennis Wilson, "Thoughts of You"3) John Phillips, "Topanga Canyon"4) Nicky Hopkins, "Waiting for the Band"5) The Everly Brothers, "Ventura Boulevard"6) Dion, "(He's Got) The Whole World In His Hands"7) Tom T. Hall, "I Hope It Rains at My Funeral"

2008-06-10T13:54:00.002-04:00

A few selections from my longer "Elephant & Obelisk" sequence are available now here at Front Porch Journal. Thanks to Trey Moody and the other folks at the journal.More selections appear at Typo and in a forthcoming Third Coast.

2008-05-11T19:55:00.004-04:00

One thing I think I was trying to do in my "System Says" piece (a couple posts below) is to think through some things bugging me and to think through them using Kenneth Goldsmith's words as quoted and linked to by Linh and to combine them with thoughts about embodiment as Linh had quoted Reginald Shepherd. I'm not a fan at all of the way Goldsmith talks about poetry or the arts: he does what I

2008-05-10T11:03:00.004-04:00

My third list:Minor Field (genre)Re-Imagining Language: Poetry in English{North America; 1950 – present}{Ur-Text}Jed Rasula & Steve McCaffery | Imagining Language: An Anthology (1998){Some Precursors, North American & Otherwise}Hugo Ball (Germany) | Flight Out of Time: a Dada Diary (1920-21)William Blake (England)

2008-05-06T23:02:00.002-04:00

System Says(for Linh Dinh)I thought to myself, wow, writing is so far behind other art forms in this regard. . .Twenty five years after Baudrillard, these poetry students were still prioritizing Romantic notions of authenticity -- "truth", "individuality" and "honesty" -- over any other form of expression. My god! Is it a case of naivety, amnesia or just plain ignorance?. . .Now is the time of

2008-05-06T17:22:00.003-04:00

To risk making a fool of myself, I think I'm gonna post one of my four exam answers; this particular question concerned the relation of new media as a theoretical field and my interest in poetry and poetics. My third exam field was experimental poetry in North America post-1950, emphasizing three strains: the oral/musical; the visual; the procedural. In this exam answer I try to sketch out one

2008-05-06T08:28:00.002-04:00

My theory list was heavily influenced by a critical studies in new media course I took with Tim Lenoir my first year and TA'd for my third; my basic notion is to look at poetry & poetics as media-specific productions. Minor Field (Theory): New MediaWriting/Speech/GestureBolter, Jay | Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, 2nd ed. (2001)Clarke, Bruce & Linda

2008-05-05T22:09:00.006-04:00

Jasper posted his lists for his upcoming exam; Duke's approach, I think, is pretty different: our major field lists tend to be massive, beyond the capabilities of one person (at least in the allotted one year reading period), and often are taken to be a kind of landscape one must be able to navigate. The two minor field lists are usually more focused and direct. Our exam structure: two twelve

2008-05-04T18:08:00.000-04:00

2008-04-22T23:19:00.000-04:00

I made an "Unquiet Country" mixtape at muxtape here.

2008-04-17T18:19:00.002-04:00

A titan just passed from the land of the living.RIP Aimé Césaire.

2008-04-01T16:12:00.003-04:00

Welcome back, and greetings, baseball.Love,Tony and Simon, respectivelyPS: Thanks, Mark, for the M's onesie

2008-03-31T20:53:00.004-04:00

Little energy except for a sort of bullet list type deal --* we took Simon to the doctor today for a two-month checkup and for his first immunization shot -- he's 25 inches long and 15 pounds, which puts him in the 98 percentile on length and weight* finished my two 12 hour written exams and my 2 hour oral exam, so now I am ABD (all but dissertation)* my intuition is that my dissertation will

2008-03-29T13:01:00.003-04:00

2008-03-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

Simon waking up on the day he turns seven weeks old.

2008-03-08T11:42:00.002-05:00

2008-03-05T21:50:00.002-05:00

The top twenty greatest country vocalistsname / strength & character / range / expressiveness & emotion / quality of material [all 1-10 range]1. George Jones / 10 / 10 / 10 / 92. Lefty Frizzell / 10 / 9 / 10 / 103. Tanya Tucker / 10 / 10 / 10 / 9 (weighing her pre-1980 recordings very heavily, and discounting most all post-1980)4. Merle Haggard / 10 / 9 / 9 / 105. Loretta Lynn / 10 / 8 / 9 /

2008-02-24T14:41:00.001-05:00

The amazingly interesting and continuously satisfying thing about children is that they are not small adults but a race by themselves. It took the Greeks a long time to recognize the correct proportions between a child's head and his total body length; at first they used the adult ratio in making a child. Primitive people partly recognize this in the elf and gnome myths--just kids. Really they

2008-02-23T23:47:00.002-05:00

2008-02-14T21:56:00.001-05:00

2008-02-13T22:27:00.001-05:00

2008-02-09T22:03:00.001-05:00

2008-02-05T23:45:00.001-05:00

The best review ever? Of course, it helps that it's about a book I wrote . . . Shit yeah, it's cool. And shouldn't it be. Or something like that. Thanks, Mr. Metres.

2008-02-04T21:25:00.001-05:00

Fatherhood so far: a day long lesson in humility that always spills over into night.

2008-01-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

Week 1.Thanks everyone for the kindness and sweetness and warmth.

2008-01-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

Simon Plunkett Tostborn 1/20/088 lbs, 9 ozhealthy & handsome little sluggerLeigh was unreal in her strength & focus, & was able to give Simon a completely natural birth

2007-12-28T11:50:00.000-05:00

Perils are great now, powers are great now. I am all anticipation.

2007-12-26T22:51:00.001-05:00

Missouri Ozarks railroad map, circa 1890. Douglas County is where all of my family resides (in Ava, the county seat); Taney County is where I went to college (near Branson). This map rules. You can click on it to make it larger. That's what he said . . .

2007-12-23T00:29:00.000-05:00

Genius.

2007-12-16T10:37:00.000-05:00

So, Kate & Maggie put together a great book party for Complex Sleep this Thursday. In the spirit of welcoming the book to reality, I didn't read from it but rather read to it, so it would know its place in the world.Afterwards, there was an extended noise making session using multiple instruments and voices. Kate's list of participants include me, Ken Rumble, Matt Mullins, Patrick Herron, Brian

2007-12-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

I think one reason craft, as a pursuit, gets a bad rap in a lot of poetry circles is that it gets lumped in with a lot of mechanical, repetitive, uninspiring work; craft as a vehicle for extending the old guard by its own terms.Thinking today about teaching poetry writing, especially to MFA students (something I've never done), the argument I found myself presenting to an imaginary contemporary

2007-12-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

A very exciting review about a very exciting book.

2007-12-05T21:12:00.000-05:00

Great review of Complex Sleep in the local Independent here, by Jaimee Hills."Perhaps the feat of Tost's experimenting is to create a poem that is unsummarizable, indescribable, one that we can only experience—which is to say the way every poem should be treated. These poems demand that we meet them as we would music."Also, warm words for the book here and here from the two people whose blogs

2007-12-04T16:15:00.000-05:00

The schools had already proved one or two points which need never have been discussed again.In essence, religion was love; in no case was it logic.Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to be known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by

2007-12-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

In Captivity, By Camille Guthrie. Subpress. 2006. 61 pp. In his first Cinema book, Gilles Deleuze discusses a certain logic of placement in Kurosawa: “One does not begin with an individual, going on to indicate the number, the street, the locality, the town; one starts off, on the contrary, from the

2007-11-28T23:35:00.000-05:00

Actually, of course joy, beauty, catharsis don't just become "joy" "beauty" "catharsis" and less real, but rather it is through a process that those scare quotes gesture to that each of those terms reveal their true face: ideologyand thus they enjoy their ultimate reality

2007-11-26T14:52:00.000-05:00

An alternately repulsive and attractive pull: to write the sort of criticism that gambles everything on being, in the end, correct;generosity to the work; humility before any artwork; illumination of details, features, or meaning; tracing of aspects; making tangible the historical texture of the work's production; a making evident of heretofore unnoticed registers of emotion -- none of these are

2007-11-26T10:56:00.001-05:00

His hands (which he always carried like a dog who is walking on his hind legs) seemed to be holding his attention, then he said, raising his large melancholy eyes with the bright twinkle that often came into them: "Why is it that whenever I hear music I think I'm a bride?"-- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

2007-11-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

Rambling thoughts on/around "Number Troubles"Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young's essay, and Jennifer Ashton's response, and the multiple blogworld responses, have been in the back of my mind lately. I don't think I have too much of a definitive or polemical stance to take, but the issues and arguments seem to hook up with some other back-of-the-mind rumblings I've had, especially since the

2007-11-23T22:52:00.000-05:00

This last summer I taught two sessions of creative writing, and will be teaching one session again this upcoming summer. Overall, Duke is exceptionally gentle to its grad students in terms of teaching loads: these summer courses are elective on my part, and are basically a privileged bonus. It'd been about four years since I taught, and I think my approach, confidence and ability have increased

2007-11-13T22:55:00.000-05:00

Complex Sleep reviewed briefly here.Jake Adam York has interesting thoughts about "Ideas of Index," with Complex Sleep registering as one of several objects of attention, here.Also, three poems from Complex Sleep, all from my suite of poems for Leigh, "An Emperor's Nostalgia," were fairly recently featured here, at Poetry Daily.

2007-11-09T23:26:00.000-05:00

Warren Zevon, "Jesus was a Crossmaker" (Judee Sill cover)Bruce Springsteen, "For You" (Hammersmith Odeon 1975)Bob Dylan, "Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)" (St. Louis 2004)Bob Dylan, "Trying to Get to Heaven" (Cardiff 2000)Warren Zevon, "Boom Boom Mancini"some people, "All the Tired Horses" (someplace)The Band, "King Harvest/Long Black Veil"Elvis Presley, "Long Black Limousine"Richard Buckner, from

2007-11-06T17:40:00.000-05:00

Per request (thank you Hilary), here is a letter I wrote to a young student and his teacher back in the spring of '04 in reply to his questions about my poem "Swans of Local Waters" from Invisible Bride.SWANS OF LOCAL WATERS Their color is not a product of the water’s depth; their quiet is not lake’s. These are accidents floating in simple water,

2007-11-05T14:49:00.000-05:00

Stan asked about my notion of the contemporary interrelation between hegemony and eclecticism, wanting a concrete example of what I'm talking about. I started this off in the comments field of my previous post, but it got long enough that it'd probably work better as a separate post. So:Stan,That's a good question, of a specific example. Since this process I'm pointing at is one I believe to

2007-11-01T15:48:00.001-04:00

What It Might Mean to Be Avant-Garde, orA Number of Paragraphsin which I Attempt to Explain to Myselfmy Inability to Embrace Varying PronouncementsEmanating from the Blog of a Clearly Intelligent PoetWith Whom I Seem to Share a Number ofSimilar Reference PointsOne of Stan Apps' attractive statements concerning the relation of artist to tradition: "Because the avant-garde rejects the authority of

2007-10-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

Because apparently I utilize other people's comment streams as my own personal blog . . . .I find it most helpful in my own writing to regard irony as simply a form of mediation, one that can be developed as a technique, but one that doesn't necessarily determine its application.It can of course lead to the same sorts of moral self-splendor as apparent earnestness or sincerity (of intent) (as

2007-10-29T00:36:00.000-04:00

The Thin Man from West PlainsRIP Porter Wagonersurely the greatest country music figure to come from Missouri or the Ozarkshe looked exactly like half of my elder male relativesnow he has escaped the rubber roomalmost an entire generation of hardcore Grand Old Opry stars have passed on now: Wagoner, Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff Little Jimmie Dickens might be the last one left

2007-10-26T22:33:00.000-04:00

As I'm reading and preparing for my prelims in March, I'm culling together a gloss I've titled: "Literary Terms Towards a Poetics of New Media." It's basically my attempt to construct a constellation of terms and usages that I find generative or that I would like to put into play in my own critical project (that is, I don't necessarily subscribe to all of them); it is also intended as a way to

2007-10-26T17:05:00.001-04:00

May you grow up to be righteous, May you grow up to be true, May you always know the truth And see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, Stand upright and be strong, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young.

2007-10-25T20:51:00.001-04:00

Thursday Evening Cage Matchvs."we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience"(Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism)And the winner is . . . .

2007-10-25T13:00:00.001-04:00

Posted my thoughts to a new Stan Apps' post over at his blog. I'm registering them here as well mostly for my own record, to track my current intuitions.1) I don't know how generous or generative it is to say that Nick and Simon are simply saying "you can't get away from tradition"; I guess putting it that vaguely helps keep one from baldly saying that their position is "one must be beholden to

2007-10-25T09:51:00.001-04:00

[ click images to enlarge]Steve McCaffery, from Carnival

2007-10-23T21:44:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if my comment over in this interesting little comment stream will go through, so:As Brent knows, I've been on a little Pragmatist jag recently, and I like what John Dewey has to say:Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction

2007-10-23T19:16:00.000-04:00

[ click to enlarge ]graphic from Andre Leroi-Gourhan's Gesture & Speech

2007-10-22T18:26:00.000-04:00

Monday Evening Ideogram(or, The Blog Post Is the New Paragraph)For my buddy Paul, the ideal death would be this: to walk in the woods, chance upon a bear, and then rush into it, hoping to land one good punch.________Making my rounds as self-appointed part time security guard for the way my two favorite writers get presented, I stumble recently upon a notion of Stein as a writer "who simply does

2007-10-14T17:59:00.000-04:00

Rob McLennan asked me 12 to 20 questions that I answered here.

2007-10-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

Ashley Howe & Brian Howe, "Maybe You Had Wooden Fingers in a Past Life" 16 minutes, debuted at the minor/american reading series.

2007-10-10T17:27:00.000-04:00

[ click on above to enlarge, or, better yet, follow link below ]Mipoesias presents us with one of the, if not the, best things Matthew Henriksen has ever written. All four poems are great, but "Aubade" is spectacular.

2007-10-08T13:35:00.001-04:00

Zachary Schomburg has some amazing poems here. Read 'em.

2007-10-06T00:30:00.001-04:00

It's Leigh's birthday today!Here's to my beautiful chicken!

2007-09-29T18:46:00.000-04:00

I'm like Fredric Jameson with bling on (I'm complex).

2007-09-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

Fred Moten, from In the BreakSo another big part of what drives these fragments is interest in what is given in or emanates from the movement from the harmony of thinking and being, thought and reality (formations from the musics of Parmenides and Wittgenstein), to that harmony's figuration in signs. We could think this also as the movement from "

2007-09-20T21:14:00.000-04:00

Every few years I indulge in a book buying spree: 100 - 150 bucks on gaps in our library. U of California Press' big sale is the occasion this time; about half the purchases will allow me to return some heavyweight books to the Duke library system, and allow me to scribble in their margins. The other half will be first time reads. Some great deals, the whole package, with shipping, is about

2007-09-20T15:01:00.001-04:00

Ever feel like we're in the middle of a great poetry Renaissance? Me too. The deeper I (quite happily) descend into the entrails of academia, the greater my love for the worlds of poetry, and the healthier the energies, imaginations and struggles of the poetry world seem.I'd like to suggest an immediate detour to this piece by Jasper Bernes in the new Action, Yes.6.2 While the list-servs and

2007-09-20T13:46:00.000-04:00

My present thought about immediacy: that it exists only in representation, and that that is its reality: as an indexical sign of a possible state of affairs around which systems may be assembled. I suppose it all, right now, comes down to a certain stance, and what can be done with that stance. For whatever reason, my first jump in this is to think about history, or historicizing, and how it

2007-09-19T22:34:00.000-04:00

RIPMegan Matthews, author of the most consistently interesting and illuminating and intelligent posts over at Moistworks, has died at the age of 36. She was in the middle of writing a book.

2007-09-18T00:11:00.000-04:00

from Publisher's WeeklyComplex SleepTony Tost. Univ. of Iowa Press, $16 (106p) ISBN 978-1-58729-621-5The eight sequences of Tost's sophomore effort are brimming with ambition and, with unusual maturity for an emerging poet, they grapple with looming questions of form, perception and the role of poetry. Whitman Award–winner Tost (Invisible Bride) shares with Charles Olson (whose work casts a

2007-09-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

Addendum to "the poetic."I'm basically trying to see if I can suggest a use for the term poetic that can have some use for me, critically. It seems that if someone says "oh, it's a poetic film," it usually means: meandering, flowery, self-indulgent. Of course, this seems to be playing off of popular conceptions about what poetry is like, or (maybe more accurately right now, as poems themselves

2007-08-23T19:15:00.000-04:00

Since my last post inspired such a vigorous and clamoring response by my nation of commenters, I figure I should strike again while the topic is hot.I kind of drifted off at the end there about setting aside my interest in poetry (as a genre) for what I feel is my more abiding interest, in the poetic (as a modality?). In the spirit of spilling out and discovering my present thoughts on the

2007-08-18T23:16:00.000-04:00

To clarify or expand upon my previous post, which was an off-the-cuff series of thoughts around a Data/Belief/Presentation triad that I thought may work better than a Truth/Facts opposition, as instigated by generous responses from Brent Cunningham (comment to previous post) and David Need (post to Lucipo). . .To answer Brent’s most immediate concern, over what precisely I’m trying to describe or

2007-08-06T20:23:00.000-04:00

In the middle of middleness, trying to gather a few stray thoughts together.A quick, immediate thought: was happy to see Mark Scroggins back on his blog, and a comment to his post here, where the commenter notes the helpfulness of differentiating between "truth" and "facts," and that in her writing she has very few facts but tries to express "the truth" (as relative to herself), reminds me that

2007-08-02T22:02:00.000-04:00

[click on image to enlarge to a readable size]

2007-07-26T10:47:00.001-04:00

Tony,Been thinking about those Tostian Aesthetics for a few days, & it’s quite helpful to have it developed at greater length. I think a lot comes out of this piece which clarifies what you were objecting to and really helps deepen your critique. At the same time it also opens, as always, more questions and places for examination. To use a Wittgenstein quote from Remarks on Colour I just ran

2007-07-25T19:09:00.000-04:00

My alma mater, College of the Ozarks, is featured in the NY Times. A few quotes from the article:“The work ethic is not what it used to be,” [President Jerry] Davis said in his Georgia drawl. “When you go out into the real world, they don’t care where you went to school. They care if you show up on time, if you don’t do the job right, if you’ve got a good attitude. Employers will tell you that

2007-07-19T23:28:00.000-04:00

Over at Silliman's Blog, I found myself again unable to avoid snapping at one of Ron's posts. Here's my comment to this post of Ron's:The obnoxious thing about the School of Quietude label is not that it is a baseless term without a history (Poe, etc etc), or that it is wildly inaccurate for a sweeping generalization of American poetry (if you have to give a ten second history of the

2007-07-01T17:18:00.001-04:00

forthcoming:Complex Sleep, Kuhl House Poets, University of Iowa Press.122 pages . 5¾ x 9¼ inches$16.00 paper original . 1-58729-621-7, 978-1-58729-621-5Available October 2007 “These hypnotic modulations of form and feeling are, in the end, a kind of phenomenological trance music, an Orphic drowse, a dream where we are shown ‘our shape as waves.’ Reading this extraordinary book, we crest

2007-05-28T09:53:00.000-04:00

Tony Tost's Summer Soundz 07Tappa Zukie, Hills of ZionAaron Neville, HerculesDee Dee Warwick, Foolish FoolDepiano, Government Ya CongoFela Kuti, Mr Grammarticologylisationalism Is The BossDennis Alcapone, Ba-Ba-Ri-Ba SkankSilver Apples, LovefingersBridget St. John, Lizard - Long - Tongue BoyVashti Bunyan, Some Things Just Stick in Your MindBunny Lee & the Aggrovators, Righteous People DubThe

2007-05-28T09:52:00.000-04:00

2007-03-28T00:03:00.001-04:00

unquiethiatus

2007-01-18T22:56:00.000-05:00

Some of my favorite country songs.Deana Carter, "Strawberry Wine" Don Williams, "Good Ole Boys Like Me" (the song my mom & I danced to at Leigh and my wedding)Alan Jackson, "Here In the Real World"Waylon Jennings, "Are You Sure Hank Did It This Way"The Judds, "Grandpa (Tell Me About the Good Old Days)"George Jones, "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes?"Toby Keith, "Little Too Late" (my favorite single

2007-01-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

The beginnings of a draft for a 'work in progress'-type, fairly casual presentation to my peers in the English department next Friday. I'll put up the whole thing if I think it doesn't blow:My most general emphasis is 20th century American lit; a little more specifically, innovative or experimental poetry in America, though in my thinking no conception of any sort of innovative tradition of

2007-01-09T22:13:00.000-05:00

Since Tim tagged me, I will now be that last contemporary American poet to fill out that one meme.Five little known Tostian tidbits:1) While living in Fayetteville, I once sold my car to a friend for a dollar at a party. Then a bunch of us flipped the car over, for fun.2) At me & Leigh's wedding reception, about thirty or so of our friends decided to get naked in the tiny swimming pool on the

2006-12-12T15:46:00.000-05:00

"Mr. Gioia, Tear Down This Wall"WASHINGTON, DC — One of America's most beloved landmarks, the Washington Monument, became all the more stirring and innovative Monday with the addition of New American poet John Ashbery.Ashbery, 79, winner of countless literary awards and perpetual possible nominee for a Nobel Prize, was bolted to the pinnacle of the 555-foot monument and affixed with display

2006-12-12T14:48:00.000-05:00

Currently in the midst of my bi-monthly utter exasperation at Silliman. Today's post, which is a kind of bizarre plug for Ashbery for a National Medal of the Arts (what's next, a plug for Robert Grenier to get a People's Choice Award?), where he lists the previous poets who've won the award:Silliman's quote:Anthony Hecht, 2004Maya Angelou, 2000Gwendolyn Brooks, 1995Richard Wilbur, 1994Stanley

2006-12-11T22:05:00.000-05:00

I've had my head so far up the butt of academia that I, until right now, while procrastinating on writing about direct and indirect aesthetic discourse in Pound and A Thousand Plateaus, hadn't read Kate Greenstreet's two killer interviews w/ Matt and Katy Henriksen. Reading the interviews made me unbearably nostalgic for Arkansas, as I recall the days before Matt & Katy's coupledom when Matt was

2006-11-23T00:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving. Wonderful one night stand in DC, which I wish I had the energy to recap. Maybe tomorrow? For now, I've been on an insane Pogues kick.The Pogues w/ the Dubliners, "The Irish Rover"The Pogues w/ Kirsty MacColl, "Fairytale of New York"The Pogues, "If I Should Fall From Grace w/ God"The Pogues, "Body of an American" (live on SNL)The Pogues, "The Sick Bed of Cuchulain"The Pogues

2006-11-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

While reading around some things, came across Pound's description of Lenin, where he says basically that the man has never written a sentence that is of interest in and of itself, but that he is still of use and interest to the serious writer because he invents a new genre of writing that is located somewhere between action and writing. I really like this notion, or at least this type of

2006-11-06T00:09:00.000-05:00

New song is out from the anonymous folk collective called Araki Yasusada. I uploaded it here.

2006-11-02T00:15:00.000-05:00

My World Jelly was a warm review here.

2006-10-28T12:01:00.000-04:00

Congrats to the St. Louis Cardinals.I seriously didn't think they had a chance against the Padres, the Mets or the Tigers. I was rooting for the Pads to win it this year, but switched over when the Cards spanked them. Who knew Chris Carpenter would don Jeff Weaver, Jeff Suppan and Anthony Reyes outfits and pitch like a champ for about 12 straight games?I also now have a love-hate relationship

2006-10-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

I hate charts, graphs and (generally) theory. Maybe not even in and of themselves, but how they make poets look when they use them. Like how I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with sunglasses, just generally disapprove the qualitative leap that occurs the second they are added to the mass of flesh we call "a face". A sneer sneaks in.I wear my sunglasses at night: the night in which all cows

2006-10-20T00:31:00.000-04:00

In honor of one of my favorite playoff games in a while (Chavez's catch, Suppan's grit, Molina's bomb, etc), here's some nostalgia tracks.Dinosaur Jr, Get MeBreeders, Divine HammerBuffalo Tom, SodajerkSebadoh, SkullChavez, Unreal is HereSmashing Pumpkins, TodayVeruca Salt, SeetherPavement, Range LifeSmashing Pumpkins, 1979Smashing Pumpkins, RhinocerosLemonheads, My Drug BuddySugar, Gee

2006-10-16T19:54:00.000-04:00

The Profundity of Baseball1st, Magglio Ordonez's series clinching walk-off homerun, as seen on TV.2nd, the view of that some homerun from a fan in the left field bleachers. This one brings tears to my eyes, and I'm not even a Tigers fan.Bonus points if you click "play" on the first one, wait a beat and a half to two beats, and then click "play" on the second for the goose bumps of simultaneity.