DISCOVERED THIS WEEKEND IN BROOKLYN



Asala Yousef ... the other Asala.

AM I EMO?



My comic, "Am I Emo?" went live on the Poetry Foundation's Web site this morning.

Read it here.

Read the whole issue, including the Flarf/Conceptual section, here.

MoCCA FEST 2009 REPORT



Jerel, Cheryl, Bishakh, Sophie and I failed to secure a table in time (having mailed, instead of walked, our application in), so we were on the waiting list. I did finally hear from MoCCA, who, a week or two before the show, e-mailed me to let me know a table had opened up. Alas, I was in Portland, on vacation.

So this year, like last, I was a spectator.

For the poets reading this blog: MoCCA Fest is something like AWP, if half of the people attending AWP weren't so quick to tell you how creepy and awful AWP is. Cartoonists apparently don't have the same ideological problem with selling their art that poets do. This may have something to do with the fact that there are people who actually want to buy their work. There is also, of course, the possibility that AWP really is creepy and awful. I wouldn't know. I've never been.

As the cartoonists among you know, MoCCA Fest has moved from the cool downtown swank of the Puck Building to the historic 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington, between 25th and 26th--the very same Armory of The Armory Show fame. Did all five to six thousand MoCCA attendees and exhibitors think, at one point, like me, "Oh. My. God! I wonder if I'm standing on the very spot where Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was hung?!?"

No, probably not, because most of them, unlike me, have lives. Or are too young & hip to care about anything as cobwebby as early Modernism.

Like last year, most of my favorite books came from elsewhere: Canada, Denmark, France, Holland, Norway and Romania. (No Brits this year, for some reason. I mean, they weren't there--at least, I didn't see them.)

Here's a (nationalist) breakdown of what I took home:

Canada



Ian Sullivan Cant's Papercut Heart. Another visual stunner from Conundrum, my current favorite comics press, in great part having to do with their recent publication of David Lapp's Drop-in, the only comic book that has ever reduced me to tears. I got to meet the owner, whose name I've stupidly forgotten. I told him he was my hero.

At a table somewhere near dead-center of the Armory, I picked up two hand-bound beauties by a young woman living in Ottawa who calls herself Saicoink. As you can see:



her work is more than vaguely reminiscent of Maruo Suehiro, which is precisely what led me to take a closer look at the copies of OSCP 01-02 and OSCP 3 she had for sale. "Maruo?" I ventured aloud. "How--how do you know ... Maruo?" she asked. "Because I am an old person with no inner life, so I wander the world collecting cultural product to fill the empty void that is my soul," I thought to myself, before answering, "I just love his work: he's great!"

The insides were less Maruo, more standard-looking manga style. I bought both books. I haven't yet read them, but I'm looking forward to digging in soon.

Finally, I made my annual pilgrimage to Vancouver-based Miriam Libicki's table to see what the celebrated author of Jobnik! has been up to. A lot, as it turns out; more than I could afford to take home, though I did walk away with a copy of her drawn essay, "Jewish Memoir goes POW! ZAP! Oy! on autobiographical graphic novels, and why they are so jewy."



I actually read this little gem Sunday morning while Nada and I did laundry. Originally written and drawn for The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, I was impressed with Libicki's insightful, if essentialist, takes on comics autobio, which she (convincingly, no less) traces back to the Old Testament.

"... if we see all of the Hebrew Bible as the Jews' collective autobiography, it is a remarkably raw and ambivalent one. How many people's national story puts both the people and its god in such an often unflattering light?" Lebicki writes.

"Comics are Jewish; poetry is Christian," I told Nada, somewhat enigmatically, after finishing Lebicki's book. By that I meant, generally, that poets tend to have a clearly defined sense of good and evil, and strive to make themselves seem Christ-like and virtuous, hoping to set an example for the rest of the world. Poets are martyrs, ignored while alive, rewarded in death. In contrast, comics artists tend to wear their shortcomings on their sleeves. They're less interested in cultural capital than in selling copies of the books they've made or had published.

Denmark
Fahrenheit Press has simultaneously released two beautiful hardcover abstract volumes: Henrik Rehr's Reykjavik and Andrei Molotiu's Nautilus. Andrei also had an advance copy of:



the book he edited for Fantagraphics. Henrik had given me a copy of Reykjavik a few nights earlier at the closing of Andrei's ArtLexis gallery show; at MoCCA I bought Nautilus for half price from Andrei, who wanted to give it me, but I wouldn't let him. (In retrospect, I shouldn't have let Henrik give his book to me, either, although of course I'm flattered and thrilled that he did.)

Despite looking and feeling (and, yes, even smelling--the Danes print in Hungary, it turns out) similar, Molotiu's and Rehr's book-length forays into abstraction are quite distinct. Molotiu mostly avoids texture, going for a more inkblotty, super-enlarged Xerox look. Rehr has a beautiful shakey line (think Chester Brown) that he often uses to create crenallated foreground surfaces that may remind one a bit of Ernst Haeckel. Whereas Molotiu's pages feel like full-page illustrations consistently broken down into regular panels, Rehr plays with panel size, position, and depth; nearly every one of Rehr's spreads has what appear to be insets.

Also from the Denmark table:



Christian Skovgaard's Selvtaegtsmanden and Johan F. Krarup's Pibemanden, both with tipped-in English-language translation sheets. (Well, thank you very much!)

[To be continued ...]

DAVID BROMIGE, 1933-2009



David Bromige died yesterday morning. His writing was one of the few great & lasting pleasures poetry has ever given me. I learned more from his work & example than from just about anyone. So much so that I dedicated my first book, How to Proceed in the Arts, to him.

A memorial Web site has been set up by his family.

Here's an old essay I wrote about his ground-breaking book, My Poetry.

Very, very sad.

POETRY: PRIMARY OR TOTAL ART?



I was surprised to see Ron’s review of Douglas Rothschild’s Theogony yesterday morning.

Not surprised that Ron would review the book, but surprised by one of the leaden passages he quoted as being a remarkable example of Doug’s pointedness:

Mysterious Playwrights

Even as a Joke:

The real mystery is
why some poets don’t
just leave the play

writing to the play
wrights. Really – ever

read any of August
Strinberg’s poems?
or Harvey Fierstein’s?

This might take readers of Auden’s plays by surprise. Or for that matter readers of plays, librettos, and performance pieces by Stein, Elmslie, Bernstein, Harryman, Mac Low, O’Hara, McClure, Kevin Killian, Rodrigo Toscano, Dambudzo Marachera, Ben Jonson, Tzara, Lorca, John Wilmot, Yeats, Baraka, Ashbery, Mac Wellman, Charles Borkhuis, James Schuyler, Breton, Brian Kim Stefans, Kenneth Koch, T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.

The absurdity of Douglas’s point seems missed by Ron, as does, and this is key, the fact that Doug's examples--Fierstein and Strindberg--are nothing if not deeply conservative practitioners of their art. (What happens to the question at the end of the poem if the examples are Richard Foreman and Samuel Beckett?)

None of the poets mentioned above—save perhaps Jonson or Wellman, who are not unknown to theater-goers—have ever had the kind of popular success on the stage that a Strindberg or Fierstein can claim. But is the point of poets’ theater to compete with mainstream theater? Especially, gack!, on its own terms?

What, perhaps we should ask, is the point of a poet writing for the stage?

It comes down, finally, to what we think or imagine “poetry” (or “the poetic”) to be. For Rothschild, and perhaps for Silliman, the most obvious answer would seem to be merely “genre”: a particular branch of writing that is related to other writing, but in the final analysis, its own thing. "Poetry" or "the poetic" is not--can't be, given the terms of the argument--something having to do with a kind of vision or way of working through the world via the arts. (Rothschild is famous for saying that "the first job of the poet is to edit," so his emphasis on poetry as mere genre--a product best manufactured in workshops--doesn't come as a huge surprise.)

How do you feel about it? Is poetry merely a genre of writing? Should Beckett have concentrated on the theater and not wasted time on his novels and poetry? Should Kevin Killian decide between short stories, novels, Amazon reviews, poetry, or plays? Would Clark Coolidge's poetry have still been as great--as ground-breaking--had he not also been a drummer?

How many poets who wrote nothing but poetry do you really love? (I'll let you supply the examples, as I can't think of any off the top of my head.) How many of them have had significant impact on the art?

In comparison, how many poets who did other things, or came from other disciplines (e.g., O'Hara, Shapiro, Cage, music; Linh Dinh, Joe Brainard, Kenneth Goldsmith, visual art) do you love? How many have had significant impact on the art?

Clearly, I'm biased. My own feeling is obviously that poets who do not either come from some other discipline or who practice no other art have a much tougher road ahead of them if they want to do anything more than simply rearrange the preexisting furniture ... but here's your opportunity to prove me wrong.

Nada and I (today is our 5th wedding anniversary) are off to Portland this evening, so I'll turn comments moderation off.

Have a (comments) field day in my absence!

THE SPIRIT OF WALT WHITMAN


for the haters

A poet was working on a collection of poems playing with ideas around race, class and gender. Suddenly the sky wobbled above his head and in a voice thick with fog, The Spirit of Walt Whitman said, "Because you have always been faithful to the poetic imagination in every way, I will grant you one wish."

The poet thought for a moment and said, "Create a non-stop underground bullet train from here to New York City so that I can give more readings."

The Spirit of Walt Whitman said, "Hmm. Well, I must say, your request is very earthbound. Think of the enormous waste such an undertaking would require. The amount of soil that would be displaced. The steel and concrete and other resources! I certainly can do it, but it's difficult for me to justify. Wouldn't you rather think of something that would really would honor and glorify the art of poetry?"

The poet gave it some more thought.

Finally he said, "Spirit of Walt Whitman, I wish for understanding between poets. I want each poet to know how the other feels inside, what they're thinking when they write their poems, why they have written them, and what they feel as they read them aloud to each other. I want poets to deeply investigate each other's projects, to never dismiss that which they do not value or simply not understand, but rather to embrace the multitudinous varieties of expression as made manifest through this most exalted and cherished of art forms."

The Spirit of Walt Whitman replied, "You want the train to run hourly or every half hour?"

THIS THURSDAY IN CHELSEA

Put on your spring finery and come celebrate with the best small presses in NYC!

Annual Books Party
Thursday, May 7, 2009
6-8pm
Jack Shaiman Gallery
513 W. 20th, NYC
For further information contact: seguefoundation@verizon.net

Featuring

Belladonna
Area by Marcella Durand
mauve sea-orchids by Lila Zemborain
Open Box by Carla Harryman
The Elders Series

The Figures
Space by Clark Coolidge
No. 111 by Kenneth Goldsmith
Ted by Ron Padgett
Mon Canard by Stephen Rodefer

BootStrap
Rancho Weirdo by Laura Chester
I No Longer Believe in the Sun:
Love Letters to Katie Couric by Derek Fenner
Parish Krewes by Micah Ballard
Riot Act by Geoffrey Young

Granary
Faster Than Birds Can Fly by John Ashbery & Trevor Winkfield.
Nine Nights Meditation by Anne Waldman & Donna Dennis
Oaths? Questions? by Marjorie Welish & James Siena
The Square by Emily McVarish

Roof
Styrofoam by Evelyn Reilly
Rob the Plagiarist by Rob Fitterman
Public Domain by Monica de la Torre
Quadragene by Larry Price

Talisman
Eschaton by Michael Heller
Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse by Timothy Liu,
Hearth by Simon Pettet
Petals of Zero Petals of One by Andrew Zawacki

Ugly Duckling
Classification of a Spit Stain by Ellie Ga
Notes on Conceptualisms by Vanessa Place and Rob Fitterman
The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova
(translated by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler)
A Plate of Chicken by Matthew Rohrer

Portable Press at Yo-yo Labs
Shaved Code by Frances Richard
Materialisms by Miranda Mellis
Generic Whistle-Stop by Thomas Fink
The Book Called Spring by David Brazil

United Artists
Absolutely Eden by Bobbie Louise Hawkins
My Autobiography by Barbara Henning
The Influence of Paintings Hung in Bedrooms by Phyllis Wat
Join the Planets by Reed Bye

THIS FRIDAY & SATURDAY @ DIXON PLACE



DIXON PLACE and the FLARF COLLECTIVE
Present MOVIE NITE

MAY 1 & 2, 2009 8PM

A Mini-Festival of Live Interactives, Musical Attacks, Neo-Benshi, Experimental Video and other damages to the World's Cinematic Legacy

A Benefit for Dixon Place

Advance Tickets: $12/show ($15 at the door) Both nights: $20

Advance Tickets Available (and highly recommended) at www.dixonplace.org

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

*Friday, May 1st*

Sharon Mesmer, Dainipponjin
David Larsen, Logan's Run
Edwin Torres, Five 1/2

*Intermission*

Nicole Peyrafitte, A Voyage to the Moon
Julian Brolaski (with Paul Foster Johnson), Another Man's Poison
Bruce Andrews (with Brandon Downing), Sip Girl

*Video by Konrad Steiner, Linh Dinh, Nada Gordon and Brandon Downing

*Saturday, May 2nd*

David Larsen, Troy
Nada Gordon, Navrang
Tisa Bryant, Untitled
Gary Sullivan, Darby O'Gill and the Little People

*Intermission*

Eileen Myles, Satyricon
Bruce Andrews (with Brandon Downing), Gossip Bruce
Drew Gardner and Risa Puno, Untitled

*Video by Konrad Steiner, Linh Dinh, and Brandon Downing

GORDON MESMER SULLIVAN @ SPACESPACE



8:00 PM, SAT, APR 25th
SPACESPACE
390 Seneca Avenue (entrance on Stanhope)
Free poetry, dirt cheap beer, spankings.

THE WHITNEY VIDS ARE IN



Nada has uploaded everything she captured from the Flarf vs. Conceptual reading at the Whitney on her YouTube page.

I took gold medals in both the "worst dressed" and "worst hair" categories.

Gooooo, me!