VRZHU bullets of pure love

Stravinsky: In Memoriam Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas: Ahead of His Time?

"Most of [Dylan] Thomas’s so-called behaviour was also a targeting of the pieties of the bohemian writer’s life; the poet, Thomas wants us to know, is an idiot, not a holy or even an unholy fool. He keeps saying – possibly because it was true – that poetry only sometimes mattered to him: that the life of the poet, his life as a poet, could only be lived as farce. The poet is a comic figure now because his poetry is not funny. He didn’t have a theory about this because he didn’t have theories – or not that kind – but he had noticed something. It was becoming increasingly difficult for poets to take themselves and what they did at all seriously. Poetry might matter to people who liked poetry, but it wasn’t important."

-Adam Philips

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O'er at Squandermania, Don Share rightly expresses some irritation re. the "20 Books Of Poetry" virus that's been going around. Does this meme contribute to a conversation about poetry?

Answer: No.

But since it is an offshoot (a related species to) of the facebook veme "25 random things about me," I think the same purpose is served.  In an article about the 25RTAM at Salon, Robert Lanham is suitably irritated by it, but then is won over:

"...I've decided to post a list of my own. I didn't join Facebook, after all, to be anonymous, incurious or left alone."

And I believe the 20BoP serves the same purpose. It's a small social binder, a grooming, a sewing circle, a way of asserting that one is part of the same way of happening. 

Unfortunately, it can also be a cause for anxiety, though I would say, don't anx about it, you are as cool and as included as the rest of us.

Only connect.

Tuesday Vrzhu - Quote Quiz - Updike Poem

Part Three

Who said: "there seems to be a desire for austerity and bareness, a striving towards structure and away from the messiness and confusion of nature and natural things."

a. Richard Howard
b. Adam Kirsch
c. T. E. Hulme
d. T. S. Eliot
e. Philip Whalen

Part Four

Who said: "Poetry will flourish - in terminal capitalism as in terminating communism - only when it is harder to find, when it is perceived as a valuable and virtually disallowed production that must be sought by need and by desire."

a. Geoffrey Hill
b. T. E. Hulme
c. August Kleinzahler
d. Richard Howard
e. Frederick Seidel

Part Five

Who said: "All poetry is an affair of the body – that is, to be real it must affect the body."

a. T. E. Hulme
b. Alan Ginsberg
c. Robert Pinsky
d. James Dickey
e. Robert Howard

Next Week: The thrilling conclusion to QUOTE QUIZ! All will be answered!

***

Here's that Updike poem I was thinking about.

LOVE SONNET

In Love’s rubber armor I come to you;
                                                         b
                                                  oo
                                                           b.
                                                c,
                                                    d
                                                    c
                                                      d:
                                                 e
                                              f –
                                                  e
                                                   f.
                                                         g
                                                     g.

from Midpoint and other poems by John Updike, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1969

Friday - Mark Doty, Buck Downs, The Way, Audio Treats, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

O'er at Mark Doty's blog, he's posted a nice talk about Brenda Hillman and how one may navigate different schools or encampments (or entrenchments) of poetry.  There's the argument to be made that both Doty and Hillman are on *that* side of the fence over there, and hence no biggie. 

But there is no fence. Not really, is there? Just as there's no third way.  And this because there's no second way, or first way.  There is--say it--no way at all. 

Your non-poetry friends say this all the time: Poetry? No way!

And if you're like me and have no non-poetry friends, well, then, the jokes write themselves.

***

There are not enough minutes in the day for me to enjoy all the blogs I'd like to enjoy.  Or even find them.  Turns out I've not been checking up on Buck Downs blog since November of 2007. And he's there on Mark Wallace's blogroll that I've been too lazy to read.  Here's a post with an audio of BUCK DOWNS reading. Coincidently, Downs, Wallace and Heather Fuller were the first local poets I ever heard read in DC. It was a reading for the short lived but excellent journal, Membrane. Wallace read some his penny-a-liner sonnets, which I thought was the coolest concept. Lines of poetry having a monetary value! That's gold.

***

But aren't there distinctions to be made, even in poetry?

I'm sure there are. What they are, I do not know.  I would like to see an exploration of bravery vs. cowardice, avoidance vs. engagement, risk vs. safety.  Perhaps this will lead nowhere. But that is how we proceed. To be proven wrong is a great honor. A poem is something that should get you into trouble.

***

I was going to use my newly acquired audio clip implantation skills to embed this (caution: explicit language, bad spelling and grammar):

Break up letter - Dramatic Reading

But couldn't figure out how to do it. 

What does this have to do with poetry. Two suggestions:

1. Write a letter to poetry breaking up with her (or him).

2. Write a poem about the experience of breaking up and making up with poetry.

Why? Practice.

  

The Quiz (Part Two) and Kenny Goldsmith, Eat Your Heart Out

Who said:

"If the poet begins to ask us to accept a system of opinions and attitudes, he must manage the task of rigorous thought."

a. T. S. Eliot

b. Yvor Winters

c. George Oppen

d. Geoffrey Hill

e. Carl Rakosi

***

The most conceptual, radical audio poetry extravaganza of this year has gone up without fanfare at Librivox.org.  It looks back to Cocteau's Orphee (and by implication Jack Spicer--is that where he got the radio metaphor from?) and forward to a stringent poetic yet to be explicated.  It pulls into its avant sphere Edna St. Vincent Millay, Haiku, and the new New Sentence.

Here it is:

Saturday Vrzhu Watch-A-Thon

Sure, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What we need are more poems about zombies. Serious poems. With zombies.  Suggested titles welcome.

"I should have been a pair of shuffling feet/Shambling through Cherry Hill Mall looking for brains."

"In the gloom the zombies come and go/eating brains like they were jello."

And on a different note, some lovely stop motion to go with Oren Lavie's Her Morning Elegance:

Tuesdat Vrzhu - match the quote with the poet...

Folks, most of this post will be delayed because of bandwidth problems.  But here's the first of the Match the Quotes:

Who said: "I'm interested in concrete poetry, in some attempt to return to the manuscript page, to use the page space, and the technical possibilities."

a. Guillame Apollinaire

b. Charles Olson

c. Kenneth Patchen

d. John Updike

e. John Auslander

Saturday Vid - Diane Reeves

Welcome to the Vrzhu Saturday Video Clubhouse.  We had a couple of vids with Esperanza Spalding not too long ago. Last night,she was the opening act for Diane Reeves at a concert here in DC. So to round that out, let's spin some vinyl featuring the inimitable Diane Reeves:

The AWP Approacheth

The 2009 AWP Annual Conference (with links!)

From Chocolate to Chi: DC Poets in Chicago
Thursday, February 12 at 7:00 pm
Poetry reading by Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Sage Morgan Hubbard, John Murillo, Kim Roberts, and Melissa Tuckey at Insight Arts, 1545 W. Morse Ave., Chicago, IL (773) 973-1521, info@insightartsliberation.org.
Admission is free. Open mic as well as the featured readers.

Insight Arts is in Roger's Park on Chicago's Northside, near Northwestern and Loyola Universities, half a block from the Morse redline stop.

Book Signing by Kim Roberts, author of The Kimnama
Saturday, February 14, 10:30 am
Hilton Chicago
720 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL
Book Fair Table #309 (the Split This Rock table)

For Those Of You Who Don’t Know

Kim Roberts is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and author of two books of poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007) and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994). She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the Humanities Council of Washington. She was awarded a 2008 Independent Voice Award from the Capital BookFest.

Here’s an excerpt from The Kimnama

At Birla House, the Gandhi
          Memorial Museum,
     you can see the great man’s bedroll,

his glasses, his cane, watch,
           books and shoes.
      You can follow his footsteps

to the back yard shrine
           to the place he was shot
      and see the stone monument

and the mural. Inside, dioramas
           tell the story of his life
      in crude miniature.

A group of elderly ladies
          in saris arrive as I do,
     staring openly at me

and smelling strongly of urine,
          one of the five sacred gifts
     by which life is sustained,

given to man by cows.
          There is milk and curd
     (for food), ghee (for cooking

and pujas and cremation fires),
          dung (for fuel),
     and yellow urine,

which heals disease,
          seals the bricks of new houses,
     and repels insects.

And here’s some praise of The Kimnama:

"Roberts's work calls to mind Whitman's 'Song of Myself' in its expansive celebration of life in all its physicality. That Roberts infuses her work with humor makes it all the more engaging." —Kimberly L. Becker, Ghoti

"Kim Roberts transports us swiftly to India where...gentle lines give us a sense of dream places that wake us to marvels. Lapidary verses vary with brisk evocation of streets, shops, and voices. Roberts devotes her lean book to vast India not only from her vantage point as traveler but from the eyes, ears, and tongues of Indians; their timeless spirit shines despite imperial edicts or raids by sacred cows." —Ethan Fischer, Montserrat Review

***

But Wait, Friends And Neighbors, That’s Not All!

Book Signing by [upcoming Vrzhu Press author] Carol Guess, author of Tinderbox Lawn
Friday, February 13, 10:00 am
Hilton Chicago
720 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL
Book Fair Table #441 (the Rose Metal Press table)

For Those Of You Who Don’t Know

Carol Guess is the author of two novels, Seeing Dell (Cleis Press, 1996) and Switch (Calyx Books,1998); a memoir, Gaslight (Odd Girls Press, 2001); and a collection of poetry, Femme’s Dictionary (Calyx Books, 2004). Forthcoming titles include a poetry collection, Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire (VRZHU Press) and a novel, Homeschooling (PS Publishing). She is an associate professor of English at Western Washington University, and lives on the Washington coast with her spouse, writer Elizabeth Colen.

Here’s some praise for Carol Guess

“Carol Guess’s poems are sexy, intuitive, angry, and hopeful. These lyrical narratives measure the impossibly small distance between love and fear. They are a reminder that we’re all vulnerable little vessels filled by the people who can break us.” — Zachary Schomburg, author of The Man Suit

As A Stage Whisper Aside

Vrzhu Press has a HUGE crush on Rose Metal Press, but is too shy to say so. Can someone pass RMP a note “Check ___ if you like us. Check ___ if we make you barf.”