VRZHU bullets of pure love

Tuesday Chronicle

Oy, lots and lots of ground to cover this week. I must make good on my promise to finish off "Poetry and Amino Acids", some news about Vrzhu authors, and with luck a little dissection of some phrases. You'd think, with Monday being a holiday celebrating Rutherford B. Hayes, Millard Fillmore, and, greatest of all, James K. Polk, that I'd be completely assured of being able to make a fulsome and satisfying post. However, Monday included:

--finishing Endless Things, the last part in John Crowley's Aegypt series, though it is really one big book

--instructing nephew in Go: some tesuji ("there is death in the hane"), some fuseki, a handicap game

--nap

--dinner to include broccoli raab with sundried tomatoes and pignoli.

So we'll see what we can git to, though some of what needs to show up here is, by blog standards, old, old news -- I'm just not fast enough on my feet for the response time standards of the blogosphere. We'll see how I feel, and if any of this falls into the tedia of something like yesterday's TV dinner (you ate the apple crisp first, didn't you), then feel free to skip ahead or out altogether.

BUT not before this Important News:

Vrzhu author, Walt Whitman expert, and all around poet around town, Kim Roberts, guest blogs here on the submitting of work to journals, and suggests some things to make it less of a slog.

The second part of an interview with Vrzhu author, raconteur and thoughtful respondent, Hiram Larew here (first part here) -- this is really a wonderful interview -- and a profile of Mr. Larew here (which was pointed out in the best selling Silliman's Blog Here).

And Now:

The Future Of Poetry/Poetry Of The Future: markets, contests, DIY, constraints, and Amino Acids Part Two

Synthetic Genome: Signed, Sealed, Decoded

You were expecting poetry, perhaps? The secret messages hidden in J. Craig Venter’s synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are Dr. Venter’s name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.

How does poetry get out into the world? We discussed this briefly here. For manuscripts, there are contests, or some sort of Do It Yourself publishing.

Much the same problem inhabits publishing or otherwise getting poems out there separately.  You can submit to journals, or find some venue of your own. Richard Brautigan, I believe, used to sell his on the street corner in San Francisco.  There are increasing numbers of poets who put their poems up on their blogs or other internet space.

And is goes without saying that regard for these methods toggles back and forth from legitimate to substandard/vanity, from totalitarian art vice grips to fawning & begging.

Poets are always interested in two things: ways of writing poetry (broadly, constraints) and places for their poetry to be read. For publication in a literary journal, there is the external constraint of the preferences of the editors/journal on the kind of poem accepted, and these can be either explicit or inchoate.

The internet has made a significant expansion of poetry's availability and the ecosystem of poems possible, not just self-publishing but also online journals, online submissions, and even search engines as generators of poems.

But where will the next poetry market be?

The answer is . . . inside!

but, Vrzhu, you ask, where is this inside whereof you speak?

The article up above is the clue. The Venter Institute has engineered the complete DNA of a bacterium.  Proof of this is in certain "watermarks" embedded in the bacterium's DNA, which use the call letters for amino acids to spell out words.

And here we find both our market and our constraint.  When genome technology is sufficiently commonplace, poets will be able to publish their poems as part of the DNA of bacteria! Poetry bookstores could become poetry tubestores where you could go and buy a petri dish of W. S. Merwin, or a prepared slide of John Ashbery. The old guard will complain about the innovative experimentalists flooding the market with non-narrative, anti-lyric spirochetes. Meanwhile, in winter months we'll catch a bad case of the "flarfs."

Here's the constraint. Dr. Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, the originator of bioinformatics, invented the one letter code for the amino acids that encode DNA. The  letters of the alphabet missing from the amino acid code provide the lipogrammic constraint for using this method of publishing. Here's a list of the amino acids and the letters with no amino acidic referent:

A - Alanine
B - Asparagine
C - Cysteine
D - Aspartic Acid
E - Glutamic Acid
F - Phenylalanine
G - Glycine
H - Histidine
I - Isoleucine
J - -
K - Lysine
L - Leucine
M - Methionine
N - Asparagine
O - -
P - Proline
Q - Glutamine
R - Arginine
S - Serine
T - Threonine
U - -
V - Valine
W - Tryptophan
X - -
Y –Tyrosine
Z - Glutamine

Everyone, exciting opportunities await you in the dynamic new field of Synthetic Biopoetics!

So Late to the Party That There's Only Ritz Crackers and Tonic Water Left -or- On the So-Called Absolute Materiality of the Signifier.

There's been a lively scrum all over the poetical blogosphere the last couple of weeks about what is and what is not meant by the term "post-avant."  This post started the conflagration, which was taken up here, here, here and here. Among other places. Chris Tonelli sums it up nicely and even-handedly at the Pshares blog (does that "ps" in Pshares stand for some sort of psychic ability?! If so, Chris puts the "chic" in "psychic").

At the same time, there was a response here and here to a Poetry Foundation questionnaire.

For the most part, I like the answers given by the esteemed Ron Silliman, though I doubt that the problem with teaching reading is an over-emphasis on the instrumentality of language.  But certainly poetry-phobia is inculcated in most schools.

But this phrase disturbed me:

". . . the absolute materiality of the signifier, the physicality of sound and of the graphic letter, is the one secret shared by all poets to which nonreaders of poetry seem literally clueless."

I know I'm reading too much into this, because, as we all know, poets are and must be aware of the materiality of words -- their sound and look -- as integral to the art of poetry, though of course there are varying degrees of this. But there is no "absolute" materiality of the signifier.  There's always a balancing act between foregrounding the word's thinghood or the word's meaning-containment.

To be continued . . .

Review of The Kimnama and More Than Anything

Please take a moment and read these fair and balanced reviews of The Kimnama by Kim Roberts and More Than Anything by Hiram Larew in the Montserrat Review, the two inaugural books of Vrzhu Press. Congratulations, Kim and Hiram!

Tuesday Miscellany

       The extremely well-designed and upscale-looking Virginia Quarterly Review has put some of its Fall 2006 Writers on Writers issue on the web.  The issue sold out so VQR has onlined its special feature of original stories by a bunch of contributors, stories in which a famous writer appears by name. Six of the eleven stories feature poets, giving poets a bare majority over novelists: Emily Dickinson, Richard Eberhart, E. A. Poe, Aeschylus, G. M. Hopkins, Stephen Crane (a crossover I suppose).  There's also a cool cover by Chris Ware.

But before you go to the stories, see if you can match the authors with the poets they're writing about:

Jim Shepard                    Emily Dickinson

Christopher Tilghman           Edgar Allen Poe

Edmund White                   Gerard Manley Hopkins

Ron Hansen                     Richard Eberhart

Joyce Carol Oates              Aeschylus

Elizabeth Gaffney              Stephen Crane

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Catching up on news.

Rod Smith, DC poet, was the recipient of a nice article in the City Paper a couple back.  The article compares him to the Baroque original instrument ensemble, the Talking Heads, though I believe the more apt comparison is to a small jelly tricycle. While I'm crushing on Rod, I must also mention that "In Memory of My Theories" is a damn good title.

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Vrzhu Inaugural Authors Hiram Larew and Kim Roberts continue their barnstorming world tour with readings coming (through the next year) in:

Milton, DE
Arlington VA
Washington DC
Amherst, NY
Charlottesville, VA

And tentative (pending funding) readings planned for

Ulaan Baator
Yakutskh
Pangnirtung
Ushuaia
Suva
Grytviken
Godthul

and

the isles of Langerhans.

The world tour T-shirt will be available sometime next year ("Vrzhu Is World" on the front, "World is Vrzhu" on the back).

For more info, please visit our website, who is feeling a bit lonely and under the weather.

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For extra credit match the pictures with the authors mentioned above. Answers to this week's puzzlers will appear in next week's Tuesday Melange. See you then!!

Vrzhu Readings for September 28 through 30

Friday, September 28, 6:30 pm

The Poet Experience: Hiram Larew and Kim Roberts

Zu Coffee, 923 Bay Ridge Ave., Giant Shopping Center, Annapolis, MD. (410) 990-0731. Hosted by Rocky Jones. Free admission.

http://www.zucoffee.com Come be part of a poetry reading and open mic night at Zü Coffee every fourth Friday of the month! Sit back and listen to poems and stories from some amazing poets and (if you would like) bring some of your own poems to share. This September 28, join hosts Cliff Lynn and Rocky Jones in greeting our featured poets: Hiram Larew and Kim Roberts.

Larew is a published poet whose collection "Part Of" was recognized by the City of Baltimore in their Artscape Poetry Awards. He is published in over 80 journals and his second collection, "More than Anything" is available now.

Roberts is the editor of the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (http://washingtonart.com/beltway/contents.html) , and is published in countless anthologies and has two books in print: The Kimnama and The Wishbone Galaxy.

Both authors' new books are available from the publisher at http://www.vrzhu.com/books.html

Saturday September 29 at 3:00 pm
Attic: Maryland State Poetry and Literary Society publication reading
Saturday September 29 at 6:00 pm
Barbara Simon tribute reading
Baltimore Book Festival
Outdoors around Mount Vernon Place
600 block of N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD
(410) 752-8632

Sunday, September 30 at 1:30 pm
Vrzhu Press Reading
Baltimore Book Festival
Outdoors around Mount Vernon Place
600 block of N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD
(410) 752-8632
Free Admission

Praise for Larew and Roberts & From Our Research Bureau

Both of Vrzhu's inaugural books, The Kimnama and More Than Anything make the Best Books for Fall Reading list at the Montserrat Review here  This is another well deserved accolade for poets Kim Roberts (The Kimnama) and Hiram Larew (More Than Anything). Congrats!

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We here in the research arm of Vrzhu Press are working [tirelessly] to improve the lot of poets, and consumers of poetry alike.

However.  Bethatasitmay. We also recognize that sometimes poetic efforts, effluvia and extravasations are not wanted or desired.

As such, one of the R&D efforts here in the warrens and catacombs of the VRB is to assist those for whom poetry is not an occasion, but a nuisance.  Here is a short summary of our initial research and a peek at one of our many products in continuous development.

Poem Infestation

Poems are among the most difficult household pests to control. Except for submission periods when they may migrate from place to place,  poems spend their entire life inside buildings. Usually they are found in libraries, bathrooms and bedrooms. They can be carried into homes in shopping bags, backpacks, furniture and pet foods.

Poems are one of the most disagreeable literary genres that may invade homes. While it is not true that an unkept home will cause a poem infestation, there is indeed a strong correlation between sanitation and poems once an infestation gets started.  The presence of poems often causes serious mental anguish for some homeowners. Poems often associate themselves with teenagers and are known to be involved in the spread of negative emotions which cause mild depression, self-absorption, herbal tea drinking, and more serious melodramatic behavior. Some people appear to be allergic to poems.

The exact origin of our domestic poems is disputed, but many are European, South American and Eastern in origin and now are widely distributed throughout the country. In most areas, homeowners are commonly bothered by five different categories of poems: confessional, experimental, accessible, surreal (which has a subcategory, deepimage), and nature poems, which are more at home outdoors but can also get into the house.

Species

The American poem may grow from one to several hundred pages. It can be identified by its normal markings: ragged, sloppy right margins and, frequently, a body segmented into “stanzas.”  There is not much reliable information about any one poem’s lifespan, which nonetheless seems to be highly variable: from a few minutes to many years or stretching cycles of years.

Oriental poems, or haiku, are uniform and small in appearance, no more than seventeen syllables long when full-grown and are easily recognized by their short lines, though mutations are possible. The haiku seems to be equally at home inside human habitation and outdoors, where they can be found near ponds or blossoms or other similar areas.

The European poem is larger, usually darker, but vary greatly in appearance and pronunciation. The European poem is quite active and can easily migrate throughout communities thus becoming a major pest, however, it seems to only truly thrive in the presence of American poems, a symbiotic relationship our poentomologists have termed “translation.”  Even so, a troublesome infestation can develop rapidly after the chance introduction of just a few individual poems. It is an unsettled question whether the South American poem, whose habits and behavior are almost identical to the European, is a subspecies, or is an entirely different species.

Another poem sometimes found invading the home is the Woodsy poem. This species lives outdoors and is not as fast nor as wary as its house-dwelling relatives. They may wander into buildings in wooded areas, or may be brought into the house under false pretenses. The males of this species (garysnyderus) are long-lived and have a rough appearance. The females (maryoliveria) are much more reclusive but probably more widespread.

Integrated Poem Management

It is easier (and less costly) to prevent poems from entering a structure than it is to get rid of them.  They can be discouraged from invading buildings by sealing cracks and crevices in foundations and outside walls. Careful inspection of all anthologies and omnibus selections is essential, as poems have been known to hide within large tracts of prose.

Carefully inspect all incoming books, magazines, and junk mail for the presence of poems or references to them.

Control

Unfortunately no method for controlling poems has proven universally successful. We here in the Vrzhu Research Bureau are working on a safe, convenient method of eliminating poem infestations when they occur.

VRZHU Reading at Minas Gallery in Baltimore

On Sunday July 1st VRZHU Press held its first reading in Baltimore when Kim Roberts and Hiram Larew were guest readers at the delightful poetry series held at Minas Gallery.

There was a great turnout for these poets with all the seats filled.  Both Hiram and Kim are returning guests to this long running poetry series. 

Right before the reading I learned that Minas has hosted a poetry reading for many years dating back to their earlier location in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore.  The gallery moved two years ago to their current location in the funky Hampden neighborhood north of downtown.  As anyone with experience with readings knows, you don't last as a series without establishing a reputation and the Minas reading is certainly respected for its knowledgeable and enthusiastic crowds.  So we were very happy to have a reading there.  The group received Kim and Hiram's work very warmly.

The second half of the reading was set aside for a small open mike for area poets and a few folks took part.  Running through the reading, both Hiram & Kim's and the open mike section, was a desire to pay homage to the life of Barbara Simon who was a pillar in the Baltimore poetry scene.  Every reader shared a few words about this very committed and socially-engaged poet and a few read poems in her honor.

Many thanks to Minas and our terrific hosts.

Here are a few other photographs from the reading.

Ed Mycue on Hiram Larew's More Than Anything

We received word of Edward Mycue's review of Hiram Larew's book More Than Anything.  It's a splendid review:

Hiram Larew's MORE THAN ANYTHING group of poems is a strong gathering of rich and fully caring American poems.  He is in the American grain with Emerson and Longfellow arching into and beyond the hiphop age as if that old lapland song Longfellow wrote of is ever beating with the thoughts of youth that are long, long thoughts.  They are about will, hope, clarity, honor, rollicking good humor and peril.

In "Shudder," the speaking voice says 'Tell me something so honest it's bald..../I can't help the never ending..../There will come a time..../In an emergency or hoping..../There's no maybe about it--/I'll never grow up/So throw me a match.'

This is only the poet's second book, but make no mistake about it: he is a matured talent and full on the captain's deck of the good ship tomorrow of coming literary honors and recognition.

Edward Mycue