A HYBRID NOTEBOOK OF POETICS AND PORNOGRAPHIES

Pornography Disclaimer

This is a an imaginary diary of facts, confessions, or messages. This is a notebook of working but broken ideas, lines, images, notes on books I'm reading, writers I admire, and brief fantasies of language. Here unfiltered  all mannerings pseudo-private, publicized, ur-. Here I am art and unrevealed: poetic, political and pop. These are my moonlit rough beginnings and should not be taken literally, directly, truthfully, reliably, and none of it is legally binding. These lies are all choreographed, but only haphazardly. Beware.

16.2.07

SLEEP AND DESPAIR OVER A BLAMELESS LIFE OF POEMS




. . . . .

The moon, likewise, returns
a blundering light not
to my bones but to
my bare breath. Body, I am Night.

I'm reading two manuscripts: one from a friend, the other
Jay Hopler's Green Squall. Struck

as ever with the green dart of envy. How is it
we are all writing this book
of the Self in the necessary
garden of predatory silences--

I'm struck by how difficult it is, the fact that we're mostly failing ourselves and our poems all the time.
How the work of being alone with oneself, trying to listen
is itself a serious enthusiasm. One we're not often rewarded for. Poetry,

I'm 32 and I'm poor. Too poor to see you at AWP.
And here I am on a Friday night alone
with a foolish attempt to listen instead to some distance
in the faltering waves, leaves
fixed and uncertain, the edges blown by a merciless
blurry

call,
lit up with my own luminous attention.

. . . . . .
My photo
I've got one foot in the grave and the other's in my mouth.

Poetry Disclaimer

My work has been awarded the Katherine C. Turner Prize from the Academy of American Poets, a Swarthout Award, and has twice been nominated and shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize. My first book, A Book Called Rats, was selected for the Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry (Eastern Washington University Press 2007). I'm curating editor for the online journal of poetry: PISTOLA and my poems and reviews most recently appear in Massachusetts Review, Beloit, Ploughshares and RAIN TAXI. I currently teach writing and literature at Santa Monica College in southern California.
bookcalledrats