Journal, Day Three

well, here we go again.

no, i. here i go again. you, reader, are really not helping at all!

this is the second time i’m writing this same/unsame insane entry. such large discourse—gone! if you didn’t read my comment and i’m assuming by your silence, reader, that you didn’t, i wrote this installment already once today and then for some sick reason pressed “don’t save”. yeah, let’s not get into issues of technology or stupidity or fate or self-sabotage and/or should one try to re-cover what one has done and lost, or accept that it is gone and go elsewhere, further? faster? (remind me to talk about my poems in tin house), cause i guess i’m just gonna do some of both.

well, no, let’s: i’m calling this one: BLOGGING OUTSIDE THE BLOG.
(who’s been reading too much hamlet?)

(and let me tell you, it really is a learning startling semi-harrying experience to be asked to daily narrate the contents of your head into the void yet with a cutoff. i know i do this, i mean, write poems, and i know there are more and less controlled ways to do this, i mean, write a blog (see yesterday’s entry), but to do this conscientiously, or really stream of conscious(ness)ly, it’s a lot. i don’t keep a journal, and i usually think i think, well, not (that) much. but our minds really do work and hard and all over the %^^$# place!)

(what would happen if i really was forced to write poems as a paid job, with real rent deadlines?)

(and what if i really really said what i think!!!!!!!!!)

(oh and yeah, how could i forget o’hara? sometimes i think that writing a poem (read: blog) is such a moral crisis i get completely sick of the entire situation!!!!)

which brings me to another aside: insider comments. i mean i’ve been getting them (amazingly, people i didn’t tell about the blog have found it) and thinking how we condemn yet so love all our layers of exclusivity. or, atleast, i do. tell me poetry for poets is not of our own making!

did i tell you i’ve been reading lowell’s letters? i mean i did, but then i pressed don’t save....

me: “man, i have to start from scratch!”
my daughter: “mama, what’s scratch?”

what is scratch? and isn’t this what we always really want to happen: for things to break down so we can break them down? further? lower? faster? (remind me to talk about my poems in tin house.)

and isn’t that what this blog is? we want the letters of...and the journals of.... and the interview with...why? lowell writes to pound re the cantos: “nothing new i’ve read so breaks through the crust of its making”. yes, breaking thru the crust of its making: from inside or out. we do love meta-text, don’t we? but do we really want to remove the art out from between us? no. and really isn’t it just wanting more of what we always already want in/from the work/art/text. it’s not starfucking, not about these or any particular people, it’s wanting to know what we ask from the their work, too, i.e. about ourselves and each other, right? some of these people just happen to be extraordinarily articulate and smart in all their voicings. (insert complete letters of keats and dickinson here.)

well, i wanted to (and did) talk/write/think more about “misreading” and about the incredible density of......(pressing DON’T SAVE).....allusions and then on to music, as promised.

it went something like this, (but, yeah, way better):

lately, i’ve been noticing/thinking about how my e-mail correspondents (my by far most prevalent form of human commerce/communion/communication) (unless you count my kids)

(look mama, wanna see me draw with my eyes closed?)

is rife/ripe with misinterpretation. the things people want clarified! the things we are confused by! our insecurities! (and it’s funny how it is different for fiction writers and poets.) (and yes, most of my correspondents are writers.) anyway, what i am trying to (re)say: with interpretation problems on/at this level (and i’m not even going to begin talking about the “misreadings” that have seriously affected the non-art course of my life, if such a thing exists. the one thing i am prepared to say at the confessional thing is that i really do believe that writing ( both in what maybe can be called a confessional style and/or not/another) makes you live a different kind of life.). once again: with interpretation problems on/at this level why do we go around pretending we know what each other’s poems are doing/saying? i mean, tell me you know what the fuck stevens is talking about! and i don’t mean sufjan. (i said: we’ll get to the music in a minute!)

(mama, captain crunch and fruit loops do taste good together!)

so i have these francesca poems in tin house.
nah, let’s save that for friday.

but i am gonna bring in cid corman again! what? yes, from that same interview. talk about misreading/overreading/overreaching, somebody mentions corman and i go crazy. metamisreading: are we choosing the right texts to misread in the first place?

I had been reading a lot of Chinese poetry, because my mentor was Chinese, and he introduced me to a lot of Chinese poetry. I wanted to translate with him but he said "No," because you can't do it: Chinese poetry cannot be translated - the ancient work. And he said, "The allusions in Chinese poetry are so deep," and we don't even know what is being alluded to 90% of the time, because the old poetry is lost. They were referring to other poetry; and we don't know what that poetry was. So it's impossible: there are so many levels in the Chinese poems—the great ones, of course—that it's impossible. And of course I wanted to translate the best. But I said to him, "You know, other people have translated the stuff anyway; maybe we can do better." He wouldn't buy that. So we never did translate much together.

(mama, who wants a tooth brush? who wants a tooth brush? )

and my thinking that we don’t get 90% of the allusions of anything much less ancient chinese poetry! and that writing/reading poetry is the great fuckyouish ability to proceed with and despite that fact.

(mama, do you know who saved the parasaurolophus? this guy: the butterfly!)

breaking thru the crust of the making:
and i know that doesn’t necessarily mean endlessly belaboring the making...
but i personally have this inability to fake it. if i’m doing something over i have to allude to the first making, and any unmaking.

(so, as i was saying in my ur-blog day three....)

and, mostly so far i’ve found this principle most troubling re poetry readings. i.e. doing the same thing over and pretending you haven’t/aren’t. ( i do know the poems are supposed to be able to take it.) i’ve always wanted to ask musicians about this, and maybe/i guess i have, but they usually say: what?

just kidding.

MUSIC, we’ve (re)found our way to music!!!!!!

so, i don’t really read blogs, (although i do think ron silliman’s is good and bookmarked and i always resolve to read it everyday and learn something, but usually don’t) but, sometimes, after checking how shitty my sales are on amazon i do go look for free downloads and check on people’s music lists, just to get to that next fix, that next great song. and i’ve also got great dealers, all poets.

it seems and not a bit strange that my poetry friends and i do not exchange poems, we exchange music. let’s also not talk copyright/ripping artists off, cause mostly every poor artist deserves all the free shit she can get, and/but mixes are my favorite. talk about confessional!

i personally make a mix two or three times a year. that’s about how long it takes me to find 20 pretty great (mostly new) songs that cohere in a very the-same-way-i-write/structure-my-poems way. most recently chiastic! (certainly some people write poems and make mixes way quicker (they remember to press save!): my friend w.c. (thanks for the fucking cid corman poem!) sends one out each month! and they are great! also great ones by a.l., n.f., d.r., m.z., m.w.,.... very recently jazz from i.s., so i’m still not sure.

what’s with this initial shit?
(happy birthday m.s.!)

who by the way links the recurrent name-dropping theme with today’s (supposed) music one:

worth noting that rappers (obviously the most popular and richest poets working today) have no qualms about shouting out to and calling out others by name, sometimes to fatal effect.

i was gonna (did) say more stuff about jeff tweedy’s stage presence, about cat power apologizing for being shitty, it was all very very smart and very very funny...but...

here we are, finally, and here’s the fix: the playlist from my latest: new year’s mix 200six:
(usually i don’t give/include a playlist)
(also don’t believe in any help/cheating in figuring out lyrics)

1. martha wainwright: “there’s a song” off bloody motherfucking asshole
2. sufjan stevens: track 16 off illinoise
3. rilo kiley: “all the good that won’t come out of us”
4. okkervil river: the saul’s conversion one from river of golden dreams “and i am feeling older/pull off to the shoulder/and wonder with my head in my hands/should i call my wife”
5. leonard cohen: “boogie street” from ten new songs, i think, i think from like 2003. “i’m wanted at/the traffic jam/they’re saving me/a seat”
6. the italian bob dylan (i asked and got in rome last year)
7. “she is the dairy” (ray’s vast basement, i think, from the verse press love mix)
8. “one by one” from kicking televsion (live wilco, lyrics woody guthrie)
9. sparklehorse: “apple bed”: “i wish i had/ a horse’s head,/ a tiger’s heart,/ an apple bed”
10. gillian welch: “o me o my o look at miss ohio” (kary’s song)
11. lucinda live: “i took a bus”
12. white stripes: “i ain’t that lonely yet” from get behind me satan
13. nirvana live: “my girl my girl don’t lie to me....” (i totally loved gus van sant’s last days. his allowing himself (and us) that pace) (elephant, too)
14. vetiver: “without a song”
15. bright eyes live: “true blue”
16. dylan: “song for woody” off no direction home.

(mama, i’m mad at you cause i love you)

reader, let’s face it: that entry is gone!, o.