Journal, Day Five

Best How-To Manual: How Verses Are Made by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Best Angry-at-God poems: Cesar Vallejo

Great break-up poem: “The Nails” by W.S. Merwin (from The Moving Target,
mysteriously absent from both his Selected Poems.)

Great pick-up line of poetry: “I want to lie down beside the length of you simply because
your earlobe is the gentlest small animal on Earth.” by Thomas Lux

Great genre-stretching book about family and divorce: The Balloonists by Eula Biss

Funniest poet you may not have heard of: Matt Cook, author of Eavesdrop Soup (Manic
D) and In the Small of my Backyard (Manic D)

Another funny/dark poet you don’t want to challenge to a drinking contest: Jose Padua

Poet with the roughest life: Marina Tsvetaeva

Worst Poet to be on an AWP panel with: Rimbaud

Two poetry movies worth checking out: Fine Madness, starring Sean Connery, and Reuben, Reuben

Best poet blogger: Frank O’Hara

Best Selected Poems for a poet who overdosed in the 90’s: The Last Five Miles To Grace (Zeitgeist Press) by David Lerner

Recently deceased poet who warrants a Selected immediately: Lynda Hull

Best reading I attended in 2006: Brave New Voices (National Teen Slam) at the Apollo Theater in Harlem

Best post-reading reading: Spontaneous cipher by teen poets on the 125th Street A-train platform

Cool music show I attended a few years ago: Frank Black solo show at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica.

Great places to visit in California: Big Sur, Joshua Tree

Best seafood splurge (New York): the lobster roll at Pearl Oyster Bar

90’s collective most likely to appear in literary history books fifty years from now: Dark Room

Coolest 90’s collective you never heard of: 8-Rock, in DC (Kenny Carroll, DJ Renegade, Brian Gilmore)

Best restaurant block, inch per inch: Cornelia Street in the West Village

Best ice cream (New York): Cones (on Bleeker), and Il Laboratorio del Gellato on (Orchard)

2 poets doing cool things with music: Kamau Daa’ood and Derrick Brown

Best NYC open mike: Bar 13; they also sponsor workshops in prisons and the Acentos series in the Bronx

LA literary venue to check out: Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach

Poet most likely to take your money playing cards: DJ Renegade

Only Pulitzer Prize-winner to read at the National Poetry Slam: Henry Taylor, (1997)

Poet with a warm smile who will dominate you and your friends on the basketball court: Ross Gay

Best new anthology: Legitimate Dangers (Sarabande) edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin

Best Appalachian surrealist: Cindy Goff

One of our very best young poets with a wonderful third book: Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box (Norton)

2 poets with lots of brain and body tension: Paisley Rekdal and Anna Swir

4 excellent defunct bands from the 90’s: Helium, Versus, Unrest, Possum Dixon

Poet with a book I am anticipating in ’07: Sean Thomas Dougherty, on BOA

Indie rock girl with a great new album: Joan As Policewoman

Couple other bands I dig: Blonde Redhead, Cat Power,

Great first books in the late 60’s: The Lost Pilot by James Tate and The Naomi Poems, book one: Corpse and Beans by St. Geraud, aka Bill Knott

Magazine from the 60’s that I wish would make a comeback: Kayak

Poetry book I’d like to see made into a movie directed by Todd Solondz: Letters To Wendy’s by Joe Wenderoth

Poet who deserves a second book: Jan Richman, author of Because The Brain Can Be Talked into Anything, selected by Robert Pinsky for the Walt Whitman award in 1994

Poet who deserves a first book: Regan Maud Good

2 Poets with the freest of spirits: Olena Kalytiak Davis and Joshua Beckman

Tupac or Biggie: Biggie