Esther Press

One would nearly relish the direct honesty of the United States and British governments stating clearly that they are in Iraq to get control of the oil...that they will kill whoever gets in their path...that they will kill and maim as many innocent folks as possible...that they will usher in chaos and terror into the country...that they will lie and obfuscate until they get their desired ends. One would relish this much more than the imbecilic show trials, cartoon diplomacies, and repellent propaganda, in which the U.S. particularly is actually insisting that they/we are there on the direct wishes of the Iraqi government that we ourselves installed!

It's beyond farce. It's uber-farce.

The Iranian/British sailor stalemate would be hardpressed to make it as even a soap-opera, unless Guy Maddin was directing it. Only then would we witness the subterreanean fealties to father competitions, stale air, and lying-as-reality. The double lying achieves a whodunit, which will most likely be resolved in more sanctions, transgressions of those sanctions, European isolation, and probably a cold war attitude, which may or may not achieve the war which is seeking its justification, desperately, buffonishly.

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Received:


Slavoj Zizek's Interrogating the Real

Rae Armantrout's Next Life

Nathaniel Mackey's Splay Anthem

Noah Eli Gordon's A Fiddle Pulled From The Throat of A Sparrow

Ron Silliman's The Age of Huts

Most recent issue of Denver Quarterly

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One will note that Condi Rice immediately leaped to defending the British version of the sailor issue without seemingly any evidence to support this defense. Honor among thieves redux.

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César Chávez Day is today in California.

Kent Johnson's interview with Lissa.

Tom Beckett's

We just received our wedding rings from Lissa. We're extremely happy with the work she's done. Intuitive, organized, restrained beauties. Here's her website, A United Lark.

Her books:

Pen Chants...

Reviews of Pen Chants: Jen Hofer's and Henry Gould's.

An Heuristic Prolusion.

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Lissa on Hank Lazer at H_NGM_N.

One month ago I said this:

If one thinks one's poems are anti-capitalist, a hoped-for terror to the State, etc., they're almost always not. Only when the State starts following you around, closes your printer's offices, uses intimidation of various sorts, is your poetry being seen by the State as a problem to the State's continual functioning. If it isn't, it isn't. Believing that one's general resorting of language and syntax by various now conventional means is a private act of overthrowing capitalism's issuance into language is one of the worst trips of delusion one can take.

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Almost always being the key terms. I just received an email from Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX, stating that the US Attorney General was investigating BlazeVOX. Hopefully, this will just be the usual bland intimidation one would see in earlier instances, like in Stalin's Russia, and not the more depressing kind of closure and fines. This is beautiful America, land of the watched free. Here's a link to the fine authors at BlazeVOX--they must be doing something right.

If Tony Blair says the British sailors weren't in Iranian waters, you can pretty much bet they were.

A NOTE ON ONTOLOGY



Mind could be a gash


is often riven
with whiskey. To wit


a morning filth, in that


in order to stop what I thought
was a rape, I once threw up


on an unsuspecting couple.


Hey rain
you old stranger,


every fiction is a wish,


the very best places to kill
yourself are beautiful,


and all the new miracles


are terrors, whereas terror
is clothes in a shipwreck's picture.


Some unbelievable slit of moon


confused through water
is an old face rising from the melt.


Our voices are all salt.


Our words keep ramming
into nothing into masks.


The sky is tar is grass is trees.


The ground is cloud is cold
is called goodbye.



--Graham Foust, Necessary Stranger

* * *



Above, in Foust's poem, you'll find the common elements in most of his poems. He has a tendency to use absolute words, like "every" and "all" and "only" (this word in other poems in the book), often used for sound purposes, and a certain rhetorical shift to an authoritative voice, as I read these pieces, even if this is unintentional. Unintentional, that is, because the atmospheres and the distilled images, shifts, seem to make such desolate places, such quiet announcements, and therefore the normal authoritative voice of someone saying something to the effect of this is so feels undermined.

As well, another feature of Foust's poems arrive in the final stanzas, with the regulating mirroring of phrasing. Note the twin use of "our" and the penultimate and ultimate uses of "the" and the triple "is." This mirroring builds momentum to a piece, is how it moves, while also shadowing the sense of a song, a field of life in which Foust seems very interested. A friend of mine would note these as tricks in my own poems, which she wouldn't mean as a slight, but as a notation on my quirks, really. If Foust has tricks, these are some markers. It should be added, though, that while there is a similarity with a word now and then, as cadence for audience, these movements set-up the reader briefly into believing the same is arriving. This is where Foust pivots and drifts.

ONLY THE ASYMPTOTES



a sound somewhere

its airplane
somewhere else

*

songs aren't music

songs have to do
with music

*

all together now

all
apart



--Graham Foust, Necessary Stranger

Citizen Timm, ever eager to note offensive comments and actions by our motherland's populace, has sent me a link to the latest. Read at your own risk.

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Prime Suspect 2 was not as interesting as 1.

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Tonight: Vital

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Marriage license tomorrow in Tweaker City (Oroville).

I HAVE HAD VERY PECULIAR AND STRANGE EXPERIENCES



And you walk alone, infinitely alone.
And you carry with yourself a flower.
They are made with flour and salt
and they are baked in
the people who stay at night in this valley.

The term, "the seed of the woman,"
was birthed out of a hunger for God.
It began its life as a wrapper for sugar cubes,
white cows moving towards the retina
which their origin in Christ himself.

Some of these losses were due to some
displacement of the fragment into
a twisted anecdote of lost love
or other gift (sweet, salt, fluid or a flower)

the iris distributes light
because some men required
things that were interesting to play with

galaxies that are counted in larger groups
may take plenty of getting used to
They are wonderfully buoyant

eastern and western famous people
seem to have a fixation for young boys
The whip is an enlargement of the body
and microscope will make it possible to eavesdrop on it in its sphere of activity

Negroes are human beings
given a considerable position in the political life of Northern Ireland
and all wore moccasins
so as to avoid a misunderstood creativity

Say good morning bossy
You are invited to suffer war, pestilence,
thoughts, internal strife, inflation
accompanied by some adjective which explains
things that you would not do in health

If you saw Blade Runner, then you had a glimpse
Of the life of every man of God
The day-to-day variation of teeth
But you still probably wouldn't get to do all the things you wish you could.


--Katie Degentesh, The Anger Scale

No One Cares Much What Happens to You




when Serbs get mad, they talk
about a small town like Grace

Stop laughing; I’m serious
Grace is all I can afford on my nursing home wages

I pity her for the thankless job of building
A nation of Americans conceived in petri dishes

Whores are disposable.
They get strangled, beaten, tortured, raped...

on old motels, diners, train stations, or whatever,
and I think about Capri Sun bags when it happens.

As he unzips his pants I realize that I’m
what happens to us when the curtain goes down

no one cares much for the body parts
murderer creeping up behind her

Look, poetry, painting, writing. . .
People don’t get it like they should.

But it exists because it’s a link to what we can
accomplish through our Academic Plan

no matter how public it all seems
there’s a forced casualness to this conversation

I’ve been out here shooting long enough
I know even a public toilet will net you jail time

because when it comes to that word, “nigger,”
— I know that this is illegal —

it’s like the emergence of yet another guilty, white Southern male
as the fat lady continues to sing,

“when they were first created the thing
was to make them as white as possible”

as long as we are laughing
at Rush Limbaugh’s addiction

remember that Mt. Rushmore was itself
the creation of an ardent member of the Ku Klux Klan



--Katie Degentesh, The Anger Scale

Having mis-read the word often, it may be the time for homophobic translations.

*

I wrote something in the car the other afternoon, waiting for L., outside of a fabric store at a strip mall. It suddenly interested me that many of the moralities that swarm around are presupposed by a belief that one wants to live, that that is the case. And that because of this belief society must operate in a certain fashion. Perhaps this is why when I watched a documentary on a guy who may or may not have committed suicide how terrified the family members seemed, that the coroner would label the death not accidental but suicidal. I then began to wonder about countering the presupposition in art, but I wasn't sure how that would work. I mean, I remember seeing a Warhol film years ago, where the protagonist actually throws a child out of a window. Conditioned by countless movies and their underlying morality play, I was admittedly shocked that that actually happened, but there was a part of me that was laughing as well, just because it counters the very belief that life must be, MUST BE, lived fully. I think this coincides with my recent interest in Leigh Bowery, as he, too, died at a young age. I also think it meshes with those pro-ana sites that have popped up in the last decade. These, too, brush up against that underlying morality, and is why so many people become offended by them.

Caché

I watched this three nights ago, and it has not left my brain since. It gets into one, the awful emotional consequences of what the lead does. Auteuil is measured and emotive as always--one of the best actors alive. The director thankfully doesn't explain things in all matters, and so the restlessness of uncertainty augers. Perhaps one comes away from it thinking that lives are intentional inventions and the people living them sometimes running from them.

Interesting, too, that the character traits that were present in Georges Laurent as a child are still there as an adult.

Reading Daniel Borzutsky's The Ecstasy of Capitulation from BlazeVOX. The initial piece in the book, "Sharp Teeth of Death: An Essay on Poets and Their Poetics," is as good enough as a piece as any to remark on the different depths of satire. In this piece, seemingly some tracts about rats have been lifted and fit into an essay about poets. At various points, one understands the word rats was substituted with poets, and we read along with the parallelling narratives refracting and reflecting one another. In the hands of a novice, this is all we'd get, and we'd get a little chuckle at the darkly humorous similarities between rats and poets. This is the type of writing one finds in those columns by Dave Barry, for instance. The next level of satire attempts to not only make the alignment, but to say something with this alignment besides the obvious extended metaphor. This type of satire tends to not rely so heavily on the extended metaphor to make the point, and carries along in its text forays into sideways worlds, even derailing the extended metaphor entirely. But this, too, can get clever and annoying soon enough. The third type does what the other two do as well, but in this case, we have a deeply unreliable narrator, as one might find in Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. However, where in Mulligan Stew, where the accumulating exclamation points begin to tire one out, Borzutsky holds back very patiently, very cunningly, never quite showing his hand entirely. Because of this, the reader isn't always quite sure if Borzutsky knows what he's doing himself, as he adopts a kind of exacting, but gentle and curious tone in the piece, as well as elsewhere. In more than a few of the pieces that I've read so far, the angle of the ruse, the integrity of the grin, is pitched perfectly, wherein Borzutsky is not simply laughing at matters, or morally implying something outrageous has been done, but one in which these two occur at the same time, but with an observer's distance and, yet, accidental culpability. It's nicely done.

Julian T. Brolaski. Three of hir poems at Eoagh.

The real deal.

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Normally, I wouldn't go to any kind of AWP-like poetry conference, but if Mr. Mohammad has the alternative one in Ashland, Oregon, then it becomes much more palatable, as it's about a 3.5 hour drive from Chico.

TOUCH & GO


Humans like me can't hear beneath
small handfuls of math. One in three
trillion green flowers advocates close
counting. The vulnerable cave
in the bottom of each hand holds
an artery hostage. The advocates
are even. You have no faith in certitude.

The periodicity of blue is gone. She
was fond of dropping names and he
returned the favor. Tomato blossom

that could. We won't reproduce cruelty.
A night at the sea means red anemones.


--Chuck Stebelton, Circulation Flowers

From an AP article about Bush's tour through South America, the antagonism toward him, etc., this bit about what Mayans feel is necessary:

Police put down violent protests in Colombia in advance of Bush's visit there, and in Guatemala, Mayan leaders announced that Indian priests will purify the sacred archaeological site of Iximche to eliminate "bad spirits" after Bush visits there Monday.

Newt does The Worm

Oscar Wilde:

"A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain."

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I am convinced that noisy people gravitate to purchasing noisy pets.

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From "All The Wrong People Are Dreaming of Photography"


Static sometimes, a broader sensibility than need
as in cattails against the sky. In Telephone Wires around
ten wires create an infinite number of lines while in
Detroit three wires make six lines as do weeds against
sky. There are plenty of ironic moustaches in Chicago.
Bees eat silk, elk eat cream. It's an apolitical feat to see
her sing loudly enough at night. All the wrong people are
dreaming of photography. To light up an other world to
eyes open and following a negative around the room.
It is a situation. Smiling changed the human face.
Thinking changed the human face. It is a law to think
now. To smile becomes the law. The dream of her
image is the curve of her in the medium of edges.


--Chuck Stebelton, Circulation Flowers

Shinya Tsukamoto interview

*

His Tetsuo simply cannot be bettered.

*

SOLDIER'S JOY



A town is at fault and it supposes.

We've cut our hair and faked our deaths.

Agreement ensues. The name I gave

to my most excellent spring was winter.

The mothball has it that cupid's back

is a bullseye. That fall, the evening

hung ready in the hints. Like capitals

in cursive, the cues swell. Indicators

follow paste. The subtle coppers

often appreciate. An orchid, city sick

armed the floor with gears forming.



--Chuck Stebelton, Circulation Flowers

I have no idea why someone would want to be part of a school of poetry. It's just completely uninteresting to me. The premise just seems so nervous and fearful... that one needs to speak as a part of a group, through a group, instead of simply advocating one's own peculiarities. If someone else brands you with it, that's out of your control, obviously. But to actively pursue it...?

*

In the Lewis and Clark book, in between all the patronizing meetings with puffed-up Native Americans, there are some moments of humorous, incongruous, daily happenings, briefly mentioned:

2nd of January, 1805

A snowy morning. A party of men go to dance at the second village. Captain Lewis and the interpreter visit the second village, and return in the evening. Some snow today. Very cold in the evening.

Last night I watched Three Days of The Condor. It's a good premise, seemingly partially plot-mined by the more recent film, Syriana. Max von Sydow is wonderful as always, Cliff Robertson turns in a nice performance as the straightfaced doubledealer. The romantic connection between Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford was ludicrous, but I just decided to not think about it too much, which made the movie rather entertaining. The ending is perfectly pitched in grimness.

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Tonight: Gemini