March 4th, 2005
Wystan Hughs Part Two

The Americans hit a new gold standard that seems worth mentioning.

1500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion began (Globe and Mail). The most ridiculous line in the story was:

Since May 1, 2003, when President George W. Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,362 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count. - Globe

I remember when Bush declared major combat operations over. What a laugh. To finish off the week, lets hear some wisdom from the dead:

Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W. H. Auden

Art is born of humiliation.
W. H. Auden

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W. H. Auden

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden

March 3rd, 2005
Wystan Hughs

A friend of mine recently passed this quote on to me, which seems fitting these days:

"It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it." - W.H. Auden

I don't know how long ago WH said that, but he died in 1973. Not surprisingly, it still seems to apply.

Question is: will it ever change? Will a poet ever earn more money practicing his craft than he does teaching neophytes the fine art of butchering the haiku? Is a revolution in poetic acceptance (and finance) somehow possible? Or is it simply the lot of poets to be forever broke, and prone to self-inflicted gunshot wounds?

And how big a fool would one have to be to declare that change is possible? Because even after taking a good shit-kicking, ideas keep popping up on how to spark the shift, and they won't go away. And I find myself inclined to follow them, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.

Yesterday, I found myself staring at a concrete poem I'd written on the weekend, something that I rarely ever touch. Stared at it and found myself thinking about next steps, about the next ride of the ambulance, and the refusal to stop railing against the machine. The poem looked something like this:

failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure                              failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure         hope           failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure                              failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure
failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure failure

Maybe a poet couldn't make a dime in WH's day, and maybe not today either, but maybe tomorrow. Fuck it. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's not knowing when to stop, not knowing when to back off, and not knowing when to fuck the fuck off.

The revolution will be forthcoming. Again. Stay tuned.

March 2nd, 2005
DPI©™

After yesterday's exciting game of Drunk Poetry Interpretation©™, I thought we'd crank the competition up a notch. Yesterday's text was relatively simple. If you can tell me what this poem means, you may win a full boudoir set (and yes, the spelling is correct):

I mean
after talking about impermeable membranes

there is no sense
in debating the wells

of something technically desfentude

old men
underneath white cotton blouses

I should really scan in a couple of these pages so that we can all marvel at the quality of my handwriting. Perhaps a nice little multimedia demonstration of the evening's progression would be in order. One statement that was easy to read, even though it was scrawled right near the end:

Nunt is done.

Perhaps I should spend some time interpreting that.

March 1st, 2005
Beer Soaked Pages

Trying to decipher what the hell I wrote on the weekend. Sure, the first five or six pages are legible, but after that, it gets tough. We went at it, roughly a pint a page, until there were words that were written six inches tall, scrawled with no regard for lines, margins or other words, and the word itself could be demons or dorene or dreams.

And even when I do make out my own handwriting, the job of interpreting the words still remains. For example, what does this mean?

taking beautiful women
are design or cutting or writing or making film

or otherwise sacrificing it all for Dreams

I have two bloody hands

February 28th, 2005
After A Weekend Like That

waking up on the Sante Fe delight
with a beer hangover

which feels fine
to start with

but likes to rake the gonads
as the day moves forward

walking home
past the Jewish temple
and the abandoned liquor store

all the cars covered in street dust
after a long winter

bright sun
showing off the grey and brown

and everyone
from the man pushing his grocery cart
to the happy young condo shoppers

they all move like set pieces

this town
wearing the collar of rust
it can't shake




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