The quiet types are always taking notes

I got to hear Tucker Finn, last night. It was very Danny Johnston-ey.

Jane Bowles / Kate Colby

Browsing the Ugly Ducking Presse catalog today introduced me to Kate Colby's long poem Unbecoming Behavior. She describes the work at the Bookslut website. I really love the premise: Jane Bowles was a writer of great gifts, but also known to make a fool of herself. She is recast as the subject of this poem, what Colby calls "revisionist biography". In her interview, Colby describes her interest in Bowles: "She embraced the unbecoming, but not in an empowering way, really; so why? I guess that’s why I got into it. To me, gender and, especially, femininity and its toilsome physical signs, are particularly untruthful constructs. And yet, what’s the alternative? Look at me. Look at Jane. What else is there to go on? There are a lot of things scrawled on the body and you become them."

Dear rainstorm,

thanks for washing away all that dust, rock & paste.

Everything melts &

here come the blooms
(a parable)

The lover takes a paper on which both their names are written. He tears the paper in two and throws her name away.

"Why have you done this?" The people asked him.

"One name is better than two," he replied. "One is enough for both. If you knew what it means to be a lover, you would realize that you only have to scratch one, and out falls the beloved."

"Why did you throw her name away and keep only your own?"

"Because one can see the shell, but not the kernel," he replied. "Do you not understand? The name is only the outer shell and I am this shell, I am the veil. The face underneath is hers."



With gratitude,
Doug


photo portrait by Tyler Love (2007). painting by Jules Joseph Lefebvre. French. 1836-1911. Text adapted from Nizami (Persian, 1141-1209)

Twoheads & Toughies

There were two big deals in the last few days. But I can't get to them, their just too ongoing right now--I'm steeped in an agonizing dilemma--oh wait, there's an easier way! --

the issue seems to be centered on popularity and chicks.

If you're popular, you get chicks. What do you do to be popular?

If I only had the right clothes to wear, damn, I'd be popular. Act a little tougher. Maybe get into a couple of fights. Take some tai kwon do.

Everybody's so stuck up, I mean, how d'they get so stuck up?

You're calling ME stuck up?

I'm just dreaming about the popular chicks all the time. I mean, like, they go and do the quarterback, but that's just so all the other popular girls will think they're cool.

It's not like I'm in band or chorus or anything.

So I've stopped getting straight A's. I hate school, anyway. So what.

I'm trying to get C's, and then wear some cool pants. Whiskey bottle tattoo with some flaming dice. Just wait.

And once I get a car, I got it made. I'm tired of that fucking deep fryer and washing dishes every weekend & tuesdays.

Anyway, later masturbator!!

Solstice

The solstice always finds me in a kind of mid-stride stasis. Everything is moving along quickly--and there's a rush of energy. But again, the decisions to be made are enormous. i'm on a new road: making my decisions so that i can be more in control of my life--but still open. Creative, collaborative, comfortable, compassionate. i've unlearned a lot. i've gained a lot. i've lost a lot, but was it really what i thought it was? if you tell me it is better to remain in a state of desire, and i find my self immersed in experience--then i know i disagree with you. and i am unashamed of my love. and basically unshamed. unh unh unh---yeah yeah yeah. Yes. Doves and blackbirds sing back to me.

the personal blog

Okay, I'm beginning this blog all over again. It's old format was as a fiction-writing blog, where I created a character, Allen Sharpe, to work on as a virtual novel/short story for my prose writing class back in winter/spring 2007. In the summer, after quitting the abject life as an adjunct English instructor and starting a new office job, I began using myspace as my "personal" weblog. When I was in the process of publishing Elizabeth Mariani's chapbook, her marketing saavy convinced me to revise the myspace page into a site for my poetry press. Just this morning, while visiting the site to post a new blog, I noticed a pop-up window on my weblog page, and decided I couldn't use myspace anymore--the site is fun, but loaded with commercial garbage. I hope to migrate the press site to a sponsored server (thanks to Ted Pelton, novelist/publisher) where the books will have a better chance of being seen and appreciated.

I've decided to use this blog as my personal site. Poetry, criticism, complaint, opinion, what interests me, links to others. I've taken down all the previous posts except for one or two that persist in literary merit. The "Allen Sharpe" experiment didn't succeed.

new letter found: the death of a century tree

delicious and all foxed out green acres greener still up the mango of cherry chocolate and almonds carrying saturate heart across pineapple habanero banana garlic soda bread garbanzo cilantro hard cheese chives basil curls and spinning heads whose poked-out eye lives in the stump blessed life-lost tree water & beer coax back to life squirrel stagger mourn the bark and talking dogs and dogs that hum like fans in the night til morning's methane spurts through venetian salutations ragged out input robins-purr shatter The Wrong Me or Falling/Running and then Bivouac Bromeliad & Co. Walking Through how tell it plain like Stetson or salvation kiss in a car cross highway down lane swirl to find my book she lit a candle set in the bathtub a bandaged heart lighthouse for listing blue blue blue blue blue beer pilgrim

even in the cold sprout tangle of her bed there's a ladybug lifting

lifting

lowering

lifting

lowering

her wings