Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Preference has been moved to increase discoverability. Susceptible to giant news camera + million-dollar blonde in the bougie chelsea market I hold this slateboard as if holding my magical member cupped in hand at my crotch on the train where the trimmings and trappings of power provoke a kind of mental armoring. The news camera beckons me, as does the million-dollar blonde, while a plain Jane next to her shapes the discourse = budget and teachers in Mayor Bloomers flower patch. Lots of giant and crawling cameras here atop the highline park. Views, views, views. The iron spikey mental cardio shell of my emotional consistency means you, Mr. Bossy Commuter should not box me out like it's all basketball; and you, young reader with maedchen frills should let me lick your stomach like it was an unnecessarily rough-wrapped extra nice ice cream cone because I like you bunches and want to hear your pleasure soaked voice. Your freckles can only say so much while our tongues are so versatile here in late June, my j-june Janey. Loan me your interest and give me outright your affections and I'll read your hip back to you--what does it say..."Save Our Ships"? Don't expect magical budgetary manipulations to miraculously ameliorate the pitfall of this, the Whole Fucking Rented World.
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photos by & rights held by Douglas Manson
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Poem
fondle and pull
recollections of a lonely wanderer
from a rotting bog of garbage
earnestly
the thinness of life
in consumerist complicity
well wish
hole in the chest
anger
books & space
weakness
thinking and forgetting
tiny cycle
small wisps around
the nerves of the brain
or whips
canned food
dry feature
compulsive
smoking
monitoring
Tuesday aubade
electric light
coffee & the men and women
who grew it, picked it
got it here
form foam
cartoon
cat and mouse and dog
and history
to be interested
the international phonetic alphabet
cultures and nations
living in temperate rain forests
and the ocean
rain
walking and getting wet
no longer having heart attacks
on a train, but thinking only of my book,
its words.
i used to look around searching faces
(as I do at my home
personalized computer society
mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge
Tuesday
October
cheese and beans
breath and hole in chest
the last barrier is
this red pouch I roll from
big black boots
boring clothes
I think about her every day.
*.*
recollections of a lonely wanderer
from a rotting bog of garbage
earnestly
the thinness of life
in consumerist complicity
well wish
hole in the chest
anger
books & space
weakness
thinking and forgetting
tiny cycle
small wisps around
the nerves of the brain
or whips
canned food
dry feature
compulsive
smoking
monitoring
Tuesday aubade
electric light
coffee & the men and women
who grew it, picked it
got it here
form foam
cartoon
cat and mouse and dog
and history
to be interested
the international phonetic alphabet
cultures and nations
living in temperate rain forests
and the ocean
rain
walking and getting wet
no longer having heart attacks
on a train, but thinking only of my book,
its words.
i used to look around searching faces
(as I do at my home
personalized computer society
mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge
Tuesday
October
cheese and beans
breath and hole in chest
the last barrier is
this red pouch I roll from
big black boots
boring clothes
I think about her every day.
*.*
Monday, August 8, 2011
5th Annual Welcome to Boog City Festival
Scenes from the 8th Annual Small, Small Press Fair. August 6, 2011.
sunny.
august.
hot.
Evie Shockley reading from her chapbook of prose poems (Belladonna*, 2010). She also read from her new book The New Black (Weslyan, 2011).
Leigh Stein reads from her sheets and keeps the crowd in stitches.
Magus Magnus exponentializes his Heraclitean Pride (Furniture Press).
Helen Vitoria reads her poems. Sunglasses looks on.
Don Saddles' Francesca Capone played us the recipes of Cariah Lily Rosberg, featuring a kind of ice cream that includes cheap, raw meat and lentils.
After drying my tears, Brenda Ijima sent an attentive hush across all of Brooklyn with her poems from Glossematics (Least Weasel, 2011). Least Weasel chapbooks are letterpress masterpieces, made from the finest materials known to man.
Stephanie Gray reads her work from the new issue of Aufgabe (#10).
Rumor has it that Joe Elliot does all of his son's Homework (Chandelier Press, 2010).
Poetry in the garden courtyard of Unnameable Books.
On my way home through Prospect Park, I saw a young woman on a bicycle careening wildly across the Long Meadow, and was startled when the front wheel of her bicycle suddenly bent under her, and she flew longwise from her perch. I rushed over, and found her lying senseless in the grass.
After applying the gentlest of my healing arts to her most tender parts, she made a full, happy recovery.
"My hero!" she sighed.
*.*
sunny.
august.
hot.
Evie Shockley reading from her chapbook of prose poems (Belladonna*, 2010). She also read from her new book The New Black (Weslyan, 2011).
Leigh Stein reads from her sheets and keeps the crowd in stitches.
Magus Magnus exponentializes his Heraclitean Pride (Furniture Press).
Helen Vitoria reads her poems. Sunglasses looks on.
Don Saddles' Francesca Capone played us the recipes of Cariah Lily Rosberg, featuring a kind of ice cream that includes cheap, raw meat and lentils.
After drying my tears, Brenda Ijima sent an attentive hush across all of Brooklyn with her poems from Glossematics (Least Weasel, 2011). Least Weasel chapbooks are letterpress masterpieces, made from the finest materials known to man.
Stephanie Gray reads her work from the new issue of Aufgabe (#10).
Rumor has it that Joe Elliot does all of his son's Homework (Chandelier Press, 2010).
Poetry in the garden courtyard of Unnameable Books.
On my way home through Prospect Park, I saw a young woman on a bicycle careening wildly across the Long Meadow, and was startled when the front wheel of her bicycle suddenly bent under her, and she flew longwise from her perch. I rushed over, and found her lying senseless in the grass.
After applying the gentlest of my healing arts to her most tender parts, she made a full, happy recovery.
"My hero!" she sighed.
*.*
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Scenes from the First Annual New York Poetry Festival
July 30th & 31st. Governors Island, New York City
Note: video quality seems choppy on my machine, and is best viewed with the audio turned off.
Brooklyn Ferry to Governors Island from Pier 6 from Douglas Manson on Vimeo.
The Ferry ride is quick, but fun. The readings were held along the beautiful & stately Colonel's Row, under a colonnade of ample, lush sycamores.
I spent most of my time at the Admiral's Stage, and heard poets from FOU magazine, No, Dear and the Southern Writers Reading Series.
Here was the first great MC at the festival. Please help me identify some of these presenters and poets!
The first poet was Claire Donato. She's a great poet:
Next up was Cynthia Arrieu-King:
Great poet and owner of Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, Farrah Field read next:
Happy to provide gender equality was the wonderful Chris Martin:
Next was a poet, whose name I missed:
I then heard poets from the Southern Writers Reading Series. Author of Painkiller, Patricia Spears Jones raised the volume!
"SAY IT LOUD!"
Just before I was drawn away by the siren song of the Poetry Whores at the nearby brothel, I heard the distinct cadences of the well-received Yusef Komunyakaa, whose most recent collection is The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2011):
At one point, thrown off his line by the booming PA sounds from the nearby "Brigadier" stage, he smiled and asked "How does this work?" I'm not sure he heard me, but I responded, "It doesn't!" Usually the sound systems worked quite well, but at times one heard a kind of mixed combination of lines from different stages, that was sometimes interesting, but usually disruptive. I stood directly between the two stages once and tried to find a point of dialogue, which worked for a few moments as two poets read, but then found it less exciting than it could have been. Perhaps more coordinated presentations of "naval word battle" could extend the dramatic possibilities of holding simultaneous readings. Too bad there weren't some semaphore poems in the mix. My two cents.
It was all free, in an amazing place, on one of the most beautiful days we've had this summer. If you see this in time, go out today (31 July) and check it out! Take water and food with you, though great food and drink were available for purchase. Please support the poets! This is an event to look forward to in coming years. Where O where were you, Boo-Boo??????? Zoom-zoom???
*.*
Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseres
Sublimi feriam sidere capite
Sublimi feriam sidere capite
Note: video quality seems choppy on my machine, and is best viewed with the audio turned off.
Brooklyn Ferry to Governors Island from Pier 6 from Douglas Manson on Vimeo.
The Ferry ride is quick, but fun. The readings were held along the beautiful & stately Colonel's Row, under a colonnade of ample, lush sycamores.
I spent most of my time at the Admiral's Stage, and heard poets from FOU magazine, No, Dear and the Southern Writers Reading Series.
Here was the first great MC at the festival. Please help me identify some of these presenters and poets!
The first poet was Claire Donato. She's a great poet:
"The kindest poet lives alone." She intoned. She insisted.
Next up was Cynthia Arrieu-King:
Great poet and owner of Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, Farrah Field read next:
Happy to provide gender equality was the wonderful Chris Martin:
Next was a poet, whose name I missed:
I then heard poets from the Southern Writers Reading Series. Author of Painkiller, Patricia Spears Jones raised the volume!
"SAY IT LOUD!"
Just before I was drawn away by the siren song of the Poetry Whores at the nearby brothel, I heard the distinct cadences of the well-received Yusef Komunyakaa, whose most recent collection is The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2011):
At one point, thrown off his line by the booming PA sounds from the nearby "Brigadier" stage, he smiled and asked "How does this work?" I'm not sure he heard me, but I responded, "It doesn't!" Usually the sound systems worked quite well, but at times one heard a kind of mixed combination of lines from different stages, that was sometimes interesting, but usually disruptive. I stood directly between the two stages once and tried to find a point of dialogue, which worked for a few moments as two poets read, but then found it less exciting than it could have been. Perhaps more coordinated presentations of "naval word battle" could extend the dramatic possibilities of holding simultaneous readings. Too bad there weren't some semaphore poems in the mix. My two cents.
It was all free, in an amazing place, on one of the most beautiful days we've had this summer. If you see this in time, go out today (31 July) and check it out! Take water and food with you, though great food and drink were available for purchase. Please support the poets! This is an event to look forward to in coming years. Where O where were you, Boo-Boo??????? Zoom-zoom???
*.*
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
If You'd Only Known / It's Hid From Your Eyes
Hör auf Mich un Conseil
Focus constantly to make your work
a celebration of the joys of human existence.
Trace the lives and live the traces
of all that surrounds you.
Notice children first and see
in their eyes the world is small,
smaller than the mile in which they move,
the smaller circle of a parent’s hand
more alive than a thought that revolves
& devolves on the edge of pluto's ellipse
or such men who calculate by millions,
pretend visions in heaps of this
& hillocks of that.
Find that each person is innately kind,
& anger is sudden confusion.
Despair is only a longing
for impossible wealth or threats
which cannot present themselves to be realized.
Pain comes with only knowing what is seen.
Comprehension of everything is a pain
created out of false consciousness,
laying your mental history upon objects
unaware of your calculation.
Chaos creeps on the edge of such knowledge
and cracks the foundation of all
that is supposed to be true.
There is a wilder truth
that the mind cannot overcome
once the eye beholds it.
Trust your senses, for they do not lie.
Focus constantly to make your work
a celebration of the joys of human existence.
Trace the lives and live the traces
of all that surrounds you.
Notice children first and see
in their eyes the world is small,
smaller than the mile in which they move,
the smaller circle of a parent’s hand
more alive than a thought that revolves
& devolves on the edge of pluto's ellipse
or such men who calculate by millions,
pretend visions in heaps of this
& hillocks of that.
Find that each person is innately kind,
& anger is sudden confusion.
Despair is only a longing
for impossible wealth or threats
which cannot present themselves to be realized.
Pain comes with only knowing what is seen.
Comprehension of everything is a pain
created out of false consciousness,
laying your mental history upon objects
unaware of your calculation.
Chaos creeps on the edge of such knowledge
and cracks the foundation of all
that is supposed to be true.
There is a wilder truth
that the mind cannot overcome
once the eye beholds it.
Trust your senses, for they do not lie.
Sun Solo from Douglas Manson on Vimeo.
*.*
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Americans Aren't Going Out to Get New Stuff as Much as They Used To
We are erogenous and emotional nomads who refuse history as bad conscience, and memory as mental detritus. We are determined, each one of us, to learn all the functional skills necessary to have a life rich in experiences, give and take pleasures by way of our demonstrations of mastery over all kinds of things--ordering food and settling bills and shopping and planning fun-filled adventurous trips across the country, meeting new people and having stimulating and refreshing conversations about topics that are really new and important and cool, turning each other on to new ideas and music and spiritual paradises awaiting them in the lifelong study and accumulation of knowledge that can be eventually packaged into a tiny pill you just pop right into your mouth and there it is, unfolding all-in-all across the canyons and mesas of your brain: someone's life work conveniently condensed and formatted for the instantaneous enjoyment up and down and in and out of the fine diamond-strewn lines and paths of your otherwise overstressed and tangled neural weave. POP!
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