38th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit Reading

Sunday, January 1, 2012
3:00 pm
The Poetry Project
at St. Marks Church
10th Street & 2nd Avenue, Manhattan
poetryproject.org


The 38th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit will feature over 140 Poets & Performers: 
Ace Mcnamara, Alan Licht with Angela Jaeger, Alex Dimitrov, Amy King, Ana Božičević, Anne Tardos, Anne Waldman with Ambrose Bye & Daniel Carter, Anselm Berrigan, Ariana Reines, Arthur’s Landing, Barry Denny, Basil King, Betsy Fagin, Bill Kushner, Billy Lamont, Bob Hershon, Bob Rosenthal, Brenda Coultas, Brendan Lorber, Brett Price, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, Bryn Kelly, CAConrad, Charles Bernstein, Christine Elmo, Christopher Stackhouse, Church of Betty, Corina Copp, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Daniel Kent, David Freeman, David Henderson, David Shapiro, David St. Lascaux, Denize Lauture, Dgls. Rothschild, Don Yorty, Donna Brook, Dorothea Lasky, Douglas Dunn, Douglas Piccinnini, Drew Gardner, Dustin Williamson, Edgar Oliver, Ed Friedman, Edmund Berrigan, Eileen Myles, Elinor Nauen, Elizabeth Devlin, Elliott Sharp, Emily XYZ, Erica Kaufman, Erica Hunt & Marty Ehrlich, Erin Morrill, Evan Kennedy, Evelyn Reilly, Filip Marinovich, Foamola, Frank Sherlock, Franklin Bruno, Genya Turovskaya, Gillian McCain, Greg Fuchs, James Marshall, Janet Hamill, Jess Fiorni, Jim Behrle, Joe Elliot, Joe Ranono, John Coletti, John Giorno, John S. Hall, Jonas Mekas, Josef Kaplan, Judah Rubin, Judith Malina, Karen Weiser, Kathleen Miller, Katie Degentesh, Ken Chen, Ken Walker, Kenny Goldsmith, Kimberly Lyons, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Lee Ranaldo, Lenny Kaye, Leopoldine Core, Lonely Christopher, Macgregor Card, Maggie Dubris, Marcella Durand, Mariana Ruiz Firmat, Mark Nowak, Martha King, Matthew Abuelo, Miguel Gutierrez, Mitch Highfill, Mónica de la Torre, Nada Gordon, Nathaniel Siegel, Nick Hallett, Nicole Peyrafitte, Pamela Sneed, Patricia Spears Jones, Patti Smith, Paul Mills (Poez), Paul Legault, Penny Arcade, Peter Gizzi, Pierre Joris, Reuben Butchart, Rickey Laurentiis, Robert Ashley, Secret Orchestra with Joanna Penn Cooper & J. Hope Stein, Shafer Hall, Simone White, Sinan Antoon, Stephanie Gray, Steve Dalachinsky, Steve Earle, Steven Taylor, Susan Landers, Susie Timmons, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Mead, Ted Dodson, Thurston Moore, Todd Colby, Tom Carey, Tom Savage, Tony Towle, Tracey McTague, Tyler Burba, Valery Oisteanu, Wayne Koestenbaum, Will Edmiston, Will Yackulic, Yoshiko Chuma, Youmna Chlala, Yuko Otomo, Yvonne Meier with Aki Sasamoto, Nicole Wallace, Arlo Quint and Stacy Szymaszek.

Admission: $20, $15 for students and seniors, and $10 for Poetry Project members. 

Returning to the place of origin

 

My mom and I visited my grandmother in Salisbury, NC.  Above:  College Q; quilt by my great-grandmother Eva (Mamaw); Uncle Joe; Grandmother's yard Buddha; tree.

Something my grandmother said

[after knocking over a container of rubber bands]
Look what I've done!  I'm an infidel!  You can't trust me.  

Another picture of me in a hat

This one's pretty good.  (I think this was my second birthday?)

Things Mom has said so far

Oh, she's Swedish. That's why she looks bizarre.

I wish someone would just show a close up of Elizabeth Taylor's eyes. They're supposed to be violet, but you can never really tell.

I don't know if I like that cheese. The only cheese I like is cheddar.  I'm tired of pretending.

Yeah. I don't even see 'em because you have to, like, kind of be paying attention.

Are sports and politics the same thing to these people? It's not about winning at all costs. This is what makes me want to move to Sweden.

Elves and poets

Well, December has me feeling a little like my eyes are pointing in two different directions, but at least Clif let me take a picture of him wearing an elf hat.

In other news, check out my friend J. Hope Stein's stunning new chapbook, Corner Office, up at H-NGM-N.

Semi-Festive

I found some Snoopy lights at the Ace Hardware.  They are a new LED kind, but Liz will be happy to know that the box was still dusty, as it should be.

Also, Andre Dubus III and yours truly-- authors of House of Sand and Fog and the chapbook Mesmer, respectively-- get our chocolates from the same place, apparently.  Except I guess he pays for his, while I get mine from my sister-from-another-mother for free.  Well, I barter with friendship + poems, which is my way.  

December and Tolerance for Ambiguity

Last night I taught my last American Poetry class at Montclair State.  I brought some homemade chocolate chip cookies for my students, and we discussed Terrance Hayes's book Lighthead.  We should have perhaps discussed this book a bit earlier, before everyone was so end-of-semester tired.  But I think the class was a success, overall.  (One student said, "What degree do I need to get to be you?"  Oh, gosh.  Who knows.)  I still have to go pick up take-home finals next week. 

Here I am about to take New Jersey Transit, my nose looking like the full moon.  But that's just poetry. 

Currently, the radiators in our duplex are not working, except for the one in my office/spare room.  Luckily, this is the most artsy room in the house, and the one where I like to think about book manuscripts and collaborative projects.

There's a lot of art in this picture, if you know how to see it.  (For example, the throw on the bed was one of my birthday presents, and it was made on 100 year-old looms in Maine.  I'm not even kidding.)  But we are hoping the radiators get fixed today. 

In other news, I've been watching Dr. Who before bed, and I've also started watching Downton Abbey.  Clif and I watch Dr. Who together, but Downton Abbey makes him fall asleep, so I watch that alone.  But I enjoy that, too.

And now that my post-doc at Fordham is over, I'm on the job market for professorships.  If I don't get one for next year, I'll be a freelancer.  Like the Doctor.  My mother says I "get high marks for tolerance for ambiguity."  Yes, I've become good at that. 



Also, Merry Christmas!  I'm liking the idea of Christmas decorations this year, but still lacking the follow-through.  I want some of those old-fashioned lights with the big bulbs.  Do you think they sell them at the Ace Hardware down the street?

The Joy of Weird Friends

(for T.C.) 

You're in my hall of fame room holding a ginger seal pup with a fabulous mullet. You have the mullet, not the seal pup. I'm in your hall of fame room going all post-apocalyptic child star, killing and roasting my own venison and wearing glorious deerskin gaiters. If I had news about my plasma, you'd be the person I'd write to, to take my mind off the news about my plasma. If you needed someone to hold the sides of your head to keep your mind ok, I'd totally write you a poem that metaphorically held the sides of your head.  In our previous friendship back in time, we were some of those proto-human toddlers who took painting lessons in a cave ritual about painting lessons. As a middle-aged man of 15, you invented dung sculpture, blowing everyone's mind. I had my own project, blowing on fiery twigs to create shapes like those little brass angels that fly by the heat of candle flame at Christmas, but nothing like that at all.

December

I haven't posted in December yet (until now).

This week so far, I:

1.  Saw my mom and stepfather.  They got some special deal to stay at the Hilton in midtown, and as my mom and I rode the elevator, we talked about how she had a stain on her shirt and how maybe she was one of those super-wealthy people who dresses in an eccentric way.  Because you just never know.

2.  Rehearsed with J. Hope Stein, Clifton, and one of Clif's trio-mates, Yuko.  We're doing a collaborative piece for the New Year's Day Marathon at the Poetry Project.  

3.  Rode New Jersey Transit to teach in Montclair.  Class hasn't started yet.  Hi from Montclair! 

Some other things I might do this week:

1.  Work on one of my other collaborative projects.  (Poems with Todd, or poems and drawings with John, or poems and drawings with my brother.)

2.  Maybe I'll think some Christmas thoughts.  Mostly for me this involves listening to "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and baking something and buying a ticket to visit Florida.  And every year I imagine buying a Charlie Brown Christmas tree of my own, but then I just skip it and skip off to Florida.

3. Oh, and who knows what else.  I might do some yoga and take some vitamins to fortify myself for the coming adventures.

Goodbye, Goodbye

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

If you put in three to four hours per day of deliberate practice,

within ten years the air around you will become firmer, making it

easier to stand upright, even in a wind storm.  Many friends accuse

me of being from Oklahoma, so this is something I know something
about-- wind and survival, funnel cakes and gas station tacos,  a strong

core. And the people, I forgot about people: How each person I met

seemed to hold a message of some sort that I would decipher years

later while scribbling in a notebook, the code revealed as quickly 
as it was extinguished. I love myself sometimes in my love for

the people, how noticing is like the whole world sitting up straight
and giving you a sad smile, or like taking off your own shirt and loving
your animal warmth apart from yourself.  But you can't just say that.

What?  I didn't say that.  Together we can envelop the news, and I do 

mean what we read in the papers, what is sprayed on the walls, 
or whispered in paneled dens over a sleeping sibling. Brother, I'll be 
over here, like Thoreau on a stalled Q train on the Manhattan bridge, 
scowling at the wondrous implicated sky.  Sister, let me illuminate

the electric green muck of the Gowanus Canal. I am all about

forgetting, even when memory comes trudging up the stairs in the form

of a poem I shall never write in order to simply say goodbye, goodbye.

OK, fine-- I remember you.  Goodbye.

Thanks

Brother

My little brother used to be this guy (with me as a teenager in a portrait from Sears).

And this guy (with me + antenna).

Now he's this guy (with the mayor of Orlando, receiving an award for his photo of the historic district).

Three

There is a light that never goes out

I think this person was about 14 years old when she made this video.  What would it have been like to be that cool at 14? 



Also, this person is the daughter of this person, who has a very cool blog. 

Wings of Desire

I’m thinking of becoming a full-time flaneur, moving

through the city at dusk or just before dusk and just after

dusk to notice things.  Thus, I cultivate the most angelic

eavesdroppy parts of my personality.  Exhibit A:

A young woman at the sushi place near St. Mark’s sets

a metal thermos next to her water glass, tells her friend,

I like to use this thermos to drink vodka in public

and also sometimes to drink tea.  I mark.  I bend to

my notebook and record.  This is my benediction, you

can tell by my large, shapeless overcoat and slicked-

back hair.  I mean the business of listening to the music

of the spheres, tilting my head like that, doing that most

difficult and beautiful job between light bouts

of bemused habitual scowling.  You’re welcome. 

Bless us all. 

A film by Joseph Cornell

. . . with music that sounds like it's from a David Lynch movie . . . can be found here.

Bear

"He puts his paws on the table, waiting, like a gentleman, another boarder-- but more polite, actually-- for his food to be served.  He's wearing his bow tie, bright red, and an oversize fedora with a matching band.  He eyes the apple core, but he knows better than to reach for it.  He's a well-trained bear, delicate, refined.  And old, too.  He looks especially frail today, his chest sunken, and an extra huskiness to his normally labored breathing.  His eyes are weak.  He sniffs at Alma with his flared nostrils, a polite inquiry as to how she's faring." 

from The Madam by Julianna Baggott

New collaborative poem

Human Resources

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

When last we saw our hero, she had taken up residence

 as a manufacturer of good vibes.  Her methods,

while outwardly sound,  gave off a sheepish, though powdery,

glandular scent. The kids loved her smell.  By kids, we mean

guys she met at poetry readings who followed her home

and mooned at her  through various apparati.  She had

graduated from the Bergtraum School of the Business of Veils

and Hunches and Improvised Esoterica, where her attempts

at being graceful met with laughter, but where all found her

realistic way of showing emotions to be soothing in the cramped

quarters of her single room.  Like the small woman from Poltergeist,

she was mockable, but you wanted her around when ectoplasm

started messing with your shit. Short and magical was how

she described herself in personal ads, when in fact

she was rather tall and ordinary, and sometimes rumpled

and perplexed.  But Xanax made her feel wrapped in cotton batting,

so she reverted to her practice of pretending to be a shaman who

gave psychic makeovers in the subway. She lived with ghosts,

laughing at the people who warned of their inability to clean

up after a tirade or a party.  She'll tell your fortune at her

discretion, for barter only and by appointment. 

It will make you sleepy.  It will change your life.

Maine

If you thought I never went on a day trip to Portland, Maine around 1999 or 2000 with my friend Wendy, where we took overly-serious pictures of each other dressed in black-- you were dead WRONG. 

Nervous cells

 “Everything around us is radiations . . . luminous radiation, caloric, electric, sonorous . . . . Why doubt telepathy, the influence from a distance of thought on thought?  The rays which escape from the nervous cells are most capable of exciting other nervous cells from afar.”     

--Henri de Parville, writing about the Curies’ Nobel Prize  in Le Correspondant [quoted in the Marie Curie biography, Obsessive Genius by Barbara Goldsmith]

Two prose poems I wrote several years ago and just found on my computer

Closure

They sit at a table next to a painting of a chimpanzee wearing a ballgown and a tiara.  They begin talking about how there aren’t very many good restaurants in their town, but how in the past two months, they’ve gone to almost every mid- to upper-range date-type restaurant.  How he’d done her that service, at least.  They briefly touch on whether they should really break up.  Then her salad comes.  She puts her fork into the salad dressing that she has asked for on the side.  He dares her to drink the salad dressing straight.  She thinks for a few seconds.  Says it would take $500 for her to do that in this restaurant.  He says he would do it for $40.  Then they begin talking about butter eating contests they have seen or heard about. 

 

No Languages

Sometimes the languages enter my consciousness, though, the ones I don't speak, as when I say, "Is it free?" meaning "Is it clear?" when I'm driving. 

Or when I stare at the word "die" one day, not knowing what it says for the longest time.    

My cat reminds me of the times I woke up late, lying on my alarm clock, frantic to realize that I had only been dreaming that I got up and got ready for work.  Seeing Andy curled up beside me, I blurted out, "What time is it?"  before remembering that cats don't speak or tell time.  I did this twice.

What do we fall through in those moments when we forget how the lock on the front door works, forget the name of someone we know, wake up in the dark and can't figure out where the door to the bedroom is or which wall we're facing? 

One of my friends loves the feeling of being lost in the week, no idea which day it is.  I get panicked then, turned around.

This same friend, though, is scared by my favorite falling in-between: at dusk, the twilight tingle of voices with no words in the head, wondering will you turn down an alley and out of your body. 

Posture of Victory

(after Todd Colby)

Flame
Garrison Keillor tells a nice story

in his red shoes. But don’t talk to him

at the cafe.  He doesn’t want to be bothered.

Mint Green Pants
It’s true your brother would never get on board

with the dark clothes you tried to buy him. 

You break down and buy him colors.

Provoking Animals with Political Buttons
The student who uses the word “swaggerjacker”

also calls Audre Lorde “ballsy,” causing the mind

to stop, a minor fit of staring into space.   


Hibernation System
Who among us are great animals?

You call the cops about your missing property.

They are unhelpful, but do not beat you up.

Vanishing Point
Dream of the lady poets

like Macbeth witches, standing around

being supportive of your progress.

Poem written for me in 2009

3 lines for Joanna

by Todd Colby

when I look at fine women's boots

I think the air must be nice in Florida

& do people skip much in Italy?

Happy Halloween from Malfeez!

My brother and I have another collaboration up here. 

A Poem of Personal Excellence for Halloween

[image: http://dreamsandvisions.squarespace.com/]

I'm excelling at vibrating at all the different levels of consciousness
all at the same time, the level where I plan a Stop Making Sense
zombie costume, but don't have a huge suit and so don't
follow through, the level where I scowl out the window at red
leaves and think deep thoughts about the academy, and also
the value-added level where I wake up to a ghost twitching
the bed and it's the sleep-hiccups of a boyfriend sleeping
in his jeans and flannel shirt because he fell asleep halfway
through scary movies about hypnotism night.  Personal excellence
means putting on your glasses to make sure a ghost in a Stop
Making Sense suit isn't watching you wake up to sleep-
hiccups over by the bookcase.  Happy Halloween.
Don't worry 'bout me.  Don't you worry about me.

Storm King

Two years ago, not long after Clif and I started dating, we went to Storm King Art Center.

And Clif disappeared into this portal.

This past weekend, at the appointed time, I journeyed back to Storm King and greeted him as he re-emerged from the portal. 

When he is ready, he will tell the world his story.

Chicago School of Poetics

I'll be teaching online community poetry workshops through the Chicago School of Poetics starting in January 2012.  The two courses I'll be teaching this winter are Poetics: Level II and Documentary Poetics.

Here's my faculty page.

Right Mind

I ran off to Boston this weekend.  (Well, "ran off" after missing the Bolt bus due to subway construction and waiting for the next bus in midtown for two hours while thousands of people occupied Times Square several blocks away and a bunch of people dressed as comic book characters walked by to/from the Javits Center, where Comic Con was going on.  One really good Edward Scissorhands walked by, but I wasn't fast enough to get a picture.)

I have many October thoughts on my mind, including but not limited to:
1.  How I'd like to write something that is a comfort to someone somewhere.
2.  How there is all this constant "becoming."
3.  The time I talked to Emma Goldman on the Ouija board (TM, Parker Bros.).   She said, "The revolution failed.  Even I failed."  Then she said some things about free love.  Then she said, "Jesus is love," and I had to wonder.
4.  "Right livelihood."  
5.  How it's good to have a friend I've known since we were 17 who knows when to encourage me to ride bikes by the Charles and when to encourage me to get in bed with a book because I might be getting sick.  At one point, W. came into the room as I was bundling myself up in her Hudson blanket and fashioning a recovery turban out of a scarf.  She took in the scene, then laughed at me and walked back out again.  And that was just what I needed.

Lately

 

Lately:

Moon over Montclair; what my hair doesn't look like after my haircut; low-key show by Secret Orchestra, including a couple of beautiful new songs-- it's amazing to me that people can do that, play music; I'm telling my fortune in coffee filters.  Or I'm just drinking a lot of coffee.

New blog

My brother and I have started a blog for our collaborative drawing-poem pieces.  The name Malfeez comes from a German board game, Malefiz, an archaic word that means "misdeed."  We also had in mind Max and Moritz, pranksterish forerunners to the Katzenjammer Kids.  Our "misdeeds" mostly have to do with existential questioning, though . . .

Here's a peek:

A Set of Questions

Have you ever teared up at brunch when you were supposed to be deciding what to order?

Was it due to all the uncertainty of life, the way things keep changing?  How nothing is fixed?

Did you enjoy your mimosa anyway?   The carmelized apples?  Were the carmelized apples a blessing, even though the man to your left kept talking about renting a hotel room to learn all the three-letter Scrabble words? 

Afterward, did you sit in the park and watch a little girl with straight posture and a braid do a dainty run back and forth to fetch large rocks and hurl them with force upon the flagstones?  Like this: run run, hands out at sides, run run, THROW the rock down to see if it breaks?

At one point did she come back with a walk that involved lifting her feet high, as if stepping through fairy dew from a ballet recital?  Step.  Step.  Step.  THROW the rock down. 

Have you had this line in your head for a while?:  to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.  Is living is like that, also?  Luckier and more painful?

Suppose we embrace it?  The dream-like rhetorical bent?  The rocks and the stepping through dew?  What then?

Some Things That Have Been on My Mind

[source: lulublick.com]

People who write "awe" when they mean "awww."  People who say "wary" but mean "weary."  People who say "anyways."  People in vests.  Pigeon-toed people.  People with cowlicks.  People with an ink smear on one cheek because no one told people all afternoon.  I have been one or more of these people.  I'll give you some other things to think about:  The other middle-aged lady sitting alone who also ordered a small plain frozen yogurt with strawberries.  What's her story?  She was a kid, right?  She had a mom.  What was that like?  Now think about the different things "middle aged" can mean.  Now think of a horse and those pointy-outy hairs around its mouth.  Think of its soft nose.  Where is your horse?  In a field, right?  Maybe by a two-lane highway, or something?  It's like one of those horses from a James Wright poem, but more wary.  Wary or weary.  It looks at you out of its side-headed eyes like, "Whatever."  Like, "Whatever.  Fine.  I love you." 

Found

Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Yay!

I have an appreciation of him up on poetrycrush. 

Things I Found

1.  This list of seven items from a visit my brother made to NYC in April 2009:

Top ten

The light at 8:10 and the way those water towers look

Brother's story of trading a crucifix for a chocolate pie

Stopping at various points in central park to sit on benches

Descrip of the renaissance youth on audio tour.

Portrait of the blacksmith's daughter

"that French woman just touched my hand by accident"

Sheep meadow
 


2.  This poem I wrote in a poetry workshop in Kansas with Luci Tapahonso in the early '90s.  Well, my friend Wendy found it and sent me this photo.  (Dig the Jane Austen epigraph.)  I think I'm better at line breaks and stuff now. 

3.  I also found a notation in my phone from August 1, 2009: "Deanie Loomis."  It was meant to remind myself to get another cat and name her Deanie Loomis.  Later that month, though, I would begin dating Clifton, who is allergic to cats.  Cliftons are all well and good, but I still want a cat, too. 


4.  And there's this Levertov poem called "Aware" in which she talks about "the vine leaves/ speaking among themselves in abundant/ whispers."  Here's the second stanza:


            My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.

Love Is All Around

Brooklyn morning, 10 a.m. writing project
a car alarm somewhere on the block behind
a quasi-desperate tiredness

I look at the job ads and think

"If I carry me off to Iowa," I think

Here's the pie chart of my mind:
big slices of I'm sick of your insane demands
of gratitude gratitude shakti shakti

I'll rest my mind upon the vari-colored
terra cotta tiles
brick-red painted house shingles
white trim, green leaves all light
and dapple dapple through the window
opposite

(Since I was a kid, if I let my mind go quiet:
particles moving in the trees)

What is this realm I've come to,
its leaves, its constant jostlings?

Spells

I have been following the blog of Bhanu Kapil.  She says things like this on her blog:

Teaching has a lot of shakti.  Writing has shakti. September is for balance, the mediation of all this voltage, and the pleasures of the color gold.  I invert myself, with others, above the river in early Fall, or the first day of Fall, then go home.  Last night, I dreamed of a tree that was filled with eight or nine mountain lions; they were three-quarters mountain lion and one-quarter hawk. 

I thought I might have a dream like that last night, but I only remember dreaming that I told some man that I needed to lose 10 pounds and he said, "No, you need to gain 10 pounds."   So, there's that.

One image that came up when I Googled "Poet Headstand."
[http://tantricpirate.com/wordpress/]

But there's also this:  I woke and thought, "A book called Spells."  Like, "Here are some magic spells," but also like, "Joanna's having one of her spells again."  The thought pleased me.

At brunch, C. and I talked about serving the poetry/art/music, instead of using the poetry/art/music to serve your ego.  Tapping into a water table of poetry, etc.  We kept extending the metaphor until it became pleasantly absurd, and C. ended up telling me not to make poetry smoothies that would poison people.  (I won't.  Hopefully.) 

I'm feeling the need to invert myself.  I will work up to that again.   

New York Penn Cooper

Last night as I came back out of Penn Station after teaching poetry in New Jersey, I saw Jesse Eisenberg ride by on a bike.  Where were you going, Jesse Eisenberg?