Maybe that will be my next project. Factory poems! One person picks the words, one person strings them together, one person revises, and one person chooses which poems will make up the chapbook.
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CALAMITY
YCALAMIT
TYCALAMI
ITYCALAM
MITYCALA
AMITYCAL
LAMITYCA
ALAMITYC
CALAMITY
Most of the words I used come from Venedikt Erofeev's "Moscow to the End of the Line."
UPDATE: Now that I'm looking at it, I think I'll use the grid as part of the layout for the cover of the chapbook. O, beautiful Photoshop, soon I shall be with you again.
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I missed his title deadline by seven minutes. Dang.
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Euro-Chinese Water Torture, Vols. 1 & 2
Le Poisson Poison
Was the name
Of my father's fake
French Restaurant.
The 99-Dollar Experiment
Was the name of his ship.
Bob Villa his house.
My mother named her
Dog , my sister her
Punk band, and
Lindsey and I named
Our concept album.
After the initial sixteen minutes
Of a strained voice saying "drip"
In a Hungarian accent,
The machine guns cut in.
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The full first volume of Varney, when cut and paste into Word in 12-point Times New Roman font, runs to more than 600 pages. This is what you get when you order Microsoft to pummel it down to 100 words. I love it. The end is freaking fantastic!
Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood
"Flora! Flora -- Flora -- "
"The vampyre, Henry." Henry started.
"Yes, Henry. Flora, dear Flora!"
"Henry," said Charles.
"Henry!" "Sir?"
HENRY'S AGREEMENT WITH SIR FRANCIS VARNEY. "Marchdale."
"Farewell, sir."
"Henry -- Henry."
"Admiral Bell."
"Well?"
"Very well, sir."
"Hilloa, sir!" "Well?"
"Flora! Flora!"
"Varney -- Varney, the vampyre."
"Varney!" exclaimed Henry; "Varney here!"
"Sir Francis Varney?"
TO SIR FRANCIS VARNEY.
"Well?"
"Well -- well."
"Well."
"Charles -- Charles -- Charles!"
-- "Charles! Charles!" "No, Henry." "Charles! Charles! Charles! Charles! Farewell, sir!" -- SIR FRANCIS VARNEY'S DANGER. -- Sir Francis Varney's Danger. -- Sir Francis Varney's Danger. -- Sir Francis Varney's Danger. "Sir Francis Varney."
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Well."
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Purchased:
Matthea Harvey: Sad Little Breathing Machine
Lisa Jarnot: Black Dog Songs
Tony Tost: Invisible Bride
Paul Killebrew: Forget Rita
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John's reading was not so much a reading as an impromptu play. For example:
John: (reads poem)
Phone rings.
Shafer: John! John, stop reading!
Shafer picks up phone
Shafer: Nice job calling in the middle of the fucking reading, Miguel!
...
Shafer: Oh. I thought you were a different Miguel. Sorry for cursing at you.
Or...
John: (reads poem)
Shafer: John and I are in love!
John: Shafer and I need to discuss what our relationship is.
Got some lines down anyway...
"memory: green shadows of gray birds"
"I am rendered extraterrestrial by a Panama hat."
"We don't need no chandeliers."
Paul Killebrew followed.
"It's a gay world.
A gay gay world.
A gay gay, gay world
And I want to be president!"
"All the satanic pharmaceutical companies will never find a cure for the make-out fever, because everyone wants it."
"I'm feeling the sunlight buzz around me like a fanclub."
"I want to be fat and pricey, like my parents' berber carpet."
Peter Streckfuss was last, and I unfortunately don't have anything recorded, because I suddenly began writing a poem about his feet. But I did catch the bit about lichee nuts.
Feet poem to follow in the next day or so, hopefully. Still trying to see if it's going to shape up into anything.
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Meanwhile, in Bizarro-World (I mean, SFGate.com), Billy Collins is being compared to Proust.
Like Proust (another master explorer of boredom's fugue states), Collins seizes on the memory-laden craft item as a connective to his youth and the uncountable emotional debts he owes his mother. "I was as sure as a boy could be," he writes, "that this useless, worthless thing I wove/out of boredom would be enough to make us even."
Feh. Everyone knows the best poetic statement on boredom is Berryman's Dream Song 14. Mother issues indeed.
Anyhoo, I will return tonight with a reading review of yesterday's fractious Frequency series, and two, count-em-two, new NaPoWriMo poems. I know. I'm one behind. But I like totally wrote the missing one out in my notebook yesterday. Swearsies.
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