Hobby-Horses in Conshohocken/Manayunk

The morning writing session produced these. As winter has debuted early this year, some of the early morning vistas from Fayette Street are very pretty. Although for a burb, Conshy leans towards the concrete-ish. Jeremy's Manayunk is even better...

Winter Wonderland

Took a long walk in the snow this morning. Thought of the photographer...what's his name..."Joy Before the Object"...Albert Renger Patzsch. Snow on Conshy looks good. As I spent the morning writing, I noticed that I seem to be channeling harsh frequencies. Sign o' the times, peeps.

Saturday, Main Line

Wrote these at the Conshy Starbucks, listening to the X-Mas music they were playing and also watching the Main Line dance down the proverbial aisle.

Outbound Cafe: Outbound Apparition Poems

I spent the morning (a rainy one in Philly) writing these at the Outbound Cafe, here pictured, adjacent to the Conshy Septa station. The Outbound is quirky: they only play 70s music, and you haven't lived until you've attempted to write Apparition Poems to the sound of "Crocodile Rock" and "I'll Be Around."

New Apparition Poems

I'm happy to say that I'm continuing again with the composition of Apparition Poems. Hopefully, the epic I leave behind when I die will be Homeric in scope.

Writing the Cheltenham Elegies

When I wrote the Cheltenham poetry sequence in the fall of '11, I was still living at 23rd and Arch. But the 'burbs had begun to close in: I started writing the series because I discovered, at a relative's house in Conshy, my high school '94 yearbook, and it took me on a very strange, eerie voyage.

Blogger Gauntlets

I started using Blogger seriously in 2006. In 2012, formatting rules changed and it has taken me a year to catch up. It's been a year of rampant embeds. Now, things have come full circle into total fertility again.

Volo Coffeehouse: Posit Trilogy: Summer '13

One of my discoveries this past summer was Volo Coffeehouse, on Main Street in Manayunk, Philadelphia. I wound up writing Deposit and Re-Posit, which form The Posit Trilogy with the original '07 Posit, mostly there. It's another ambient locale.

P.S. A return to Volo ten years later (2023) resulted in Volo: A Chapbook, or Posit Part 4. 

Otoliths Equations: September 2010

The Otoliths Equations went up in September 2010. By then, I was into teaching English 902, a syllabus I designed myself. The centerpiece was Zadie Smith's "White Teeth," with Donald Barthelme and Anne Sexton on the side. Shown here is Anderson Building; I actually taught the course in Gladfelter Hall.

More Equations/Wagon Train

Some of the Equations came out in Peter Philpott's Great Works in late '10. Also, I was building up support for the book using Red Room. The Red Room pages for 54, 48, and 10 have been revamped/improved this year. Wagon Train, here shown, between 21st and 22nd on Race Street in Logan Square, was where I usually picked up my morning coffee from late '99 to '12. Thanks John!!

More '10: Roots of Equations

Equations, which was released as a print book in '11, was written co-terminously with Mother Earth in '10. If Equations has been misunderstood, it's because readers don't realize I was "writing from life." The encounters in the book are not bluffs or braggadocio. As of '09, slightly earlier, they opened the Arch Street Market on the corner of 22nd and Arch Streets in Logan Square.

Argotist Online Apps Page

The Argotist Online Apps page has a nice story behind it. The Apps on the page were all written very early one December morning (12-05-09), about 4 am. I sent a query to Jeff Side at about 9 am (2 pm UK time) and by noon US time the poems were up. Could be the single most exciting day I had while writing the book. More was added to the page in '17.

Incarnadine: PECO Towers

Though this pic is shot from the other side of the PECO Tower, when I looked out my fourth floor window at Westminster Arch at night, this tower is what I saw. The desktop set up I had, placed my desk and desktop right before the western window, from which I could see the huge random parking lot at the corner of 23rd and Arch, and the blocks sloping up from it. This Stoning the Devil page, from right after X-Mas '09, has a hinge also, for some obvious reasons, to being a keeper.

Four Years: Apparition Poems: Westminster Arch

Hard to believe it's been four years since I wrote Apparition Poems. It was mostly written in my apartment at Westminster Arch, 23rd and Arch, Center City Philly, here shown. The view from my windows was quite grungy, even lurid: but at least I could always get the time & temp from the Utilities Building across the street. And in winter, as it mostly was when I wrote AP, with the blinds half-drawn, I got a potent "noir" effect. Turn up the Sister Lovers. This page from Stoning the Devil, 12-09-09, is as representative as any.

a new addition...: denver syntax

Two Apps pages, put up in 2010 in denver syntax now preserved: 1473 and 1497.

Book Covers

Book covers have always been important to me; not as important as content, but a more than reasonable concern. I've made some wise choices and some iffy ones. Choosing stark white for "Apparition Poems" was a mistake I hope to rectify eventually. This Crowley book cover is striking, too.

Frozen Warnings

Frozen Warnings by Abby Heller-Burnham is what I want to adorn the cover of The Great Recession.

How macho is solido: Cheltenham Elegies

With an archiving tool like archive.is, it's hard to judge sometimes what pages deserve to be preserved and which don't. The new one I have up, from "Cheltenham," and including several Elegies looks nice enough to me to warrant the site's treatment. As I continue to compete on my artist's version of "Quienes mas solido," but not against Lorenzo Llamas, or Ricardo Montelban.

A mild day in November...

This Conshy-ambient shot was taken by someone named Paul Runyon. Conshohocken is as ambient, in its way, as any American suburb I've seen. The Chicago burbs are aesthetically interesting too. Being in suburban Illinois is like being on the moon. And the sky looks different, more fluid.

Moody/Magnificent

The miracles of the twenty-first century have allowed me to preserve, in "full text," Cheltenham and Apparition Poems. This pic is one of Fayette Street turning into...I forget...not Ridge Pike...some Expressway. It's as moody and magnificent as any other Philly shot I've seen, & anonymous to boot. 

Art-Odyssey : Heller-Burnham

Here's an incredible Abs-page I thought to lock in for the ages.

Archive.Is is...

The Internet is a lot of things: cowboys & Indians, the new Wild West, and "Learning to Dance" (like Abs' painting here). So: found a preservation site called archive.is, and have no idea how many chips to place on it. I do know that it seems substantial enough to take seriously. Here's my first round of "preservations": Otoliths Great Recessions page, Jacket 40 Apps page, Jeff Side Beams review page, Laura G on Opera Bufa page, Cheltenham As-Is page, and Stoning the Devil home-page.

Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum's Philadelphia

Macabre City Hall

Who knew that, shot from the right angles, even Philly City Hall could look macabre?

Still from "Suspiria"

Bam Bam Bigelow

I'm drinking Bigelow Green Tea, with antioxidants.

Hyde Park

I snapped this shot of the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park (London) in spring 1990.

"Cheltenham" book cover

I am of the opinion that the cover of "Cheltenham," my '12 print Blazevox book, is the single greatest cover on a poetry book in literary history. In its stark, lurid radiance, it is iconic. I didn't come up with it: Blazevox editor Geoffrey Gatza did. Thanks again, Geoffrey.

"Moody" Kelly Drive

A moody vista, this, which I like very much. I lived in this neighborhood (near Kelly Drive) from late 1999 to 2012. When I moved to 23rd and Arch in 2008, I started to use Kelly Drive to walk and run more frequently. Useful, then, to let off steam. Stark black and white pics of Philly tend to work well. Philly, is, after all, as good an answer to Paris as America's got. Philly photographs "moody."

Ava Gardner

Conshy

This view, taken from the bridge above the Conshohocken Septa station, expresses to me the weirdness of American suburban spaces & sprawl. Many American suburbs can't decide exactly what they are or want to be: pastoral or urban, forest or concrete jungle. Suburban spaces & their weirdness are a fetish for me, and "Conshy" is as weird as the rest. I'll see you on Fayette Street.