English 271: How Does This Sound?

I've put in a good amount of work, consolidating the events that transpired at Loyola U. in Chicago in 2008. All the particulars of the course (English 271, How Does This Sound, Ultramodern Metaphor, 25 East Pearson Street, room 306, Prof. Laura Goldstein) and my involvement in it (Opera Bufa 2.5 days, my lecture on the third day) are now well documented. There are some details as to how the lecture day (June 19) went that are worth relating. The funniest is a quirk of Loyola classrooms, as a ricochet against Opera Bufa. Loyola, of course, is a religious institution. It follows from this that all the classrooms come equipped with a rather large, plasticine Christ-figure, hanging in a lofty position at the back of the room. Room 306 happened to be a downwards-slope model academic room, so that when I lectured, I was gazing upwards at the class of about twenty students. The plasticine Christ appeared to be gazing down at me from a great height. I remember feeling a wry sense of amusement at this circumstance; Opera Bufa is an intermittently racy book, and some of the passages the students wanted me to explicate were racy ones. If Jesus were there, would he have approved?

Adam Fieled: Treated Image Self-Portrait: 2020

 

Sergei Belyaev: The Break: 1998

Lost in a World of Confusion: Nicole Zach: 1998

Crossroads: 2020

Why is the legend of Robert Johnson relevant in 2020? After a hard-bitten, chaotic, fractured decade, a decade beset by shadows on all sides, many individuals feel like the deals they've made to survive are with the Devil himself. What the 2020s will be about is anyone's guess. My prophecy involves a 30% improvement on the Teens; more action, more liveliness. Especially beneath the surface, where the media, the government, and all kinds of imposing influences can't see.

Mary Harju, Rue St. Denis, Montreal, Quebec, 2003 (Adam Fieled)

1790 Butler Pike: Another Vision

A Vision: 4th Ave & Hallowell Street in Conshy...

The miracles of photo manipulation: 4th Ave & Hallowell Street in Conshy is one of the optic highlights of the entire Ply-Mar area. The view of the 300 Four Falls Building is stunning. What would Van Gogh, doing a plein air routine, have made of such an optic feast? Well, here ya go...

Hannah Miller

Hannah Miller was an important social presence for the Philly Free School in the mid-Aughts. Hailing from the West Coast, she split her time then between books & politics; and she was devoted to a liberal socio-political vision of Philadelphia that Mike & I approved of. 

Among other new appearances of Hannah online, in & around P.F.S., Poetry Incarnation '05, & the Highwire Gallery, Hannah appears in this Something Solid sonnet from '17, too, which I can be heard reading here. 

The White Album: A Tale of Two Editions

Yesterday, the second edition of The White Album was released by Eratio Editions. I thought it would be reasonable to post here links to both editions, the Eratio and the Ungovernable Press (2009), so here they are: the au courant and the nine years ago. The discrepancies between the two editions are major, and you can see for yourself who in poetry might prefer which edition to the other, and why.

King of Prussia: Lunar, Loopy

My new page in Otoliths 50 allowed me to discuss the Philly suburb King of Prussia, and its fantastic architecture. King of Prussia (Upper Merion) is as fascinating to me now as it was twenty years ago, if not more so, because the sense of transcendentalism/ethereal levitation in-built to it ages well, has not diminished for me over time, so that being in or seeing King of Prussia is always a treat. Conshohocken (Plymouth-Whitemarsh) architecture tends to be stately rather than lunar or loopy, and the dichotomous tension between the two styles/modes of presentation make for two physiological reactions which complement each other in intriguing ways. I may eventually have something to say about lonesome, windswept Bridgeport at some point too.  

"Squawk, Squawk, Squawk..."

If Mata Hari were about to file her report, she'd be happy to note that the fourWtwenty-eight print anthology, which was released from Charles Sturt University in Australia in December 2017, and features a fragment used in Something Solid, is now available online in pdf form.

Uranus into Taurus, and Apps

The Sun just entered Taurus; more importantly, as a long-term influence, Uranus enters Taurus shortly as well. In the interest of Taurus-level gravitas, another solid auditory Apps experience.

Posit Sounds...

For those who want to hear how Posit sounds. 

April 17, 1998

April 17, 1998, twenty years ago today, was a day like any other in State College, Pennsylvania. I was living in a bedsit flat in North Halls; and about to move into a sublet on South Atherton Street. Yet, it turned out to be a memorable day for me, as it was the day I wrote the first, almost-instantly complete draft of the poem Clean, which appeared in Philly print journal Siren's Silence (as is here shown) later that year. It signaled a leap forward for me and my writing, which culminated in the composition of Mortuary Puppies later that year, which was staged in State College in February '99 by the Outlaws. Illustration (Angel of Burned Flesh) by Brian Willette. 

On the Fritz in 1613

Another venue for 1613, inviting us to yoke things together by force.

Answered Prayers: Eden, Milton

It's too bad I never wrote a sonnet sequence in the manner of Trish (about Mary H) for Jen. If I did so, it would have to be about two innocent kids wandering into a sort of Eden, or an Edenic context, and then getting booted out. Eden and plebeian human reality are a macabre juxtaposition. What's in Equations and The Symbolist Book (Answered Prayers), and in the new sonnets (Something Solid), will have to suffice. If I was ever in a place to do a riff on Paradise Lost, it may now be much too late for goodbyes. Maybe.

Answered Prayers: The Symbolist Book

The book I wrote in State College in the 90s (Answered Prayers and Willard Preachers) manifests the blatant influence of the French Symbolist poets, principally Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. When I wrote the book ('95-'98), I wasn't necessarily ready for Keats, Wordsworth, and Milton yet. The acid-headed, hallucinatory antics of the Symbolists, however, were germane to me then very much. It helped that 90s State College was an acid-headed (or shroom-headed) kind of place, and the general ambiance was a phantasmagoric one.

Trish: A Romance

Here's a piece which needs some action. 

Making a Racket, Not a Racket: The Emendation Game

Because Chimes has already been released in several different print editions, what edition number this is is confusing, but this is the first emended edition. Now we have all ducks in an emended row towards solidity, Chimes-wise.