JOHN GIORNO and BRIAN KIM STEFANS



SEGUE @ BOWERY POETRY CLUB
Saturday Feb 28, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
$6 admission goes to support the readers

John Giorno is the author of many books of poetry, which have been translated into several languages. Subduing Demons in America: The Selected Poems of John Giorno, 1962-2008, a career-spanning survey of his work, was just published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull.

Brian Kim Stefans’ most recent books are What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), Kluge: A Mediation, and other works (Roof, 2007) and Before Starting Over: Selected Writings and Interviews (Salt, 2006). He just moved to Los Angeles to take a position as professor of English and Digital Humanities at UCLA.

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue Foundation. For more information, please visit seguefoundation.com, bowerypoetry.com, or call (212) 614-0505. Curators: February-March by Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan.

TONIGHT!

Bill Luoma & Gary Sullivan
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's
Corner of 2nd Avenue & 10th Street
Wednesday, February 25, 8 PM

Bill Luoma is the author of My Trip to New York City, Western Love, Swoonrocket and Dear Dad. He's a member of the subpress collective and currently lives in Berkeley, CA. New work can be found in Work and Try.

Poet and cartoonist Gary Sullivan's most recent book is PPL in a Depot, (Roof, 2008). He is currently at work on the fourth issue of his comic book, Elsewhere. His translations of the poetry of Austrian "outsider" poet Ernst Herbeck appear at herbeck.blogspot.com.

FROM THE HERBECK BLOG

The Cigarette.

is a monopoly and must
be smoked. May it
go up in flames.

Translated by Gary Sullivan and Oya Ataman.

* * *

Die Zigarette.

ist ein Monopol und muss
geraucht werden. Auf Dasssie
in Flammen aufgeht.

CULTURE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

I don’t want to join a club that will accept me as a member.

I’d never belong to a club that would have me as a member.

I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

I would never become a member of any club that would have me.

I would never belong to a club that would accept ME as a member.

Any club that will accept me as a member, I wouldn’t want to join.

I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member.

I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

Groucho Marx says he DISMISS the club that would have him as a member.

I’m of the Groucho Marx persuasion, and don’t want any part of any club that would have me as a member.

Which brings to mind Groucho Marx’s quip about not wanting to join any club that would have him as a member.

Enter Julius Henry Marx, better known as Groucho Marx: "I would never join a club that would have me as a member."

In this spirit it was named after Groucho Marx because of his famous remark about not joining any club that would have him as a member.

I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.

MELANIE NIELSON and SARA WINTZ
SEGUE READING SERIES @ BOWERY POETRY CLUB
Saturday, Feb 21, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
$6 admission goes to support the readers

Melanie Nielson was born in Humboldt, Tennessee, grew up in Southern California, and lives in New York City. She edited Big Allis magazine for many years with Jessica Grim, and is the author of Civil Noir (Roof Books, 1991).

Sara Wintz’s writing has appeared in Ecopoetics, Cricket Online Review, Interrobang?!, and on Ceptuetics. She co-directs, with Cristiana Baik, :the press gang:, publisher of Intricate Systems, by Juliana Spahr and One Might, by Karen Volkman. She lives in Brooklyn and works at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue Foundation. For more information, please visit seguefoundation.com, bowerypoetry.com, or call (212) 614-0505. Curators for February-March: Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan.

OPENS TODAY



in Karachi, alas.

WC FIELDS + WCW

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. Forgive me.

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her. Forgive me.

Abstaining is favorable both to the head and the pocket. Forgive me.

Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler. Forgive me.

All the men in my family were bearded, and most of the women. Forgive me.

Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake. Forgive me.

Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad. Forgive me.

Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. Forgive me.

Children should neither be seen or heard from - ever again. Forgive me.

Don't worry about your heart, it will last you as long as you live. Forgive me.

Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting? Forgive me.

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against. Forgive me.

Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia. Forgive me.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. Forgive me.

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy. Forgive me.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison. Forgive me.

I am free of all prejudices. I hate every one equally. Forgive me.

I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food. Forgive me.

I drink therefore I am. Forgive me.

I like children - fried. Forgive me.

I must have a drink of breakfast. Forgive me.

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it. Forgive me.

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes. Forgive me.

I never drink water. I'm afraid it will become habit-forming. Forgive me.

I never met a kid I liked. Forgive me.

I never vote for anyone. I always vote against. Forgive me.

I never worry about being driven to drink; I just worry about being driven home. Forgive me.

I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday. Forgive me.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it. Forgive me.

If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon. Forgive me.

If there's a will, prosperity can't be far behind. Forgive me.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. Forgive me.

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to. Forgive me.

It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it. Forgive me.

It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money. Forgive me.

Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed. Forgive me.

Marry an outdoors woman. Then if you throw her out into the yard on a cold night, she can still survive. Forgive me.

Never cry over spilt milk, because it may have been poisoned. Forgive me.

Never give a sucker an even break. Forgive me.

Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life. Forgive me.

No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree. Forgive me.

Now don't say you can't swear off drinking; it's easy. I've done it a thousand times. Forgive me.

On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. Forgive me.

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water. Forgive me.

Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream. Forgive me.

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. Forgive me.

Set up another case bartender! The best thing for a case of nerves is a case of Scotch. Forgive me.

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil. Forgive me.

Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink. Forgive me.

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it. Forgive me.

Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch. Forgive me.

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with. Forgive me.

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. Forgive me.

The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath. Forgive me.

The cost of living has gone up another dollar a quart. Forgive me.

The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves. Forgive me.

The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive. Forgive me.

There are only two real ways to get ahead today - sell liquor or drink it. Forgive me.

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation. Forgive me.

When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty. Forgive me.

Women are like elephants. I like to look at 'em, but I wouldn't want to own one. Forgive me.

ANNOYING DIABETIC BITCH
Sharon Mesmer, Combo Books, 2007

[This review originally appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter.]



Days after Obama’s historic election I received an earnest e-mail from a Canadian poet who had spent most of the Bush era in the States. “I was intrigued,” she wrote, about “the future of flarf in a post-Bush world.”

She had a theory. Flarf—a kind of poetry that often involves suturing together the results of Internet searches, and which tends to be poly-vocal and often somewhat disturbing or offensive—seemed to thrive during one of the most conservative periods in our nation’s history. She mentioned Sharon Mesmer’s writing as a particularly “disturbing” example of what she called flarf’s “polyphonic disconnect.”

How would such writing fare under Obama?

I gave it some thought. Was it, I wondered, helpful to consider the Beats and the New York School as mere products of the Eisenhower years, a poetic response to a conservative ethos whose most famous product was McCarthyism? “Howl,” the most celebrated American poem of the ‘50s, certainly seems like a direct hit on the times. But what about Kenneth Koch’s “Fresh Air,” written a year after “Howl?”

“The literary magazines in America and England were controlled by academic and conservative poets,” Koch explained in an interview with David Shapiro published in Jacket #15. “I thought I was a good poet, and I knew John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara were, and it was extremely difficult for any of us to publish anything. Meanwhile there was all this terrible, structured, elegant, mildly ironic drivel being published....I wrote ‘Fresh Air’ out of feelings of rage and excitement.”

If a quick glance at Mesmer’s poems like “I Chose the Wrong Power Animal,” “I Am So Over Fucking,” and “Sonnet in Favor of Literary Narcissism” do not strike one as direct responses to the political times, we might want to adjust our notion of “the times” to include the poetic landscape.

In this light, Mesmer’s poem “Mary Oliver vs. Cyborg Prostitute” might well be the “Fresh Air” of the Internet age:

Mary Oliver is the dead people who live on our eyelashes
Cyborg Prostitute is what could happen if the dissolved remains
of an evil Cyclops goes looking for his next meal beyond the boundaries
of the wordless novel
Slouching towards Mary Oliver is an Olivetti laughin’ cryin’ to Olivia Newton
John massage music
The eager note on my door said ‘Cyborg Prostitute is a formless Sioux rowboat
trader in a Christian school videopoetik and strangely repellent’

Kenneth Koch again: “Although ‘Fresh Air’ was an attack on academic poetry, I also wanted it to be a celebration of good poetry.” While Mesmer affronts the “structured, elegant, mildly ironic” poetry of our own age—qualities that bring to mind more academicized strains of post-avant writing as well as the quietist poetry of a Mary Oliver—she also celebrates her own sense of “good poetry.”

Mesmer’s language is charged, electric, wildly funny, with passages as twisty as anything from the NY School:

Spatchcrocked, ectopic,
modified and sebaceous:
Monkey Penis Sausage
and Schmookums on Thanksgiving
arriving with their children,
J. Penis, Scrotum,
Doodiekins and Debbie
singing “Happy Birthday, Cowboy Sally! /
Your penis is three inches /
And leaves a short flavor.”

But all is not Elmslie-like zizzing and popping in Mesmer’s world. There is social as well as literary engagement, in poems like “Fascist Girlfriend” and “Compassionate Conservative Girlfriend.”

In some cases, the work might be so engaged as to invite controversy.

The post-avant, poetic landscape has been dominated in the last decade or so by well-meaning but fairly dry writing that carves out idealized, if not exactly utopian, space. A poetics, one might argue, of avoidance. In this milieu, where poets have refrained from direct engagement with some of the uglier aspects of the social, poems that have foregrounded their author’s refusal to whitewash their poems of ugly human nature have been met with strong resistance.

A poem like “Juan Valdez Has a Little Juan Valdez (I.e., Energy Cannon) in His Pants” seems a strong candidate to spark some future controversy, given its uncomfortable use of an exoticized icon. Whereas other poets might have written a book-length serial poem deconstructing the fictional character, tracing him back to his ‘50s ad agency origins, with feints and dodges into poetic explorations of ethnicity and U.S.-South American power relations, Mesmer’s approach is to simply pour the icon into the blender with a lot of caustic found language:

It’s a true dichotomy, hauling beans on a mule.
Beans take exactly the same amount of time to decompose
as road apples.
Juan Valdez, Java Man, you should be neither slandered nor lionzed.
I shall personally make the wolf parade apologize.
Juan, let me take this opportunity to embrace,
as per the washing instructions on Camilla Parker-Bowles’ underpants,
the following idea:
Juan Valdez + love machine = bovine sex club.
Boy, you rocked me so hard I peed my pants.
You are so a varied artist!

Is the appropriate response to the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency’s creation, to the countless minor and major horrors we’re confronted with every day, another book of slack, dry, barely readable poetry? Mesmer argues “no.” Despite the insane energy of its surface noise, the resulting poem ranks among the funniest and most upsetting in recent memory: a genuinely sane response.

MY FAVORITE U.S. LABEL

KENNETH GOLDSMITH and EDWIN TORRES


SEGUE @ BOWERY POETRY CLUB
Saturday February 7
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
$6 admission goes to support the readers

Kenneth Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry and founding editor of UbuWeb (ubu.com). He is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU and teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania. A book of critical essays, Uncreative Writing, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

Edwin Torres is a NYC born lingualisualist currently on hiatus from the apple, living upstate. A NYFA recipient and 2006/7 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer-in-Residence, he’s been widely published and taught his Brainlingo workshop at numerous venues & universities. His books include, The PoPedology Of An Ambient Language (Atelos Books), The All-Union Day Of The Shock Worker (Roof Books), Onomalingua: noise songs and poems (Rattapallax e-book), and Please (Faux Press CD-Rom).

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue Foundation. For more information, please visit seguefoundation.com, bowerypoetry.com, or call (212) 614-0505.

Curators: February-March by Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan.

ANOTHER FROM THE HERBECK BLOG

THE SUN

Who longs for the sun—
rises to the mountain.
And breathes strictly alone
the air like a dwarf.

Dwarves go deep inside
into the forest
until their wee song
reverberates

Who longs for the sun
rises deep down in the valley
and beautifully brown is like it thirsts
and this without agony.

Translated by Gary Sullivan.

* * *

DIE SONNE

Wer der Sonne sich gelüstet—
steiget auf den Berg.
Und atmet streng allein
die Luft ein wie ein Zwerg.

Zwerge gehen tief hinein
in den Wald
bis ihr Liedlein
widerhallt

Wer der Sonne sich gelüstet—
steiget tief hinab ins Tal
und schön braun wird gleich er dürstet
und dieses ohne Qual.