The Japanese Garden

Just finished an essay that I thought I would publish here.  Then I thought, wait a minute, I should submit this for publication.  So the search is on for a journal, any journal, that will publish a piece called "Lake Shitty Way".

Since submitting my essay means I had better not drop it here (yet), I guess I might as well share with you this piece, which was published in Ruckus about a year ago:

The Japanese Garden

This is the hardest I've seen
my grandmother laugh:
a frog with a rock on its back.
Was it the strange reversal
of nature, usually the frog
sits on the rock, or the fact
that the frog, unstartled,
stared back at her after
she tossed a stone at it?

My grandmother is a hard read.
The licked tooth, the scrupulously
clean kitchen. Direct subtext.
She gives marvelous responses
to poetry.  Explained "number one"
instead of "I have to pee."
When grandfather exclaimed
"My son. I have a son!"
She said "Yes. Sometimes you
just forget,” her delicate hands
clasped around his waxy fingertips.

But anyway, she thought
that frog was hysterical.
Those peals of laughter
sent ripples across the pond.

A year in books

I've been getting some good reading done on the bus this year.  Among the books I've read and enjoyed:

Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon

This was my first literary undertaking of the year, and took me a couple months to finish.  It's a tome.  It's also classic Pynchon.  And yes, it is a historical novel about the less than celebrated astronomers and surveyors, who trekked across the continent of North America for no better reason than that's what they were getting paid to do.  This book stands out from other Pynchon novels because it's the most fun.  They sled through the mountains, they marvel at the wizardry of Benjamin Franklin, they smoke pot with George Washington.  They seriously funk with the feng shui of our developing nation.  Good times.  This is a book for people who want to spend a lot of time on a book and be rewarded their efforts.  Fair warning, it's also about as crazy as guano.

Fresh off this high, I immediately headed right back to the Pynchon shelf at the library and snagged

Gravity's Rainbow, also by Thomas Pynchon
Everybody talks about how great this book is.  I don't know.  I couldn't finish it.  Baffling is the only word I can think of to describe it, but it's Pynchon, so duh.  I got bored with it and then distracted by

Christmas at the Orphanage by Bill Knott
Bill Knott is a great poet, and as rumor has it, a huge prick.  I read this book just about every day, and it continues to be great.  If you ever see anything by him in a bookstore, it will probably be used, cheap, and the best thing you ever bought.  I can't believe I got this collection of sonnets for free.

Edit: Bill Knott is not a prick!  See comments for a link to his poems.  Dedicated poets should commit some of these to memory.


Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science, by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener
Deserves a mention, because I bought it, read it, loved it.  Yes, it is a comic book. Yes, I own the previous four volumes in the series, which have such illustrious guest stars as Carl Sagan, Nikolai Tesla, and the ghost of Rasputin.  These books are hilarious, elegant, and are a joy to read again and again.  Atomic Robo might be the reason comics were invented.  If you've ever thrown your fist in the air to declare the awesomeness that is science, then you best peep this series immediately.

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
Either you know about this already or you don't care.  This one also took a while to complete.  It kinda dragged for the first half, by holy cow do things get cracking by the end.  Leaves you wanting more.

Thus Spake Zarathustra
Still working on this one.  Best taken in small doses, but there's a surprising amount of poetry in between pontification, and thats what keeps me coming back.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
 Satanic little book.  Stream of consciousness writing.  Lots of scene setting in the old west and Mexico, punctuated by short thematic dialogues and bursts of intense violence.  Bloody, disgusting, and bloody disgusting.  There were parts of it I loved, and parts I reread five times before giving up and turning the page.

Picture This by Joseph Heller
I read a poem by Kurt Vonnegut once that was about running into Joseph Heller at a party and asking him if it bothered him that people only talk about his first book.  I will not talk about that book here, because Picture This is the one I just finished reading and prompted this Year Review in Book Reviews in the first place.

I picked up this book for $3, used, because it intrigued me.  Now that I have finished it, it still intrigues me.  It is labeled as fiction right there on the spine, probably for lack of a better word.  It is a book about ancient Athens.  It is about the Dutch Republic during the time of Rembrandt.  It is about Rembrandt painting a picture of Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer.  There are other things the book is about too, since it is essentially a book length essay that manages to connect themes of economics, politics, art, and philosophy from the time of Socrates, through history, and up to the very minute the book was published in 1988.  Straight up fascinating.  But don't take my word for it!


Ba dum bum!

That's my year in books so far.  I still have time for one or two more!  Any suggestions?

More mash ups

Mashing up someone else's words is similar to the editing process you might go through on a piece of writing of your own. You take the parts you like, and you experiment with moving them around in different places. In my case, this fact was made all the more clear when I heard a mash-up my friend Jay did of three of my poems. I thought the result was much closer to the mark in terms of my own poem, and gave me some ideas of revisions I could do. You can see the mash-up Jay made here. I'm going to post the revision I made later, but first I'd like to point out that it is this type of shared creative process that I thrive on, and I think having other people around to help and inspire you is about as good as it gets. Anyhow, here's the draft that Jay used for his mash-up. It's a riddle, and I'm pretty sure I did a lousy job, because in this draft I don't really think there are enough clues to guess what I'm getting at. Can you guess? Here it is:

I am the worm.
My life occurs in cycles, from birth
as egg to blind hermaphrodite to death,
I'd eat my own tail if knew which end
of me was my head.

I am the star of a recent
film, Discover Earth, in which
I am shown chewing through
an apple. A worm
shaped halo of rot
trails after me, a seam, a worm
shaped tracer of a worm
reveals where I've been.

If you want to know
where I am going, it's easy.
Cut the film, place the frames back
to back, a stack laid on
its side, a tube, a worm shaped apple
I'm crawling through.

The film becomes the apple,
the apple becomes the worm.
Dissect it, within one cut
you can see what my annelid eyes cannot,
the fixed picture, stuck in a slice of film,
the poor solitary segment thinks he's me.

Which is almost true. I feel what he feels,
but I'm all allegory and he is almost real.

Mash up

I will preface this by saying that the choice to use these words was not entirely mine. Every word in the following poem is taken from one of three poems by a friend of mine. I didn't use every word from her three poems, but I did pick ones I like and organize them in my own way. This raises some interesting questions about originality, although none of these questions is new. How original do the following words sound to you?

Photo Factory: Mules Wanted

This friday, everyone you know
will feel comfortable. Worst part:
They almost believe it's possible.

The mime has an imaginary life,
robs airports at night. His heart holds
winter one month, another one moon,
he still hasn't kept his saddles smooth.

Lizard skin begins to steam.

A terrible black creature trumpets
bible seeds all over your bearskin,
lights a cigarette. Protect your headdress
please. Death comes to a rabbit.

Slipping in underground scorpion pools
kills the most baby. Break down your
molecules to a great big silken loose
lazy firetruck, or everything is darkness,
maybe.

I'm feeling butter this afternoon, mamma bear.

The voice of the Sea wounds you
because prowling dreams come with it.
Nervous laughter at the bedside, like
breath stolen from a wood spirit.

Oh supernatural snake eater, serve me.

Part of the mind is faithful,
but the blood keeps lingering ghosts.
All's up with that, sure,
I'm down if not for don't.

A double brain, descended from seeds
can learn Iriqoui and Cantonese,
remind you to gut the whalemeat.

This is the most confusing scene in the act:
Two brothers disrobe.
We find out that one of them
is in fact Robert de Niro.

Turnip, turnip, turnip, turnip,
turnip, turnip, turnip.

Screen your pie before going to Brazil.
Daughter knows teepee life is difficult,
but it's harder in the garden, like
a hummingbird in heat.
Turkish souls don't sleep.

"Each Eternal I Turned In" a response to Robert

Here's the piece I'm responding to.

Here's my response.

Each Eternal I Turned In

Overheard on the bus:
"The complex structure of life
does not exist to override entropy."
I'm not sure what that meant, although
I asked the person sitting next to me
who shrugged, saying: "I'm a smart
architect. I know it's not this
simple, and yet I see my lust
for structure echoed everywhere.
What does that suggest?"

Effortless, we fall from text
to subtext, flaking away layer
by layer, a stack
of printed papers, a plate
of frosted glass, shattered.
Even as the axe severs synapse
from synapse, a phantom hand
rests behind the neck.