A PEEK INTO HOW MOI GETS HER BOOKS PUBLISHED

Love my publisher Marsh Hawk Press! I send them pretty thick manuscripts--see BRICK and SON OF A BRICK. Their fearlessness in the face of BIG POETRY (what commercial consideration?) inspired me, too, as a publisher -- see the two-volume bricks I've put out by Allen Bramhall and John Bloomberg-Rissman, as examples. (I could go on longer here as to how the poetry contest system and academic-assignment markets have artifically determined limits on poetry book length, but why bore us all...?)

Anyway, as ever, I recently sent Marsh Hawk a relatively thick manuscript for my next book. What does my savvy in-house editor say? GO BIGGER! I'm offering a reductive summary of what was a larger, more complicated discussion -- but the effect is (partly) I'm going longer again! Technically, one could say I just switched from a verse collection to a multi-genre collection. Heart Moi the multi-genre!

And one of the side-effects is reprinting some prose I've written on the visual arts ... which leads me to a morning email from an artist who expressed thanks for having first written on her. She's 31 now. Apparently, she was only 23 when I first wrote on her work and so it was quite meaningful for her. I learn that, just 8 years later ... but who's counting the years? Not Moi. I only count my white hairs.

Speaking of white hairs, I've had this idea for a long time -- that I keep all the white hairs I pluck out of moi purty head (yes, I know I'm not supposed to do it but sometimes it's like an addictive itch, like popping pimples). Then I use the white hairs to "draw" -- to make marks against, lessee, a white page so it can join the "white on white" genre, or against colored or black paper for a more dramatic impact. I could title it "Aging" or "Mortality" et al. But that titling would be too obvious, not complicated enough ...

... which is what my beloved in-house editor (whose name is no secret but I don't want to mention here because my blog jokes don't do justice to his intellect) said about my manuscript. Great poems but I might want to deepen its context/concept, include some "dialogic relations" (he's in academia; he talks this way sincerely).

I riposted, "Y'all just want more bricks by Moi. I know it!"

Unlike my shallow, jokey responses, he continued to go at length at how I need to stop futzing around and get back to widening the margins that currently propose the limits of poetry. I don't share my initial reply of BUT I JUST WANNA SIT ON MOI BUTT AND LAZILY FEEL IT GET LARGER! I mean, isn't it enough that the poems are good? (Thank you to the poet-editors who are currently gobbling them up for their journals -- I have 22 more new poems not yet published so shoot me an email if you want some.)

I'm also trying to save the world on another continent.

But, okay, you want more blather from Moi? On that, I can deliver asleep (and have to many an unlucky recipient). So, the manuscript that I thought I'd finished and finished titling? You know, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: STIGMATA SCULPTURES ...? That is now just Part I (a thick Part I) of my next book. Which means I have to go through another rumination of a new title for the updated, THICKER version. My first cuts at the title -- which I'm not totally satisfied it but share for the blog file are:

POST STIGMATA
PRAYING PAST STIGMATA

I know. Gotta keep ruminating.

And it's the least I can do to be part of Marsh Hawk Press -- a group of savvy, experienced poets who've been around enough to know that poetry's scope is not just radiant but can irradiate. And that'd be some ineffective radiation if you don't, ambition-wise, GO BIG.

Thank you, Marsh Hawk Press.

MORE NOTES FROM THE STUDIO

I've never written poems that got away from me so fast. Usually, when I begin a poem I am in the poem (or want to be in the poem) and then am in its space for a while especially if I edit the poem. But with these poems, as soon as the first drafts were written they flew away from me. Which is to say, as I edited them -- and I was surprised by how much editing they required (I've been a first draft, last draft type pf poet for the past few years) -- I was outside their space. I was looking at the poems with distance between me and the poems.

And it's all good. Because, I suppose, that's what sculptures are and I consider these poem-sculptures. That is, with (most) sculptures, you can walk around them and see them 360 degrees.

Which is also to say, these poems are their own worlds. And that's fabulous. With these poems, I got out of their way to let them have their say.

I'm getting there ... let's see what there is.

NOTES FROM THE STUDIO

Intent matters. When a sculptor chisels out a sculpture of, say, a woman's face by listening to the lines/waves/seams of the stone block -- instead of determining at the outset to sculpt a woman's face -- the result (expression) will be different.

I've forgotten how many layers of reproductions I've been writing to come to the reproductions that will appear in REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG. To reproduce a memory, let alone a lost memory -- that's surely one way to lose/forget the personal "I"...

... in the same way the sculptor loses himself in stone by being stone.

Sometimes, to write poems, you need to listen to stone -- also a metaphor for silence. Listening to silence -- I wouldn't wish for this to become a lost art ...

MOI AND THE GOTAN PROJECT

When I was in New York this past July, I had a brief (very brief) foray into Argentinian tango and so had my first immersion into the music of THE GOTAN PROJECT. While not the first time I heard their music, it was my first immersion and as I listened to their sounds, it felt very familiar. And I wondered at its familiarity ... but didn't ponder it much until this last couple of days while editing my forthcoming book. Immersing myself into the manuscript viz close-edits made me realize that I was attempting (hopefully achieved) in this new book a sensibility as I felt in the music of THE GOTAN PROJECT.

I guess I can suggest then, if you want a preview of my 2014 poetry collection, one way is to check out THE GOTAN PROJECT on YouTube.



My book, by the way, has a new (moithinks, finally FINAL) title:

REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: STIGMATA SCULPTURES

I tangoed mucho with developing the title -- guess it had to be that way for these poems...

STIGMATA'S POEMS

As I said in prior post, Achilles and I are currently editing the manuscript for MICHEL'S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: SCULPTURES. So, I thought I'd share the book's Preface:

Stigmata’s Poems

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
—Michelangelo


What if the block of stone was a block of prose?

These poems were written-sculpted out of the poems of similar titles in the first two sections of my 1998 prose poem collection, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole. I did not sculpt poems from Reproduction’s third and last section as those poems were previously wrought from sculptor Anne Truitt’s three ravishing and inspirational memoirs. While sculpting the poems, I was also inspired by an observation:


“Art: … The prayer that leads to stigmata …”
—Eric Gamalinda

And here are possibilities for ye olde Author's Photo below for what would be my--que horror!--25th print poetry collection:

No make-up, but still Avatared out viz Iphone. Or, nakedly transparent but "truth" only as defined by poetry.

STATUS CHECK

9:04 a.m., Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. TERMINE! Finished the last of 57 poem-sculptures that will make up moi 2014 book, MICHEL'S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG.

'Twas more complicated and difficult than I anticipated. Am relieved the first draft is finished.

Synchronistic now that whilst sculpting, I was reading during coffee breaks Daniel Silva's novel-series about an Israeli spy who also is a master restorer of paintings. To be mired in a world of radical politics requiring extreme sanctions and yet never losing sight of the singular integrities of Art. All useful scaffolding as I chiseled away at prose blocks.

Two more manuscripts. Then, shall the Poetry Muse release me? I wonder, since I would not be unhappy to be so released. Ironic. I've so desired to plumb Poetry's mysteries and fell deep with so much joy and appetite. Now, I wouldn't mind yet another way. Poetry's light is blinding, but it is dark light.

**

Only a (King Lear's) Fool would ever want to be a poet.

The problem is that being a poet is not about what one wants. It's not (just) about desire. It's also about helplessness...

"SONG" by Marton Koppany

"Song" (see below) has just become one of my favorite Marton Koppany visual works. And that's because I interpret it as an ars poetica. Whatever one says -- whatever a poem presents -- is inevitably affected by the listener/viewer's subjectivity and so the communicated or poetry experience is completed by audience -- as shown by the incomplete bubbles of its speech balloons. But note, too, how the bubbles are incomplete. That is, the shapes taken out of the bubbles look like bite-marks (those shapes could have been shaped in numerous other ways, like a crack; instead, they offer the implication that the listener/viewer "bit" into (or interrupted) the remarks or poems. This implies that the incompleteness of the remark or poem may be due, not to the communicator/author but because, the audience is not totally listening to the message. Either way the result is the same: the experience is affected by its audience.

Further, note how Marton positioned the speech balloons to be coming from what looks like nests. That's apt, for what is being communicated is just the egg to what will become the experience.

Last but not least, I do appreciate the work's optimism as denoted by its title, "Song" and enhanced by the choice of light blue for the background. It suggests that the experience will be a beneficial one, and while one cannot hope for that worthwhile interaction from all or most general communications, one can hope for it when what's being presented is a poem. Hence, ars poetica.

Thannnnnnnnnnnk you, Marton!

THANK YOU

Richard for THIS.

And to Mark for accepting and publishing [FROM] 147 MILLION ORPHANS: A HAYBUN

***

The universe of [147 million] "orphans" is a complicated environment -- just witness how I can't just say 147 million orphans without the caveat of brackets and quote marks; no one really knows how many orphans exist  worldwide, and "orphan" is now applied to not just kids without parents but kids whose families are mired in poverty and therefore are "orphaned" into scenarios that might improve their plight (e.g. placed in orphanages for feeding programs or for adoption).

Of late, I've been concerned about a real life situation of an orphan aging out of orphanages. In Colombia (to cite just one example) studies show that many of the children commit suicide before they reach age eighteen, and of those who survive, as much as 60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals.

When I was last in Bogota, I had the chance to visit a group home set up for orphans who'd aged out of orphanages with nowhere to go.  These folks had to have a job or be continuing their education in order to get basically a dorm-room in this shelter.  It's a great idea (we have a similar facility here in Napa Valley).  But more such facilities are needed.

I'll leave it there for now. Except to note (more for moiself than anyone else) that Poetry, that hard taskmaster, is more than words.  Perhaps because actions, too, as a matter of technique, are tough to beat for powering up words.

THE ART OF LAS VEGAS (aka WHY I WANT TO WRITE POETRY WITH BOTERO'S IMPACT)

Las Vegas (the product) is a deadening context for art. With its glaringly- and shamelessly-huge carbon footprint, casinos that radicalize how low human beings can fall, reactionary presence of second-hand smoke, the fragile line between dream and disillusion, such fakeness that even the fake is fake! (see Michelangelo's "David" below) ... one can go on. But the all of it creates an environment where, ironically, the art that successfully struggles against its context -- rises above it, if you will -- shows itself to be great art.

The artworks that gets subsumed into interior decoration for the city's, uh, fake cities ... reveal themselves to be poorer quality artworks.

In this sense, Las Vegas -- by being a deadening context -- also becomes a bottom-line judge revealing whether the art works commissioned from many name contemporary artists are effective.  Only the strongest, really, can withstand being brought down from "fine" art to something ... lower.

Let's cut to the chase: the winner of Best Las Vegas Artwork by totally repelling the sheen Las Vegas would coat over it is a sculpture by Colombian artist Fernando Botero -- here is a bad Iphone shot of it. It was placed by the entrance of a restaurant called (but of course) "Botero" so that's as kitschy a placement as can be. But its setting didn't matter. Botero just shrugged it off to retain its powerful magnificence. The art work retains its soul:

So, what didn't show up as well? Well... sigh: so many choices ... Lessee:

Viola Frey. She had an oversized vase. It's probably a better piece than as presented in its Las Vegas context where it just became an expensive part of hallway decor:

Dale Chihuly. Gorgeous ceiling work ... that, in Las Vegas, just becomes (like Viola Frey) interior decoration, unable (unlike Botero's) to rise above its context:

In other words, the fine art of artists like Frey and Chihuly came off no better than the pretty stuff made to decorate, like this peacock in some storefront:

Another way of putting it perhaps is that it's like the artworks got their souls hollowed out, like this metal sculpture in a home decor store:

Well, but what does one expect of Las Vegas developers who'd put up something like this statue re "The Judgment of Paris" (or "Three Muses," can't really tell and it didn't seem to matter in Vegas) with the impact of faded wallpaper?

or this reproduction of Michelangelo's "David" in Caesar's Palace? Hello? Dear Real Estate Developer -- Please hire a historian as a consultant if you're going to insert historical figures within your themes: Michelangelo, of course, sculpted "David" only about 1,500 years after Caesar ... (or mebbe I'm too tough: those ancient sculptures all look alike, after all...)

Nonetheless, if one is to take an architectural perspective (i.e., context/environment matters), one could argue that Jeff Koons' "Tulips" sculpture is quite successful. Koons' reproduction of flowers using high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating befits the maximized artificiality of Las Vegas (again, I'm talking Las Vegas the product, not its locals):

I could argue that, but even Koons was not immune to Las Vegas' deadening prettifying-for-the-tourists. "Tulips" would have been more effective visually were it not placed beneath a ceiling stupidly decorated with oversized, garishly red butterflies. Waaaay too much make-up, people!

It's apt to see this sculpture by J. Seward Johnson. It's fine work.  But the significance of context rears its head up again to the loss of the artwork. When seen with eyes glazed by Las Vegas' banality, second-hand smoke, and having just witnessed one of Las Vegas workers ending her shift with a tired face, limp casino uniform and undoubtedly hurting feet, the sculpture's pathos ends up clichetic rather than powerful.

I usually think it wonderful when artworks are taken out of the art gallery to be placed in non-gallery settings. In this case, several of these art works would benefit by being returned to the soothing white walled boxes of a gallery -- the problem, of course, is that they were for sale. And were sold and bought. Metaphorically, it's just like this statue below -- rather, a human being paid to become a fake statue:

*****

Having said all that, the poet-critic Thomas Fink had observed to me that visiting Las Vegas could/would be good for my poetry. Since I've returned from this trip, I agree even as I don't yet know what this means. It seems synchronistic, though, as I am working on a manuscript entitled MICHEL'S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG. Well, I just hope it won't turn me (back) to that poet's drink (and wonderful Las Vegas show), "Absinthe" ...  I've done that poetic research and, as with Las Vegas the Product, am glad I'm over it:

THOSE POETS WHO SPEAK "THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT" AND THUS PERHAPS SPEAK FOR US ALL

Art: ... The prayer that leads to stigmata,...
--Eric Gamalinda

I've said in the past, Judge Moi by what she reads -- and then I've mentioned my ongoing "Relished W(h)ine List" through which I post everything I read (to its completion); I don't discriminate between bad and good in that list; if I finish a book, it gets on that list (I don't list books I don't finish reading). And I do think this Relished List says something about Moi. (And since truly horrendous books don't end up being read to their "The End"s, it does say something good about a bad book to get onto the list...)

But perhaps a more accurate picture will be portrayed by a list still in its relative infancy, The LinkedIn Poetry All-Stars list. For example, my Recommendation #8 is a book by Eric Gamalinda. And so, go HERE for one of his poetics prose I published in PINOY POETICS -- I heart it and highly recommend you read Eric's "Language, Light and the Language of Light"... thus learn.

Another excerpt--this one I'm feeling is particularly timely today:

The reality of a poet living in contemporary society involves, unfortunately, constantly submitting himself to the judgment of a small elite of industry people, many of whom may not even be inspired by the music, history, art and poetry that inspire the poet, and whose only purpose, to put it a little unkindly, is to sustain the very industry that feeds them. I often wonder how many of these people, because they have been trained and conditioned to think only in certain terms, understand the work that artists do and the aesthetics and faith that compel them to create. In any case I believe they constitute a kind of barrier that insulates author from audience. I am thus inclined to praise the work of small presses, but more especially the inevitability of more widespread self-publication in the future, the democratization of publishing, which new technology makes increasingly possible: to demolish the authoritarianism of the industry and the institutions that support it, which I regret to say includes even the academe on one hand and the “spoken word” scene on the other, two poles that have contributed to creating a kind of herd mentality in poetry, a common, generic, “acceptable” set of voices. There is a tendency among poets in the academe and spoken word scene to mimic one another, particularly in diction and delivery; read any journal or go to any performance and you’ll see how everything is the same. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing: If anything, it is an indication that we have reached the same crisis that made a poet like Rimbaud inevitable and necessary, a poet who would deviate and speak only for himself, not just TO an audience, and certainly not TO A MARKET, and in so doing perhaps speak for us all.

WHILE I WAS CLEARING THE CAT LITTER,

an idea for a new poetry book surfaced. This is why I clean the cat litter. Anyhoo: this new poetry book (is about and) will be entitled KING LEAR'S FOOL. Excited am Moi!

Speaking of books, 'twas a pleasure to have a poetry discussion rise with the son this morning. I happened to have my manuscript-in-progress -- MICHEL'S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: SCULPTURES -- on the counter and he asked about it. And, among other things, we discussed the evolution of its title per

Sculptures of Reproductions

Sculpting Reproductions of Emptiness

Sculptures of Reproductions of Emptiness

Reproductions of the reproductions of the empty

REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: SCULPTURES

to finally its final (I think) title:

MICHEL’S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: SCULPTURES

I explained how this book is based on sculpting verses out of the prose poem blocks in my 1998 book, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE. And that I'd found it unexpectedly complicated to generate a title that hewed to the new collection's concepcual underpinnings that might be evident in its two epigraphs:

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
—Michelangelo (1475-1564)

What if the block of stone was a block of prose?
—Eileen R. Tabios

I said that the reference to "Michel" referred to "Michelangelo" but that since a reproduction is not quite the thing itself, I shortened the name to approximate-due-to-reproduction the name. I said, "It's just like when you take a photograph. Your photograph is not the same thing as what you capture in your camera."

That made my photographer-son's eyes light up in understanding. What a blessing to see that light. Such a different nature of conversation than what he encapsulates in his Facebook post where he claims that when I talk about being a poet, I usually only talk about making books.  I look forward to more poetry discussions with moi son!

But here's the thing, when I was clearing the cat litter this morning and an idea for a new poetry project came up, I didn't think of writing a new poem entitled "King Lear's Fool." I thought specifically of a new BOOK with that title. That says something about Moi as a poet -- I'll leave it to others, though, to articulate that matter...

"WITH OUR BACKS TO THE WORLD, ... HERMENEUTICS..."

After a teensy hiatus, things are back to rockin' and rollin' over at SitWithMoi!  Most recently, fabulous multi-media artist James Westwater contacted Moi to share some images of a new work, "With Our Backs to the World, We Bow: The Hermeneutics of Solitude", mixed-media, 2013.  Go HERE for the SitWithMoi post about this fabulously-titled mini installation, of which here is a relevant detail:

The image of a reader is relevant to us 9 billion Peeps, but I do encourage you to check out James' SitWithMoi Link to rediscover the importance -- and distinct pleasure -- of context!

Moi hearts artists!  Thanks for the input, James!

CONSTRAINT-BASED WRITING

And of course SitWithMoi--with its focus on miniature chairs and books--is just another form of constraint-based writing.  I like moi LATEST POST which veers across the wonderful Dusie project of Susana Gardner, the marvelous 80 Beetles by Mark Cunningham (which had been an unplanned addition), and of course Marthe Reed's latest chap, Florula Ludoviciana. 

That's what the best of constraint-based writing offers: a universe in a grain of sand.

"...RACINESS AND FREEDOM AND HUMOR OF JAZZ..."

One of the many things I like about Jack Kerouac is shown HERE.  I love how one can travel in the universe just sitting on a tiny chair.  Here's an excerpt from Jack now safely in Heaven:

You simply give the reader the actual workings of your mind during the writing itself: you confess your thoughts about events in your own unchangeable way...did you ever hear a guy telling a long wild tale to a bunch of men in a bar and all are listening and smiling, did you ever hear that guy stop to revise himself, go back to a previous sentence to improve it, to defray its rhythmic thought and impact...he's passed over it like a part of the river flows over a rock once and for all and never returns and can never flow any other way in time? Incidentally, as for my bug against periods, that was for the prose in October in the Railroad Earth, very experimental, intended to clack along all the way like a steam engine pulling a 100-car freight with a talky caboose at the end, that was my way at the time and it still can be done if th ethining during the swift writing is confessional and pure and all excited with the life of it. And be sure of this, I spent my entire youth rehashing, speculating and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings."



What about jazz and bop as influences?
Yes, jazz and bop, in the sense of a, say, a tenor man drawing a breath and blowing a phrase on his saxophone, till he runs out of breath, and when he does, his sentence, his statement's been made...that's how I therefore separate my sentences, as breath separations of the mind...I formulated the theory of breath as measure, in prose and verse, never mind what Olson, Charles Olson says, I formulated that theory in 1953 at the request of Burroughs and Ginsberg. Then there's the raciness and freedom and humor of jazz instead of all that dreary analysis.

AWED OVER THIS AWESOME ANTICS!

Reading THE GRAND PIANO, for me, also elicits more awe at another project: ANTIC VIEW by Allen Bramhall and Jeff Harrison. These guys have been discussing poetry on blog since 2005. The ambition. The commitment. The love. The helplessness. All for Poetry.


These guys get it.  And got it.

To witness is to be humbled ... and blessed.

CUBIST POETICS

I'm sitting with David Hockney and Picasso over HERE, relishing the relationship to poetry.  You're invited to come over!

POETRY -- IT EXPANDS VISION

which I've always said and which I'm pitching now as I introduce you to my latest furniture design, "Eileen's Chaise Lounge."

Or, I may just be losing it ...

GROWING AND HARVESTING FROM THE GARDEN OF CHAIRS...TO EXPAND THE ART OF THE MINI-BOOK

Ach: how I love to watch my, correction: YOUR garden grow! Here's a LINK (ignore its date: I artificially date it into SitWithMoi's Arcbives) to show how the mini-chair collection has grown: in less than two months, from 7 to 37 chairs. Why? So that you, moi dears, may have chairs upon which to "shelve" your mini-books!

It's been great fun for Moi to participate as it has exercised, thus, expanded vision. Like, my latest "edited" mini-book, supposedly by my brother.

Through SitWithMoi, I've discovered a desire to expand the scope of the "mini-book" which often (tho not always) has been one of copying its larger avatars. Tsk! Let's expand that imagination!

A mini-book, certainly when viewed from a poet's eye, surely proposes its own Art. (Moi examples HERE, and more are coming as they're too much fun to make!) Poetry--it's not one of just repetition, but also expansion.

Enjoy!

A FONDNESS FOR FOUNDNESS: A POETICS

Everyone is invited to "Books on Chairs" but I also am making books for that project. What's been surprising is how I've taken so quickly to making the type of books I'm creating: books based on what randomly surfaces in my environment (e.g. the junk mail I receive) rather than based on something I intend to write about. Now I'm realizing that these tiny books are just another extension of my long-held poetics practice of wishing "to write in the world in the poem" versus relying on the constraints of my "I" -- and "eye." Of course, in creating works this way, one hopes that one's "I" -- and "eye" -- are also widened in expanse and vision. One hopes ... anyway, here, to date, are books reflecting my fondness for foundness. If the named author is someone else, it's because I "edited" that person's book into its tiny being. (I will update this list as I generate more books.)

READ MORE HERE.

REVEALING THE SECRET LIVES OF PUNCTUATIONS!

I'm always so happy to get input from readers of my books ... and consider it especially wonderful when they contact me about a book I put out years ago!  Adrienne J. Odasso--a poet new to me but will check her out--emailed the other day to say she found my 2006 book, THE SECRET LIVES OF PUNCTUATIONS, VOL. I, in a bookstore.  She said she found it

along with a signed copy of Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum," which I read at fourteen and after which I was never quite the same, so I took it all for an auspicious turn). Having come to the end of my reading "Secret Lives" this morning, I have filled out the blurb section at the back, photographed it with my iPhone, and now I attach it here...

Wonderful!  And you can see her blurb-poem HERE, but which I replicate here too as I enjoy it!

(Click on image to enlarge)

That was enough to make me rise in applause!  Thank you, Adrienne!

Then, of course, I returned to SITTING.  I've learned that sitting, by the way, facilitates moi blather ... as in the empty chair a metaphor for poetry!  Why not?  Before a poem can make you stand in applause, you must sit with it, di ba?  See?  Blather....