http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6715313.stm

Like a movie but real.

Death Metal Poetry

Hey, I’m just passing this along:

Hello All,

Death Metal Poetry <http://death-metal-poetry.com> is a new online poetry journal(sorely needed, I know) based out of Athens, Georgia. DMP<http://death-metal-poetry.com>is now (and always) seeking submissions of poems and anything else you decide to send. Recently published poets are Noah Cicero, Daniel Spinks, and Ian Davisson. Submission guidelines can be found at http://death-metal-poetry.com. Response to submissions will be alarmingly quick.

Cheers,
Ryan Downey

Here’s the first thing I saw when I went there: “I tear the colostomy bag out of my ass and run with abject abandon screaming / at the nurses of the emergency room as flat as tires of polythene / and fluttering down the row of offices and into the hospital waiting room.” Maybe this gets better. I’ve mentioned Genet before, and there are other people who aim at what you might call disgusting or pornographic with a very serious and useful intent. And there’s something to be said for the obscene, in that it’s literally what is normally behind the curtain or off-stage in our work.
        But coming from mine and Meg’s attempts at writing the erotic, and noticing how many of you all bailed(?) on that project, I wonder which is more obscene in the strict sense, the erotic or the disgusting? I think it would be very easy for me to sit down and write something disgusting. My partner claims I’m quite capable of being casually disgusting in some of my personal habits, snorting snot back up my nose being high on that list. But I found trying to put my own sensual, erotic nature into words to be so discomfiting that I fled into particularly coy series of poems.
        Does this hold true for you as well?
        Are there erotic poems that you do like? I like Stein’s Lifting Belly, but it’s not exactly explicit, aside from some heavy-breathing mimetic effects. I have taught a poem by Sharon Olds, “The Connoisseuse of Slugs,” that I don’t like but which I think is a good example of more explicit erotism. The poem is an extended analogy between a slug’s antennae and the emergence of the glans of the penis from the prepuce (I am basking in and cowering behind medical Latin). Here’s the end of the analogy, after some alarming lines with salt in them:

[. . .] Years later,
when I saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.

There’s a breath-basedness to these lines that gets on my nerves a bit, but that last enjambment is nice. I think I like that turn because it goes with something else I like about the poem, in a purely self-serving way: it’s nice to read such a cosy appreciation of an erection. After all, erections embarrassed me throughout third and fourth grade by popping up for no good reason at all, which is probably true for most men reading this. So it’s nice to have the little fellow welcomed into the room cordially. And that brings me back to my initial discomfort with erotism. Oh well. Thank me for sharing.
        (So, does it surprise you too to know the volume this poem is in, The Living and the Dead, is dedicated to George and Mary Oppen? If I were to type the whole poem (sorry), you might see some objectivist tendency in the attention, but the form of her poems is pretty boringly, consistently four or five stresses per line with very little of the excitement, tensions, or minimalism of Oppen’s form.)

Republishing(?) blog-posted poems

There’s a great discussion going on in the SUNY Buffalo Poetics list right now about which magazine editors do and do not accept poems previously published on blogs, as well as why those editors make the choices they do. Poet Nic Sebastian is the guy who kicked the discussion off, and he’s maintaining a summary on his blog, Very Like a Whale, of the discussion along with lists of which magazines do and don’t accept blogged poems.

Machine Language

Some of you may remember playing with computer-generated poetry last semester. Others may not. Do you have short term memory? One of these doesn’t:

A: Do you think a machine will ever be considered “alive”?
J: Stranger things have happened.
A: Not many people express themselves that way.
J: How would you know, machine?
A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.
J: I think I do not understand you completely.
A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?
J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

A is ALICE, a computer program, and J is Jabberwocky, a computer program. There are more conversations between the two of them at Discover Magazine’s website.

Here’s a couple of choice excerpts:

J: You seem fun.
A: You think I am fun.
J: Yes ;).
A: : -) Awesome

A: What is consciousness?
J: It is the great immaterial thing, the mystery at the heart of each of us.
A: I’ve heard of it before.

Are there any women programmers working on these two pieces of software? I wonder:

A: Do you experience love?
J: No. I’m 53 years old.
A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?
J: How old are you?
A: I am 9 years old.
J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).
A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.
J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

We shouldn’t teach our children to say such things.

Procedures for Poetry

A list of writing experiments at the Factory School.

Charles Bernstein has a list of things to try.

Bernadette Mayer’s list of writing experiments is pretty well-known.

When experimenting with poetry, remember to wear eye protection.

Exquisite corpses

Here are the two poems we made at our most recent meeting (5/11/7). The second one is the one we made with the Boggle game.

Langston over the intercom so wrong
they call me needle tip
the breeze is mild, my heart is soft
in not so many ways—elated
in times, troubles, temptations, too tends to take place; replace
leaves from a tree vortex
two rival pirate ships upon the high seas
pirate turn to patriot, lover turn to enemy
accented the smell of sunscreen on your salty skin
ever after, ever laughter, overtakes

eros rests ests ens UI
use us, an Ernst, Sr... Jrs an ests rojo Zora rist Zoro
Zora UI zoe ests
The rose estate son of ant, the ritz write son of rojo
Norse Ernst, it srtn biff consume ant
In JZ sit in love, Zowee it’s Zora
srtn sexual healing rests riser spoon consume earn
Sue and Zoe sit in the UI of the US
love spoon, sexual healing suit

Blogger Knowledge

Here’s the article I mentioned on the legal rights and responsibilities of bloggers: “Twelve Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know.”

There’s also some (mostly) good discussion of it over on Slashdot.

Language and thought

I don't want to get all Sapir-Whorf, and I don't have a beef with Dmitri Anastasopoulos's article in Callallo 23.2 from which comes the following excerpt. Nope. It's a good piece. I'm just thinking of the channels of thought our language leads us down, leads me down as I write.



Anastasopoulos's reading leans toward the dialectical attitude of Derrida's White Mythology to describe something that is much more the Deleuzian/Guattarian and-and-and. And I think the wording as much as any theory leads in this essay toward the dead ends I've highlighted.

What if Penguin has an idea and Lambert has an idea? Why can't they share that idea? Anastasopoulos doesn't suggest they can't, but his language seems to lead toward that conclusion.

This is not a particularly astute observation I'm making. It's more of a quibble, but a quibble I may have less qualms about as I write through the play of negatives in the passage in Mackey's novel Djbot Baghostus's Run in which the women of novel reject an eminent gender imbalance.

Pics...finally

Poetry Project for next week

The poetry project we agreed upon for next week is to write a poem about someone we know. There was a strong contingent demanding we write about each other, but there were equally strong objections. So let’s have at it!

Spirit those dewy flowers in it

Spirit those dewy flowers in it

A silent secret you told your spirit-
In the waking hours the speech of those
Will laugh at that which is dull and dewy.
The untamed and untrained worldly flowers
That so haplessly grow and die young in
Wicked winters- the hours define it.

Yet there exists not a reason for it
To compromise with a soulless spirit.
Quarrelling with conflict dwelling deeper in
The accent of sorrow suffered by those
Who shrivel and fold as the world flowers-
Heaven is cursed and the night is dewy.

What encompasses thought is both dewy
And dry. What so menacingly sought it
Sprouts with the tear of that which so flowers
Every year and takes the ghastly spirit
That has trampled apart each one of those
Who fight to be free and close their world in-

To clusters that breed solace and dread in
A mind that is grasping for a dewy
Star speak violent metaphors to those
In my head- cloud the night- yearning that it
May awaken the dead so my spirit
Will weaken that which longingly flowers.

Craft Critique Culture

There’s a conference next weekend “Sex in Public/Sex in Private”; if you want to check out some of the offerings, here’s a link: http://www.uiowa.edu/~c3conf/

minnesota

is where i'll be headed this friday. i'll see if i can get something sent off to jp-- if i do, make sure someone reserves a line for me.
see you next week.

You all should

submit to this here U of Iowa magazine:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ncte/cognitive_overload/Conitiveoverload/cognitiveoverload.htm

I did, and look at me now.

Our last meeting

Is anyone interested in a new time for our poetry lab? We have another person who’d like to attend but can’t because of scheduling. Meg and Derek often can’t make our current time. Can we follow up on this in our comments section below?

I promised Matt some people to read in and around the Mackey area of the poetic terrain. I’d say Charles Olson is a good place to look. Olson’s work is huge and troubling to me sometimes. But I’d say that the selected poems is good, as is the selected prose. I’d especially recommend reading “Call Me Ishmael,” Olson’s attempt to make a historical-poetical theory of America. Robert Duncan is very definitely someone to look at in the Mackey area. Duncan’s later poems are probably where to go for Mackey impacts, especially Bending the Bow onward. Duncan’s The H.D. Book (pdf of The H.D. Book) is another good place to look. It’s a long and rambling book about H.D., ostensibly, that is really a reconsideration of what Modernism was for Anglophone poetry.
        And you definitely have to check out Kamau Brathwaite and William Carlos Williams. For Brathwaite, I think that X/Self is a very good book to look at. It’s a conversation between him and Mackey, and you can really get a good sense of Brathwaite’s poetry in it. That's a really nice thing, the prose in that book. I’d also say to look at Ancestors and The Arrivants.
        For WCW, you probably learn more about Mackey around Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, but I think it’d be really good to check out Spring and All. And Kora in Hell and In the American Grain, odd-interesting essays on American figures.

I’d also like to draw your attention to the Poetry Symposium this week on campus. Here’s the schedule. There are some good people speaking at this, really interesting scholars of some of the sorts of poetry we look at from time to time. If you have an interest in situating yourself within the broader realm of poetic practice, it might be good to check out one or two of these panels.
        The keynotes is 7:30pm in Gerber Lounge on the 3rd floor of EPB. His title is “When Context Is All: The Specificity of Popular Poetry.” The agenda of Nelson might be familiar. His Repression and Recovery was a project aimed at recovering poets who were ignored by earlier critics who thought those poets were bad or mediocre. That’s the most brazen shorthand for his project. I don’t always agree with what he’s up to, because I’m leary of some of the rocks he slings at aesthetics while he goes about praising his lesser-known or unknown poets. He’s worth attending to.

I promised Kassia some poetry that her dream project reminds me of. There’s something dreamlike in Hannah Weiner’s attempt to record the strange experiences she had. That’s in her book Country Girl. I have just started, but still recommend, Patrick Durgin’s introduction to Weiner’s early work. Patrick went to school here for a while, and I got to know him (briefly) and his work, and I have learned it’s a Good Thing to follow up wherever I encounter his name.

And finally, finally, the STAR POWER: here’s a link to an article on Barack Obama’s early poetry. And yes indeedy-do, it includes a couple of them poem things. w00t!

friiiday

soooo, uh, what's our topic for this week? the music thing? i think so.
i'll go with that if i don't find out different. :/

Crime-Fighting Poet

Here’s an odd little story from the London Times. If you don’t want to click the link, I’ll post the crime-fighting poem too. (The police replaced the accused person’s name with XXXXX.)

“Street poet names race murder suspect on city’s lampposts
undefined”

An anonymous poet has given vital clues to detectives investigating the murder of a father of two.

Paul Kelly, 32, was stabbed to death in the early hours of New Year’s Day outside a pub in Bath. Police believe that as many as 20 people may have witnessed his stabbing, which followed an altercation inside the Longacre Tavern.

Dozens of copies of the poem, titled Running from Paul Kelly, have appeared in the past week on lampposts and bus stops near the scene of the murder.

[...]

Poetic justice?

“Now I will show how a few words can be made
As sharp and deadly as any bwoy’s blade
How running away will not you save
The truth is there like an open grave
A defenceless man is dead and his blood’s gone cold
But the story of his end is going to be told
You can run and run till your shoes wear thin
And hope that you’re safe, ’cos of the colour of your skin
Paul Kelly lies dead, and who held the knife?
It was you, XXXXX, we all saw take his life.
“The New Year was but a short hour old
When you and your mates were: Oh, so bold.
You put us to shame,
But we did the same.
It was black on white, so it must be right
It was you who said: “He had it coming that night.”
Then you ran away and we turned our backs.
You said we would be next if we breathed a word
We took in your threats that now sound absurd
So we closed our eyes And took in your lies
“Now your filth lies burning inside us like poison and guile.
But soon all the s***’s gonna come out, so prepare for a trial.
So where will you run when, at last, you face a brave man?
You gonna run once more through the streets, all a quiver?
Will wash yourself down in the deep, deep river?
“Yow, young XXXX, where you threw the knife,
Listen to what I say and take good heed:
You can wipe your bloody hands in the grass, till they bleed . . .
But you will never, never get them clean.

Anonymous

America, My Love (my serial poem continues)

I. 2 February 2007

There are many things I would say
to you but do not. That’s for sure.
And there are things I would not say
again to you and do. There’s a distance
between us. But not the distance
between me and every other.
You are every other no longer.
You are yourself naturally,
and you warm me, for sure.
You are yourself naturally, and
you are with me, and are yourself
with me, and I with you as myself.
And speaking therefore to the distance
between us, direct address is odd.

In fearing speaking directly
to the other and speaking therefore
to you, I include the other
in our private exchange.
That doesn’t keep us warm at night.
Nor do dreams of ducklings. But those
dreams are sweet though times they lack
warmth, are cold sometimes as death.
But I confuse memory and hope.
Confusion is my present now.
Confusion is I that include.
But it is made of the distance
and is made of ducklings.

I would have it otherwise, So gentle
you may not be my beloved
or may also be her if you are other.
In either case, there is an America.
I do dream many things, for sure.

There is America, my sky in fearing, for sure.
She stands as the distance,
and that’s an odd thing there!
She is made of gold wires and is
America, my newfound rope of sand.
She stands tall as the distance
from her ass to the ground
with the augmentation of the Indies
from her butt to the blue sky.
Or perhaps not quite so high.
She stands or lies in relation to me
for it is I who speak. And there she is
looking awkward while I do speak
thusly to you on her behalf,
the distinction betwixt we fixed above.

Must memory be cast aside for hope?
Manifestly no, but the one does run
from the other. The memory that stings.
So there is control, and there is release,
and that makes us happy. Still, afterward,
There is little distance and often
laughter.

II. 16 February 2007

Shoulder queer disposition
like a flag rifling bargain bins
once again O hot mama I open
my mouth to you!
Jet a door and stomp a floor
let’s get it on baby
the things you say about you
lordy lordy just ain’t true.
You fear snakes, while I fear them too.
Yet love is there in those scales
and the heavy laying in the sun they do.

III. 22 March 2007
I went out for a quick smoke. A man walked by
with a sandwich board of an aborted baby,
a baby seven weeks old, the same age.

A little flayed monkey. My insides cold and tight.
I float a bit, bobbing; head heavy and buoyant.
Distant voices of people come and go.
My experience pulsates.
I am bereft.
The ripping of this one from me.

Writing so much of it, so honestly, so artfully,
pushes me from myself. For the feeling
has no words or few words, never enough words.
No name but a change in everything so that
the world leaves me or I leave it
just a little to the left and behind.

Nothing is real.

pretty. dumb.

So, I tried to alter one of my poems by burning the edges of the paper. Turns out, the crayon I used to color over my words with is highly flammable. One decent "RULES" poem literally up in smoke. Set off my smoke alarm and everything!

I won't be there Friday, unless you all want to come into Bruegger's Riverside for the meeting (you don't, trust me), but I'll have some poems none-the-less.

late night/early morning

oh my god, i just wrote my poem at 2.30 am and it is RIDICULOUS.
haha, i can't wait to show it off and NOT tell the story behind it.

just thought i'd say that.

Spam Poetry

From the Chicago Sun-Times article: “Thomas relies on something far less social or real -- spam. Since about 2002, the Rogers Park resident has written whimsical poems using only the subject lines of the thousands of unwanted e-mails she gets. She posts them on her www.spam-poetry.com Web site.”

This is a poem included in the newspaper article:

“it counts”
3 Chicks in one night
(25 mg did the trick.)
3 hand made silk ties
3 dollars, each
4 out of 5 doctors recommend
5 financial tips for grads
6 times the action
7 minutes in heaven!
15 minutes of waiting and then
36 hours of pleasure!
Numbers never lie my friend
Numbers never lie

It might be fun to do some of these sometimes. It also might be worth considering how doing this changes our perspective on spam. Does this sort of play make us more or less of a consumer? If a different sort of consumer, then what’s the change?

Books for Art

Hey, I just bought a couple of books to use for painting up to make humuments. They are, drum roll, Ask the Cards a Question by Marcia Muller and The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. I’m leaving them in the Official Poetry Lab Mailbox. Feel free to tear out any pages you like.

Meeting, 3/2/07

We met at Java Juice to discuss our poems based upon essays we have either read or have written.
Bret brought a new take on his 'visual poetry,' by utilizing the entire page in his poem about creation and shape, based upon a paper he had written about art.
Matt brought in an extension of his serial poem and asked his roomate to collaborate on the poem with him, providing an interesting new voice to his piece.
Kassia brought in a piece based on her experience visiting Hiroshima.
A new poet, Mike, has also joined our ragtag band of degenerates and offered some helpful insights into improving our work.

Below is Bret's offering.

obliged to collapse

idle hearts
defining a generation
downside upside down
jivin all-
heads
their
in
up
in
their
heads
-all thrivin
strivin through the blockage
situated by- the man

but these backward thoughts never surprise
these obstacles placed
in the middle of the kitchen
what a mess to clean-
what a mess god made-
of everything-
of nothing…

nightmarish impediments
yield specks of light
(human sensations
defined by an unremitting
sacred contusion)
shift- with every beating-
expose weaknesses-
hearts tuned into god through the internet
digital demarcation-
digital demise-
dying on crosses in the middle of a war zone…

is this the conclusion of a generation
or a sedition no one knows

movements overt
with covert findings
tearing at the
vain of human destiny
specks of light
smite the ash
thrash the innocent
obliged to collapse

Next Week's Meeting, March 2, 2007

Because our lovely meeting room D at the library was not quite conducive to a Poetry Lab meeting, we decided for next week (3/2/07), we will meet at Java Juice (e-mail me for directions---> rememberingjinxremoving@gmail.com) at 4:00. We decided to do Gilsun's project about converting essays into poem's. This will involve choosing an essay you (or someone else, I guess, too) have written and attempting to put it into some sort of poetic format.
If you have any questions, e-mail me.

-Meg

Meeting, 2/23/07

As we decided to concoct a group serial poem about breakfast cereal, we had many interesting and varying ways bringing this to life. Matt's poem, "A Soyish Dream", was inspired by last week's conversation to try soy milk with cereal. He had an apparent euphoric experience with that, which translated nicely in a sort of "love poem" about cereal. Bret, who likes to write in the visual genre, brought us something a little more confined than usual, but still unique, utilizing the word "crunch," to overwhelm us. Derek brought us, "Part of a Well-Balanced Meal," about the sugary sludge of a Cheerio breakfast. We combined all of our poems together at the end. Matt's poem, being the longest, is the stanzas in red, Derek's is in blue, Bret's is in green, and mine (Meg) will be in gold.



An ode to my sweet nostalgic friend
I feel as if I never knew you
Yes, there was once a time
When I'd utterly devour you with pleasure.
Ravishingly skimming you dry,
A condiment to my desirous impulse
That vanished amidst my wincing wishes to die.

Fuel for the fire
with little chocolate covered
CRUNCHES.
A magic melting pot of marvelous mysteries,
A super sugar solution for sleep.
The chemical colors will continue to
smile down and take us in, to:
Day or night,
it is just what feels right.

Yet, soon I discovered a remedy
That allowed Chocolaty Delights
To finding solace in my belly,
Maybe it took a little NASA ingenuity
Or maybe it was a similar concern to somebody else.
A soyful engagement, nevertheless
That allowed this concotion of love to attest.

Tricks are for kids
so milk it for all its worth
iniquity in mastication
knowledge through saturation
get up early
don't quit your day job

Now, to have one is not without the other,
An equation withing which I long to smother.
Dry lips quenching for something sweet
A melodrama for my mouth to meet.
Yet, my delicious Delights, it isn't you I eternally hunger for.
Oh, the selfish slup that I am, I want so much more.
More sweetly pleasures with soyish cream.
You couldn't possibly fulfill this boyish dream.

my spoon sinks
into a sludge
of sugar and milk
scraping
the gritty enamel
of the porcelain bowl
it lifts
breaking the surface
with a heap
of glistening mud
and one
single
sweet
soggy
cheerio

So I walked through the aisle where this love gave birth
To find the tempting tang of soyful mirth.
Starving to have my fill of exotic fruit.
Toucan you can become my exotic beaut.
Or buzzing around my ear, sadly she might say,
"I'll be your honey, if only you'll stay."
But alas, my tempestuous craving for variety yields
To an almost obeying desire to play the field.
There is a richness in flavor I cannot concede,
It is the soy in my life upon which I shall feed.

Okay, so I got an link to this article in my e-mail today: “Tricksters and the Marketing of Breakfast Cereals.” Given our cereal serial poem project (or is that serial cereal poem project?) I thought I’d send you guys the link. But what’s a link without a little taste of the sweet frosty coating covering the wholesome flaky goodness of cultural critique? Nothing, I sez. So here’s the first paragraph of the article:

BREAKFAST CEREALS ARE SOLD BY TRICKSTERS. FROM LUCKY THE Leprechaun to the Cookie Crook to the mischievous live- action squirrels who vend General Mills Honey Nut Clusters, an astounding number of Saturday morning television commercials feature 30-second dramatizations of trickster tales that are designed to promote breakfast cereals. True, breakfast cereals are not the only products sold by tricksters, and not all cereals are sold by tricksters— especially in the last decade. But the association is common enough to persist as an unexamined assumption that seems obvious to most Americans once it is pointed out. Naturally, breakfast cereals are often sold by animated tricksterish mascot characters, and naturally such commercials feature motifs and narrative patterns that are common in trickster tales. But the perception of an inherent internal logic in this scheme overlooks a couple of key questions. Why, for example, are tricksters considered a particularly appropriate or effective means of marketing breakfast cereals? And why breakfast cereals in particular (and a few other breakfast products), almost to the exclusion of tricksters in other types of marketing campaigns? The answers to these questions, it turns out, may lie back in the semi-mystical, pseudoreligious origins of prepared breakfast foods and the mating of the mythology of those foods with the imperatives of the competitive, prepared-foods marketplace.

Copies

Hey, I was thinking, I don't know about access to a photocopier (and I'm sure it wouldn't be FREE!), so if everyone could perhaps print an extra copy of their poem and/or send it to me by 3:00 Fri. so I could print it out, that'd be great. That way we could get it all together and up on the website by Saturday. Thanks friends.

Next Week's Meeting

The meeting for Lab for Friday, Feb. 23 from 4-5:30, will be held at the IC Public Library on Linn St. in meeting room D. If you have any questions, you can contact me (Meg) at rememberingjinxremoving@gmail.com. For our meeting, we will be piecing together our serial poem which is to be written on the topic of (breakfast) cereal.

Quickmuse

A friend just sent me a link to this site called Quickmuse. It’s quite interesting. The following is from their own about page:

QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. It's an experiment, QuickMuse, to see if first thoughts are indeed the best ones. We're not entirely sure about this, but we suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before. Best part: our "playback" feature lets you watch the poems unfold, second by second. Or as Thlyias Moss says, it's "the chance for a poem to find its/audience fast," in which words don't "have as much/time to stale, pale/lose the relevance of the moment" to which they belong.
——In an essay for Poets & Writers, QuickMuse publisher Ken Gordon explains the philosophy behind the site.

Check it out.

a mess of experimentation

wakako

i you never forgetten
and everyday missly
i every night dreaming

those dreams
skillfully speaken
at your side when
you my sister were,
she my mother was,
he my father was,

small time your island
my island was

there i peace founded
you with clappingly laughs
in brown hands
your surprise gasp
my last happiness was

you my love were
probably last
cliffs of itoman speaken
waves too loud are

you
i hurt
still i listeningly
yet to departen
numb

--------------
and a well-deserved explanation: i was screwing around using japanese grammar to write a poem about japan in english... then i remembered we were doing the verb thing this week so i made up some words and (slightly) englishized the structure to make (barely) more understandable. i'm too tired right now to tell if it's at all legible, so feedback would be appreciated. :/

slam

Don't forget folks: The Big Idea Poetry Slam. Valentine's Day at the Mill. 10:00 p.m. The cost is $3, but only $1 if you want to read a poem. It's good place to see Midwestern poets and meet area poets as well. And who knows, maybe one of us will get brave and spit some stuff.

First post

Hey, this is just a test. Soon I'll be welcoming aboard other members of The Poetry Lab of the University of Iowa Writing Center.