Manfred Mann - Come Tomorrow

Paul Brown, poet

Paul Brown is criminally under-read and under-rated. So under-rated that in spite of the fact that my copy of his book meetings and pursuits comes inscribed to Lee Harwood, "For Lee, Pages in the education of an alien? Paul 11-7-79", it was pretty much cheap-as-chips to buy on abebooks. Although I get the feeling I was lucky to find a copy at all. His books include 'MASKER' (Galloping Dog Press 1982) which I have never been able to find, and Gingerbread House (Share 1975), ditto. But rest assured I am thoroughly, ravenously hungry for these books after reading meetings and pursuits.

For example, this bit from the poem Grin without a cat, which i find tender and embarassed:

'Couldn't find a word
with butterfly in it

Like coulours
not making'

or this, where the whole idea of line-breaking is mocked while being employed to glorious, stylish, fascinating effect:

'It is a smallish pic
ture but since its dis

patch has had lovers of every des
cription and sex, this:

girl with parrot
on her shoulder'

Harold Monro, poet

The poet and bookshop owner Harold Monro (1879-1932) is a fascinating figure in Twentieth Century British poetry. His poetry, neither particularly traditional nor easy to sit beside the radical poetries of the day, deserves to be read for its understated simmering lust/depression/desperation and its destructive elements. There is a great selection available from Laurel Books, edited by Dominic Hibberd. One of my favourites in the book is 'Introspection', in which the poem literally disintegrates, fades out to nothingness. But here is the excerpted beginning of the poem. It has a great first couplet:

'That house across the road is full of ghosts;
The windows, all inquisitive, look inward:
All are shut.
I have never seen a body in the house;
Have you? Have you?
Yet feet go sounding in the corridors,
And up and down, and up and down the stairs,
All day, all night, all day.

When will the show begin?
When will the host be in?
What is the preparation for?
When will he open the bolted door?
When will the minutes move smoothly along in their hours?

Time, answer!

The air must be hot: how hot inside.
If only somebody could go
And snap the windows open wide,
And keep them so!'

I find this poem suffocating and desperate. ILOVEIT! The book is great and highly recommended. So thank-you Laurel Books.

Leon Bakst

Leon Bakst, painter and costume and set designer, is one of my favourite artists. Famous for his work with the Ballets Russes, I also love his portraits, like the one of Zinaida Gippius, further down.

Self Portrait, above, 1893

(Portrait of the writer Zinaida Gippius, 1906, above)

a blank page

My poem 'a blank page' up now at Writers' Bloc. The site is great and there are many many good things to look at there. Thank-you to Vaughan Simons and the other Writers' Bloc people.

Paul Sharits Word Movie

Paul Sharits - "Word Movie"
Uploaded by arginati22

great

truly awesome blogpost by Nada Gordon about poetry and personality, here.

James Chance and The Contortions. I can't Stand Myself.

why am i so influenced by what i watch on t.v.?

Mr and Mrs Ossie Clark by David Hockney

Celia Birtwell Patterns

I know it's only 8.21 pm, but why not take a trip here?

Three poems by me up at 3:AM. Thank-you so much to Susan Tomaselli and 3:AM.

Mister Lonely

Steve McCaffery reading Carnival this weekend.

Saturday, Glasgow, The Arches 18.40.

I CAN'T WAIT!!

Poems

three poems are up now at the wonderful Dogmatika. Thank-you to Susan Tomaselli for putting them up and for all her Dogmatika work.

Alice Notley

I just read this great Alice Notley interview at 3am.

I am reading

'An Honest Woman'

by Jack Dunphy.

Here's a good bit:

'
"Well?"
He sounded as if he had been drinking.
I'm leaving him.
After all he left me.
He sounds in love with me.'
(p.16)

Now that is how to handle interior monologue.

In the unlikely event that anybody wants to visit my Amazon Reviews, 39 now, then here is the link.


Finally, here is a link to something, namely, Anything Anymore Anywhere

Helen Adam

Curtis Harrington Links

Today I am putting in a bunch of stuff related to one of my favourite directors, Curtis Harrington.

Here is a scene from 'Night Tide' 1961, Harrington's first feature film, which features a fantastic performance by fresh-faced sailor Dennis Hopper and equally unusual and astounding ones by Linda Lawson, Gavin Muir and Marjorie Cameron (who you may know from Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome).



And here are the end credits from 'The Cat Creature' a made-for-TV movie from 1973,



There's an interview with Harrington here

and a good profile of the man and his work here

Here is Harrington talking about his film The Killing Kind:






Go Here to see a trailer for the 1977 film Ruby

And Here is the first part of Whoever Slew Auntie Roo on Youtube. I believe you can watch the whole film on there, which is a good thing since it's pretty hard to find otherwise.



Here's a trailer for the film 'What's the matter with Helen?'



And here's the first (fiery) part of How Awful about Allan,




Queen of Blood (1966):

A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett Review by Reuben Sutton
A review of the 1993 historical saga "A Dangerous Fortune" by master storyteller Ken Follett. How the wealthy Pilaster banking family made, and lost, a fortune in the treacherous world of late nineteenth century London.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1523845/a_dangerous_fortune_by_ken_follett.html

when i sit quietly, it's thoughts of
you that deflate my tire,

the left hand opens a book
the right hand drinks tea

there's still less?
we'll ask, the questions are

the easy way: there's no
room for unprofessionalism

i am good cop
you are bad cop

i think i'm in a band
i think i'm supporting 'mcfly'
and playing to a very sizeable crowd

random bad photo autobiographical poem

last night i watched this. i think i thought it was pretty good, anyway i am looking forward to the next installment.

i taught my first class today. it was on Twelfth Night. i enjoyed it, but i have a lot to learn. i spoke too much, and zipped past things that it would have been helpful to focus in on...

i am reading 'The Bookshop' by Penelope Fitzgerald. It's good but it is dangerous reading for me because it has always been my ambition to open a bookshop. or a restaurant. this book gives me ideas, (i mean that in the worst possible sense).

i am also reading this. absolutely amazing.

20 books that made me fall in love with poetry...

I found Ron Silliman's list really fascinating, not just for the insight into his development as a poet, but because his list really seems to focus on the question as asked, i.e., the twenty (or more) books that made yu fall in love with poetry. It is a very different question to the more usual, 'which poets have been most influential to your development as a poet', or, 'what are your favourite books of poetry'. For me, these questions would all overlap to some extent.

I thought I would get my tuppence worth, so here goes nothing. I started to fall in love with poetry in 2004, with a great big massive swoon, I might add. Almost overnight I made a transition from saying ridiculous things like 'Poetry is basically dead, there are no good poets anymore' to adoring and devouring poetry to the exclusion of most anything else. Three things, none of them a book, were most important to me here. The first occurred quite by chance while I was washing dishes in my second year student flat with my flatmate's (hi Tommy) itunes on shuffle. After 'Radiohead' or 'The Cure' or whatever, on came Frank O'Hara's voice reading a curious poem about having coke, and another about Lana Turner. I loved these poems and this instance was the first thunderbolt where I realised I was wrong about poetry. The second thing that made me fall in love with poetry HAS to be Silliman's Blog which I stumbled upon when googling Frank O'Hara I think in about 2004. As a resource for me to read and google and buy books I have found it totally invaluable. When people criticize Silliman for things he says on his blog I can never sympathize really because whole swathes of literature, and very different writers, have been made avaialable to me, almost solely through reading his blog and following up on writers that sound interesting. It still happens very often that I learn of new writers through his blog. I think the fact that I have weird choices on there, like Beverly Dahlen, is due to reading his blog and ordering the books from Abe. It might explain why my list is absurdly American though. The third thing that made me fall in love with poetry is Jacket Magazine. The wealth of poems, reviews and in particular interviews available for free whenever anyone wants it is truly amazing and wonderful. (why have i started making an oscar speech all of a sudden?...) Here's my twenty books,

The Collected Poems Frank O'Hara
The Collected Poems Edwin Morgan
Drafts 39-57 Rachel Blau DuPlessis
A Reading 1-7 Beverly Dahlen
Deviant Propulsion CAConrad
The Collected Poems Kenneth Koch
Bay Poetics Stephanie Young ED.
Collected Poems 1947-1980 Allen Ginsberg
Gasoline Gregory Corso
The Collected Poems Marianne Moore
Recyclopedia Harryette Mullen
Argento Series Kevin Killian
Collected Poems Tom Raworth
Collected Poems Lee Harwood
Talking David Antin
Active 24 Hours Alan Davies
Striking Resemblance Tina Darragh
Islets/Irritations Charles bernstein
In The American Tree Ron Silliman Ed
Disobedience Alice Notley
Skies Eileen Myles
Collected Poems Ted Berrigan