posted by Jim Behrle at 19:22
2/23/2006
2/20/2006
Talking Points
* I guess blogger got mad about my Abu Ghraib photos: find me over at thejimside.blog-city.com.* I guess it's too soon. All my Barbara Guest jokes are falling flat.
*I don't understand why all these great women poets have had strokes, leaving us with plenty of insufferable, older loudmouth no-talent male poets. If it were up to me? Like if I were passing out The Strokes? That wouldn't happen. I'll take one if you spare a great female poet. You can hold me to that.
* Matt Miller has completely unraveled. The anonymous losers are tough when they are anonymous losers. Shine the light on them and they become weepy bitches . Do not follow that link unless you like catfucking jokes a lot. Donald Revell is a man of god, dude. He'll probably forgive you. I however will eat your soul.
posted by Jim Behrle at 05:12
2/19/2006
"Do You Wanna Read First or Second?"
Is there anything more boring than the petty political struggles that poets pull on each other before poetry readings to see which one of the readers will read first and which one will read second? Who decided that reading second was somehow a greater honor in the first place? I'd rather have an unmolested audience. I mean, who knows what the joker before you is gonna do?Is it such a great honor to read after one reader (25-40 minutes) and a break (15-30 minutes) when all anybody wants to do is leave? So how's about we decide together, as colleagues, that it really doesn't matter when you read, first or second. OK? OK. I vow to only read ever first. First is better. Show up on time audience members. Or show up late and purposely miss me. I won't mind. I love doing that myself. Kind of like the feeling when you skip class. If I was playing by the rules I'd have to hear blah doing blah blah but instead I am having a slice of delicious cake.
I don't know, say you're Mei Mei Berssenbrugge and Leslie Scalapino, just off the top of my head. Does it really make any damned difference who reads first or second in that scenario? Why would anyone take offense at having to read before one of those two? I mean, whose name didn't rhyme with Smashberry? If you reach the point of being, for arguments sake, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge or Leslie Scalapino, shouldn't you really be beyond the need to read first or second over the other one? But this happens at every reading, all the time, for no goddamned reason. One book nobodies insisting to read over people with no books. People with two books demanding to read after people with one book. Well I have three books! And one's a novel! Shouldn't I read after the chick with the memoir and the book of sestinas?
Here's an easy way to avoid being one of those "I Have to Read Second" Idiots. Use these simple hints as you go about your reading days whenever they might come.
1. You show up at reading and the curator's like, "Hey, great! Thanks for being here! Do you have any preference about reading first or second?" And you say: "I would like to read first." Graceful, elegant and simple, this route clarifies all situations. If there is some kind of heirarchical significance to reading 2nd, your 2nd reader will be touched and moved by the gesture. You will be the first poet to be heard by a very fresh and excited audience. Way to go.
2. You show up at reading and the curator's like "Hey, great! Thanks for being here! Do you have any preference about reading first or second?" And you look them in the eye and tell them honestly "Can I be honest? It doesn't matter to me *whatsoever*." And the curator says, "Oh, OK. Maybe you will read second..." The people who try to pull the jedi mind trick of "It really doesn't matter to me even though my entire body is telling you that if I don't read second that I will literally burst into tears" are hilarious. We curators are looking at you and we know when you're having a hissy. We keep track in our portable curator devices the people who were freaky and misbehaved reading days. And the next time those people will be forced to read only after Behrle does his whole papsmere strip tease fellatio a unicorn's horn thing onstage, when the audience has literally dissolved into a seething liquid of surrender.
Curators: having trouble deciding who should read first or second at your next reading? Get in touch with me and I'll make the call. There is no one in this country not named Ashbury who should somehow be harmed out of reading first. If you are then you are a *ridiculous person*.
Also hypothetically, should anyone apologize from the microphone for reading poems that they recently read AT THE GUGGENHEIM? Like, should that ever happen? You might have heard these poems the last time I was on Letterman, sorry to read them again here. They're just superfantastic. I thought the point of being a famous, respected poet was that you got to act like a famous, respected poet. Hunh.
PS: Because O'Hara read before Lowell. If O'Hara read before Lowell, *you* can read before *anybody*. In general you can think to yourself "What would Frank O'Hara do?" and then do it with the confidence that it was the correct and most graceful way to handle yourself. Until like, I think I'll go up to the dark, poorly-lit beach and wander around. But that's the exception that proves the rule.
posted by Jim Behrle at 01:44
2/18/2006
Dear Sam Hamill
I'm a very prominent poet and I'd either like to have the poem I submitted back in 2003 moved to the chapbook section of the website or removed. I also am disturbed that the name of the site has changed from Poets Against THE War to Poets Against War. I don't know if I'm against all wars, I kind of take them as they come. Some wars may be necessary. A war to stop a genocide. Or a war against invading armies of space aliens who try to suck out our organs and fill us with Twinkeegoo. That would be a war I could totally get behind: I don't want to be filled with Twinkeegoo. I am very serious about this.
I am certainly more famous than Primus St. John or William O'Daly. Those guys aren't prominent at all. And why isn't Kent Johnson's poem in that chapbook. He is way more famous than those guys too.
xxxjimmy
unicornsandbunnies.blogspot.com
I am certainly more famous than Primus St. John or William O'Daly. Those guys aren't prominent at all. And why isn't Kent Johnson's poem in that chapbook. He is way more famous than those guys too.
xxxjimmy
unicornsandbunnies.blogspot.com
posted by Jim Behrle at 19:53
2/17/2006
Talking Points
* Bookscan Poetry Bestsellers week ending 2/12 from here.1. THE PROPHET Kahlil Gibran
2. TWENTY LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR Pablo Neruda
3 TEARS FOR WATER Alicia Keys
* Here's a copy of Poetry Snark Matt Miller's Magnum Opus on Utah's Donald Revell, which went mysteriously missing from the poetry snark website around the time Matt was outed (he tried to blame Agent Trochee even though it's clearly written by him ("Posted by Snark"). Don't believe me? Read the version in google cache. If you really want to be a stinker, tell Donald Revell all about it with a little note. Or contact me through the Drop a Dime site to give me anonymous tips about other poets who are acting like douchebags (I might have stolen the whole douchebag thing from Andy Mister a while ago, I can't remember. Love ya Andy Mister!)!
* Know your new Bond Girl (tm): Eva Green.
posted by Jim Behrle at 21:36
Talking Points
* Is it lamer to just be the proprieter of Poetry Snark or to then, on top of it, when outed, first deny it's you and then send mousy backchannel messages around about how you're not Agent Trochee and you really like Sarah Manguso and blah blah. I think it is cool that he once dated someone in my book who is one of the most beautiful people in all the land. And I dig his mullet. The rest of the feedback is that Matt Miller is a straight-up careerist asshole who lacks the talent to back it up. Good luck, Chuckles.* Pitchers and Catchers and Opening Day should be National Holidays. Are there any Presidents worth celebrating on Presidents Day? No. Shouldn't Veterans and Memorial Day be the same day? There you go. One February holiday and one April. Much better.
* The funniest thing about Iowa is that they create both poetry's imagined ruling class and its toxic waste. Will everyone that doesn't end up a Department Chair become a Neurotic Superfund Site? That's an anthology I want to read: HAWKEYED HACKS: The Most Bitter and Least Talented of the Writers' Workshop.
posted by Jim Behrle at 00:17
2/16/2006
2/15/2006
Somebody Please Ask Cheney
If it's good to mix beer with his heart medication.
posted by Jim Behrle at 21:38
Policy Clarifications
See this.
And can you imagine if this kid played "Grand Theft Auto." Freud's head would have fallen out and a bunch of glass would have poured out of it.
* No publications: I might send a poem someplace if somebody asks me, but probably won't, I'll make up some excuse. I just don't wanna be in your magazine. I submitted poems under a pseudonym someplace as a joke, knowing they would be rejected. I can't think of any magazines I want to be in. Why are magazines important? Who really reads them (other than Jordan?) And like, what are magazines rejecting? I'd probably like that stuff better.
* No readings: I read at the Project last June, and then at Pete's in August. I have been saying no to readings. I can't think of too many places I want to read. I like the Burning Chair ones and maybe the Zinc again sometime, 40 years from now. SF to mark the 10 year anniversary of the "Fuck Your Heroes" speech and my rock bottom and beginning of sobriety (7 more years from now this week). I think people read too often and think the accumulation of readings (and *stuff*) is the point of being a poet. There must be another way.
* No anthologies. I was in an anthology already and you can buy it. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would agree to be in another one. I'd rather my work be left out and somebody less boisterous and narcissitic could find their way in in my place. Don't fence me in. My poems gotta move and get claustrophobic. All attempts to say: I like these poems, these are the best poems of __________ is wrongheaded. All attempts. I can't participate in them. Even the Holy Donald Allen anthology, how many people were wrongly excluded from *that*? We should stop making the marketing mistakes we've been taught to make. If you had a book called CELLAR DOOR with just 20 poets you thought were sexy, well, that could be an OK project. I still wouldn't want to be in it, though.
But also for example I can't think of anyone I'd really want to sleep with (or sleep with and then have to deal with the consequences of sleeping with). But I may be depressed right now--I'm sure I'll snap to soon and be really really eager to rejoin the bullshit agenda already in progress.
I think the role of being a poet is surely more than getting in things, getting asked to be part of things. I'm pretty overexposed, you know, turn your lidless eye elsewhere. This is not an attempt to bring myself more attention. There must be other ways to be in this art than simply to accumulate a list of publications, readings and anthology credits.
I want to create new systems to distribute poems and I want to participate in those systems. I don't need anymore attention than we already get (I'd like less--a lot less--but my ego and desire to go apeshit keeps pulling me back into your consciousness). I am not trying to manipulate you (some Bostonians had taken it that in not wanting to come back and read with Fanny Howe that I'd lost it. I have lost it, but not for those reasons.) And I'm not trying to be a dick (although if that's a side effect I'm OK with it). I don't give a shit about creating more demand for my poems or for me (I swear Axe Body Spray, people are already irresistably drawn to me in ways I don't understand and can't handle).
All aspects of the poetic life must be challenged. What you think it means to be a poet is probably hollow.
What can you do now to make it *easier* for someone else to write poems? I want to know.
And can you imagine if this kid played "Grand Theft Auto." Freud's head would have fallen out and a bunch of glass would have poured out of it.
* No publications: I might send a poem someplace if somebody asks me, but probably won't, I'll make up some excuse. I just don't wanna be in your magazine. I submitted poems under a pseudonym someplace as a joke, knowing they would be rejected. I can't think of any magazines I want to be in. Why are magazines important? Who really reads them (other than Jordan?) And like, what are magazines rejecting? I'd probably like that stuff better.
* No readings: I read at the Project last June, and then at Pete's in August. I have been saying no to readings. I can't think of too many places I want to read. I like the Burning Chair ones and maybe the Zinc again sometime, 40 years from now. SF to mark the 10 year anniversary of the "Fuck Your Heroes" speech and my rock bottom and beginning of sobriety (7 more years from now this week). I think people read too often and think the accumulation of readings (and *stuff*) is the point of being a poet. There must be another way.
* No anthologies. I was in an anthology already and you can buy it. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would agree to be in another one. I'd rather my work be left out and somebody less boisterous and narcissitic could find their way in in my place. Don't fence me in. My poems gotta move and get claustrophobic. All attempts to say: I like these poems, these are the best poems of __________ is wrongheaded. All attempts. I can't participate in them. Even the Holy Donald Allen anthology, how many people were wrongly excluded from *that*? We should stop making the marketing mistakes we've been taught to make. If you had a book called CELLAR DOOR with just 20 poets you thought were sexy, well, that could be an OK project. I still wouldn't want to be in it, though.
But also for example I can't think of anyone I'd really want to sleep with (or sleep with and then have to deal with the consequences of sleeping with). But I may be depressed right now--I'm sure I'll snap to soon and be really really eager to rejoin the bullshit agenda already in progress.
I think the role of being a poet is surely more than getting in things, getting asked to be part of things. I'm pretty overexposed, you know, turn your lidless eye elsewhere. This is not an attempt to bring myself more attention. There must be other ways to be in this art than simply to accumulate a list of publications, readings and anthology credits.
I want to create new systems to distribute poems and I want to participate in those systems. I don't need anymore attention than we already get (I'd like less--a lot less--but my ego and desire to go apeshit keeps pulling me back into your consciousness). I am not trying to manipulate you (some Bostonians had taken it that in not wanting to come back and read with Fanny Howe that I'd lost it. I have lost it, but not for those reasons.) And I'm not trying to be a dick (although if that's a side effect I'm OK with it). I don't give a shit about creating more demand for my poems or for me (I swear Axe Body Spray, people are already irresistably drawn to me in ways I don't understand and can't handle).
All aspects of the poetic life must be challenged. What you think it means to be a poet is probably hollow.
What can you do now to make it *easier* for someone else to write poems? I want to know.
posted by Jim Behrle at 17:44
Peeping Ron?
from today's Silliman's Blog: "Reading it always feels lurid like coming upon a friend in the act of masturbation, then pausing to watch."
posted by Jim Behrle at 16:01
Talking Points
*Some givens:
The poem isn't the point, the poet is. [The poem isn't the point, your poem is the point.]
The poet is a reliable producer of the feeling that you are in on the poem. [The poet is a reliable producer of the feeling that you will use in your next poem.]
Poets have been fucking with branding since before the first empire. [Most poets would be a lot better off if there were less poets.]
As much of a fuckoff as the poet may be, as much as anybody wants to blow poetry off, deep down most people still consider poetry sacred (nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah). [The stuff we like is sacred and it makes us sanctimonious. All others get cast into suspicion.]
* Yeah, I've been watching "The Corporation." That's what some people are after! To be middle managers! Although do middle managers imagine they will be remembered in perpetuity? "What do we want / immortality / when do we want it / ugh?" Who is ever remembered forever? There is no forever. There is no memory. Light is also an illusion. And when you climb out of the cave, you realise its source: the Island of We're Still Fucking With You.
* Without books or the pursuit of books, what basis would poetry have to evaluate itself? How would we know it was any good? We pressure each other into publishing because that makes us more comfortable and makes the roles of others more understandable. When you pull up a chair at AWP you are interviewing for an assistant manager job at Target. Only it's worse: you're becoming part of a system that places vulnerable and overqualified people into debt and constant worry so that they will perpetuate the myth that you need to be put into debt and feel constantly afraid (tenure, publication, awards, grants) to even belong to a community of artists, to even participate. Whoa.
* So indoctrinated are we into thinking a certain way about art and life, we will someday peel away all firm beliefs because we're too tired to keep it up. It becomes too hard to resist. Ipods are cool. It would be nice to have kids and drive a Camaro. Why shouldn't we live comfortably even if it means _______ to ________. We believed we could be anything we wanted to be when we grew up (except women, I don't think women grow up believing that. I remember meeting woman's basketball superstar Rebecca Lobo at a bookstore I was working at. She had shook Red Auerbach's hand as a child and told him she was going to be the first woman to play for the Boston Celtics. I told her the Celtics could really use her (they were in last place again that year)) and then we come to understand that the obstacles are insurmountable. I took down Mohammad's visit with Horatio the Unicorn because my mother was worried that there would be dire consequences for *my family*.
* Cheney was drunk and shot a guy.
* The NSA is spying on millions.
* Good morning!
The poem isn't the point, the poet is. [The poem isn't the point, your poem is the point.]
The poet is a reliable producer of the feeling that you are in on the poem. [The poet is a reliable producer of the feeling that you will use in your next poem.]
Poets have been fucking with branding since before the first empire. [Most poets would be a lot better off if there were less poets.]
As much of a fuckoff as the poet may be, as much as anybody wants to blow poetry off, deep down most people still consider poetry sacred (nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah). [The stuff we like is sacred and it makes us sanctimonious. All others get cast into suspicion.]
* Yeah, I've been watching "The Corporation." That's what some people are after! To be middle managers! Although do middle managers imagine they will be remembered in perpetuity? "What do we want / immortality / when do we want it / ugh?" Who is ever remembered forever? There is no forever. There is no memory. Light is also an illusion. And when you climb out of the cave, you realise its source: the Island of We're Still Fucking With You.
* Without books or the pursuit of books, what basis would poetry have to evaluate itself? How would we know it was any good? We pressure each other into publishing because that makes us more comfortable and makes the roles of others more understandable. When you pull up a chair at AWP you are interviewing for an assistant manager job at Target. Only it's worse: you're becoming part of a system that places vulnerable and overqualified people into debt and constant worry so that they will perpetuate the myth that you need to be put into debt and feel constantly afraid (tenure, publication, awards, grants) to even belong to a community of artists, to even participate. Whoa.
* So indoctrinated are we into thinking a certain way about art and life, we will someday peel away all firm beliefs because we're too tired to keep it up. It becomes too hard to resist. Ipods are cool. It would be nice to have kids and drive a Camaro. Why shouldn't we live comfortably even if it means _______ to ________. We believed we could be anything we wanted to be when we grew up (except women, I don't think women grow up believing that. I remember meeting woman's basketball superstar Rebecca Lobo at a bookstore I was working at. She had shook Red Auerbach's hand as a child and told him she was going to be the first woman to play for the Boston Celtics. I told her the Celtics could really use her (they were in last place again that year)) and then we come to understand that the obstacles are insurmountable. I took down Mohammad's visit with Horatio the Unicorn because my mother was worried that there would be dire consequences for *my family*.
* Cheney was drunk and shot a guy.
* The NSA is spying on millions.
* Good morning!
posted by Jim Behrle at 06:27
2/14/2006
Can't Get a Date but Can Watch the Pilot
Morgan is goddamned funny and that scene with his mom is Sammy Davis/Archie Bunker shit. You can strike up the Vh1 V-Spot on a PC but you may need plug-ins. Motor over there. Vh1's "Can't Get a Date" premiers on basic cable Friday 4/7 at midnight. So? Dave and Jay suck.
posted by Jim Behrle at 09:11
