NOW FOR THIS NEW THING

I've returned from an internet absence largely compelled by the process of moving house, beginning a new job in an entirely new industry, the arrival and departure of a number of house guests, and the other miscellany. 

I've announced my return with new Fall Colors, because the virtual seasons are otherwise difficult to detect. 

NOW FOR THIS NEW THING: my honest engine reason for not posting anything for some long while has been my inability to determine how to proceed. There are different ways of saying the same and different things. Saying things differently. So an ongoing presentation determining the difference is the solution. I'll be posting in different colors:

White facts & white opinions. 

Pink poetic or abstract. 

Light blue nearly meaningless.

1 Week ago, I went to Brooklyn to investigate The Poetry Brothel, a gallery/ club of sorts. Its run by folks calling themselves The Madame and Tennessee Pink. The fundamental concept is a venue offering rooms laden with pillows and fabrics, wherein poetry is read to you by poets dressed in sexier than usual garb. It all suggested more 80's & 90's theater than any kind of discernible poetics, though I'm told they're mostly students from the New School MFA Program. $10 buys you admission, a gold plastic coin good for a private reading with a Poetry Whore (fresh from The Madame's Finishing School for Poetry Whores), and a green plastic coin for Absinthe (still the official drink of olympic poetry!).  Also included, The Poetry Brothel program, which amounts to a list of cast (character) biographies, acknowledgements, and advertisements for 3 workshops: 

A Finishing School for Poetry Whores: "geared toward the development of a poetry "whore" persona through the writing and workshopping of a small body of poetry for this alter-ego." 

Theories of Poetic  Enunciation: participants "focus on finding the more resonant qualities of our own voices," beginning with a study of the poetry of the "great masters."

Tarot and Poetry: "poets in this workshop will come to understand ways to incorporate into their work the still, small voice that is so easily hushed and disregarded in daily life."

These are six-week sessions. Want more? "all of our instructors are also available for private, one-on-one consultations. These are recommended for those with an existing body of poetic work and a desire for some length, indepth feedback on it. Consultation Fee: $100 per 2 hours."

My blog reading fee is $600 per post read (& it's still a better deal). 

So maybe most poets are no longer nearly so eccentric as history suggests certain dead poets were. That's no reason to go running around charging people to develop  stock strange artists. These workshopped poetic personas consist of 1 paragraph bio descriptions, toting pre-war stylings, exoticism, orientalism, EVEN MODERNISM. Each one has a list of influences beneath: Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, Wallace Stevens, Bly, Hass, Kunitz, William Carlos Williams, Silvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Frank O'Hara, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, John Ashbery, Charles Bukowski, Walt Whiman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H Auden, Russel Edson, Robert Creeley, Anne Waldman, Margaret Atwood, Ezra Pound, Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, and Salinger. 

This would not be my starting line-up. It almost reads like a "Much Loved Poets and Writers" coffee table collection. Hard-bound. Massive. Shiny. Black.  

Though, amongst the lot of them, they also managed to include: Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings, William Burroughs, James Joyce, Richard Brautigan, Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notely, and Anna Akhmatova. 

Other odd notables included: Tom Waits, Marilyn Monroe, and Edith Piaf. 

What I liked (& would like to see at other poetry events):

-inclosed front patio replete with odd lounging furniture and friendly faces

-a charming well-dressed Maitre'De

-alcohol besides wine

-an accordion player serenading between acts

-art on the walls

-attractive environs

-the idea of private readings within a larger reading

-generally friendly and approachable people

-a large constituent of women reading and listening

-Queer Friendly

What I didn't like (& am even somewhat vexed by);

-bad accents (it only makes it more difficult to care about what is being said)

-costumes (as opposed developing your "character" and subsequent aesthetic within the parameters of day to day living)

-absinthe (I love the drink, but it comes with so much baggage, and they were more interested in the baggage than the drink).

- "Poetry Whores" (as a title, the result is neither sexy enough, nor exploitive enough. Think School of Quietude in fishnet stockings and patent leather heels). Cheesecake Gluck!

- temperature (too hot to contemplate so much personal narrative)

Perhaps if the focus were set more upon the "poetry" and less upon the "brothel." Perhaps if there were less emphasis on kitsch Lit history, and more upon the spirit of experiment with venue, text and performance. 

Should have gone to TIM PETERSON  the should've shid. I saw peterson on youtube smash his club on IOWA's creative MFAce. It made sense. I think he's as intelligent as he sounds, but he has strong feelings about some poets he knows. 

PAOLO JAVIER left to teach in Miami, an associate prof on perm VAY-K. Many people visit my blog in search of PAOLO JAVIER. Keep Coming. 

ITTk looks like a dumb truck full of TT. TTap Dance. Ta Ta Tap Tap ap laPDAnce LAPDance. Ignant words doggy up my flexis mooch. Up in their towel wrapped a  fat sperm whale. 

To gurlesque, make bugwords CUM! THIP! CRISH! PHUSH! Prack ... to star in John McC[[l]]ain and William Moor Lie Hard with a Variance.