sw00753st66-3poets

 Have a Sprintedon winter.

Since I had other things to do, shortly after 3 PM I shut down 
this wicked machine.  Around 3:50, while I was eating, darkness
set in.  By 4:10 the outdoor airs where swoopin' and whoopin'.
Ten minutes later rains were streaming on the windows.  Though
I'd rather not toggle off the surge protector and unplug the two
wall socket connections, I did; and went back to reading Auden's
introduction to his selected Byron.  It is PM 6:38 and the temp's
heading toward 32, and gusts are again whoooushing.  Could get
an inch of snow tonight.

7:20 - Just returned from exploring the latest of John Latta's
twisted and tangled and ever delicious ruminations at his Isola.
However poorly I understand him, he is always a livening read,
and the photos top and bottom of each post/ with their curt 
captions. 



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00721st46-connecting

Being reclusive has its advantages, but also its disadvantages.
My personal problems at that time aside: after the publication
in November 1972 of my first book, getting involved with the
Wisconsin Poets-in-the-Schools Program early in 1973 was
worthwhile; but pulling back into myself and away from being
actively engaged with other poets was--though I cannot prove
it--a major error.  As I have noted in Sprintedon Hollow's All
About Me section, I am reading Postmodern American Poetry.
Last night I got to and through Larry Eigner's pages.  So?  So:
Up until 1978 he lived in Swampscott, Massachusetts.  Before
that year in the 1970's I was in Swampscott, MA, at least once
because aunts of mine who had been born and raised in the
same Wisconsin town I was born and raised in owned a house
there.  I might have been able to visit Mr. Eigner.  I did visit
William Everson briefly at his home in California during the days
of one of my separations from Janice.  But I was in San Fran,
and even stopped at City Lights.  Did I try to connect with the
poetry community there after I was told the person I had come
to visit was out of town for two weeks?  No.  During another
separation I was in New York City.  Similar question.  Same 
answer.  How many times was I in Boston?  I lived for 3 years  
in Milwaukee.  My 24+ years in Gainesville, Florida?  There I 
only seriously connected with other poets during the singular
semester I was a Donald Justice student at UF.  So, after I
moved into Missouri late last year, I convinced myself that 
until my body's mind ceases to function/ I was going to re-
connect with and remain connected with other poets for as
long as they would allow me to.   


-------------------------
Li-Young Lee on making poems


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00703st40-poets.blogs

Spent most of my online time yesterday visiting poetry blogs.
After PM 10, impelled by Latta's Friday post, I found an edu
site where an article about Slavoj Zizek is.  Should go back
there today to finish reading it.  That Zizek revived the use 
of the word "ideology" (the death of which I was not aware 
of) appeals to me.

Sometimes when I search my own name at Google, I find a
site where the comment attributed to me is not my comment.

My sister picked up at Library Station the anthology I had
requested: Postmodern American Poetry.

Now Latta's turnin' my broken back/ toward that straight'ner
poet/ Ed Dorn, sumpin' I'd been puttin' off.

Placed a long comment beneath Mark Wallace's "archive" post,
a comment which touches on four of his posts, and which would
have been longer had I remembered to write about the other
thoughts which were originally in my mind. 


-------------------------
Zizek


Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00651st22-poet.views

So much for yesterday's 7:55 record: woke last today at 8:02; but
was up till nearly midnight trying to read the 56 comments beneath
one of Stan Apps's recent posts.  Quite interesting, all of it centered
around Stan's gardist categorizations.  At some point, a voice in me,
'minding me of Shakespeare, said: "Avaunt, gourd."  This morning,
when that thought returned, this thought followed:  It could be said
every new poetic voice (no matter how weak or imitative) is a kind
of avant-garde/ in that each maker is unique// and each made thing
is perforce unique due to the unfathomable set of concurrences which
fostered, nurtured, imbued, and birthed it.  Perhaps such poets as
Rimbaud and Stein are obvious exemplars of newness, but right now
all of us virtuals are engaged in the construction of a communal new.
If you really want an avant, wait until Robert Jastrow's prediction of
a fourth physical fold of the human brain encasing the present cortex
appears.
-
Best rain chance this evening.  At the moment, AM 11:24, it is windy 
clear.  PM 1:22 - Clouds have taken over.
-
Though the English language is--in some ways--drear, lacking nuances
present in certain other languages  [ here Nicholas Manning's thought
about other languages makes me feel we need to strive to prevent
languages from disappearing and to (if we can) resurrect those which
have disappeared ], English is a word-accretion / form-changing
language.  Witness "s/he": a form someone first used which is slowly
garnering general acceptance.  The Internet has spawned/ English-
language changes, but English has some inherent flaws a radical re-
visioning of it would eliminate.  That, however, is a book some AI
being may one day write.  For now, this:  I do believe, if one is open
to it, thoughts can enter one's consciousness directly from the Universe
(meaning God or some other higher intelligence).  Dreams have been/
sources.  Still, nothing that comes from an imperfect being is sourceless.
Most of what comes is a reconfiguration / reconceptualization of what
is already known.  I could point to myself for examples of all of this,
but why should I.  Each person has his or her  [ the existence of "his"
and "her" stand as proofs of what is inherently askew in the English
language ]  own examples.  Irony is "big" these days, but irony has a
negative aspect: it tends to negate honest humor and thusly to promote
taking oneself too seriously, which is the door to insanity.  Let us have
our arguments; but let us loosen up, which (hopefully) allows me to say:
I enjoy J B's "Vallejo says hi!"
-


-------------------------
regarding Hugo Ball and dada phonetic poetry, first scroll down to NOTES



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00623st3-poetics

Another clear morning.  At 8:07 the thermostat temp had descended
to nearly 70.  At 8:26 the furnace came on.  It is now 9:10 and is still
warmer in here than it needs to be.

-

In 1959 I entered Marquette University, and became a Schroeder Hall
resident.  One day I took a walk toward downtown along the north side
of Wisconsin Avenue.  When I came to a bookstore I went in to browse.
A large reddish-brown hardbound stopped me.  Near its jacket's top in
bold black print was D A N T E.  Beneath this name was an upright oval
containing a sideview of the poet's head.  I glanced through the book,
attending especially to the photos of engravings accompanying the text.
I read some passages.  On the jacket's front flap the original price had
been crossed through and a sale price listed.  I bought the book.  It is
presently sitting to the left of me on my dictionary.  I brought it into my
bedroom about a week ago, but I did not start reading it until late last
night.  So far I've read the first five cantos.  The chosen 69 engravings 
are by Gustave Doré and the blank verse translation by Lawrence
Grant White.  The book was published and copyrighted by Pantheon 
Books Inc., New York in 1948.  How much of this book I read during
my year at Marquette/ I can't say.  I thought I'd used it for the paper
I wrote--which I also still have--for an Enlgish course I took in 1960,
but when I went through that paper today I saw I had used Laurence
Binyon's 1947 translation: The Portable Dante.  I may have gotten
that book from the university's library.  I'm not absolutely sure what the
proper title of the book I have is, but my best guess is: Dante Alighieri 
The Divine Comedy  The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

-

My paper: "The Fourfold Chariot": has a 9-line Prologue stanza I wrote.
This stanza has a rhyme scheme: aababcbcc: the same rhyme scheme I
used when five years later in the upstairs apartment in the Brumwell's
house in Solon, Iowa, I began writing Onefor (Justan Tamarind).  It
staggered me as I read it and began to think it might be, a fact I proved
moments ago via a "Justan Tamarind" search from Googleland.  It still 
does not prove I invented it, but I did first use it in 1960.  Here it is:

I rode the fourfold chariot through lands
Of liquid fire and ice where hope on sands
Did die, where endless sorrows strolled;
Where blackness killed the dancing golden strands
Of beatific light.  While thunder rolled
In bowls of coldest dew; the lively steeds
Increased their speed past Purga's prayerful fold,
My spirit skipped across the rolling meads
And stood in awe where paradise proceeds.

I'm shameless.  I know.  And that I was only nineteen then is no excuse,
which is not to say I've improved since.  I may have devolved.  My paper
is dated May 2, 1960.  That same semester a poem of four lines and two
sonnets I had written were accepted by the Marquette Journal, but a far
superior poem to any of mine, a longer and less encumbered poem, was
also accepted.  I have not yet been able to track down that poem's author,
but I have kept the Journals mine were in, and so have kept his.  Sharing it
would be a pleasure, dark as it in someways is, but I have no right to.  Its
title is: "Pride's Offering to the Gods": you will just have to imagine the rest.
Conjunctions of that nature always make me think, make me wonder, make
me want to say: I"ll bet there are more great poems written by unknowns
than there are by knowns.

-

Speaking of mysterious conjunctions, I am in the midst of one right now
as the result of a "beyond language poetry" search.  It is an essay by a
poet new to me: Richard Jackson, an essay published in the Cortland
Review.  He focuses on the sounds of words, and how poets can get
carried away by sounds, and how sounds carry meanings beyond those
meanings words normally have; so that while a poet needs to maintain a
kind of control, the words with which a poem is made depend on those
sounds inherent in them for the sake of that poem's vitality.  One example
Jackson points to is/ canto 5 of Dante's Inferno.  How is it this kind of !
occurs?  In my life they do so over and over and over and over and over.
Free will?  Yes, but--.  I am providing a link below and then returning to
read the second part.  It is PM 10:55, and amidst needs, I have finished
attending Jackson's essay.  The first poem he explores in index2.html is
"The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, a poem I recently read.  In reflecting on
his concluding remarks, I at this moment realize how all poets (no matter
their differences) are united: as users of language in ways which expose
the cultural prisons attempting to enclose and silence us / as users of
words in ways which seek to express the inexpressible / as explorers 
and preservers of freedom/ however we are able to do so.  If the forces
of deception prevail, all will die; for all such forces are bearers of death.
Upon the reigns of imagination and empathy inside each human/ so much
depends.


-------------------------
Richard Jackson on Language-Driven Poetry


Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00278aih-muttob.etc

10    As It Happens
 -


 When it rains quietly, nearby above is a metal thing
 upon which the rain's sounds seem like a tune being
 played on a distant marimba.  This morning I found
 possible words for the chorus of that tune:
                         Whoooole an-nd gentle
                         Is the only way I need you;
                         the only way I want you..

 ~

 Pulling the left edge of the drape in my living room
 back/ to ostensibly check the sky, which moments
 ago was ridge cloudy, my eyes fixed on the staunch
 bush I had taken several photographs of when ice
 sheathed it: scintillant ice when the sun shone.  This
 day it is pushing forth light green leaves and white
 blossoms.

 ~

 Yesterday I slid into my docs space and cleaned up
 Usta Mari, and then printed both it and The Forty-One
 Days of Kim.  Not sure I'll be posting them today in 
 Venturings, but I may.

 ~

 In The Best American Poetry 2006:
 Billy Collins, Editor | David Lehman, Series Editor
 is "Toward Some Bright Moment", a poem by
 Stephen Dobyns which centers on experience,
 reflection, empathy, regret, and self-knowledge.
 In my inner self, I applauded Stephen, and
 thanked him.

 ~

 Mutt Object
     -

     "Dog On"

     Matching
     mongrels  

     merrily
     marching

     mountainous
     miles

 ~

 Much of this afternoon, as dark rolls of clouds coursed
 from northwest to southeast, rain with thunder & lightning
 and/or thunder & lightning and/or thunder coursed with
 them.  So, after unplugging my computer system a second
 time, I moved my surge protector, monitor, cpu, and
 keyboard/mouse/modem/phone table to locations I am
 more comfortable with.  I sit on a medical stool three feet
 from my monitor.  I also changed how the keyboard and
 mouse wires connected to the cpu, and how the cord for
 the surge protector ran to the wall socket I plug it into.
 -
 It has become my habit when thunder grumbles/ to turn
 my computer off if I am using it.  [ Partly because it is 
 programmed to turn itself offwhen I am away from it
 for ten minutes, I do not leave it on unless I return to it
 in less than seven minutes to make afew key strokes so
 it "knows" I do not intend to shut downyet. ]  If I hear 
 thunder grumbles more than one time, I shut this system
 down, unplug the phone/highspeed jack, turn off the surge
 protector, and unplug the protector's cord.  I would unplug
 the protector's cord before turning the protector off, but
 I have sometimes noted sparks from sockets in this place
 when I was unplugging a cord.  Paranoia?  Some sometimes.



Brian A. J. Salchert                       

sw00243aih-poets.humans.dna

3      As It Happens


-

Yesterday evening I let myself get pulled into reading 
Part I of Seth Abramson's "The Sociology of Poetry"
which was posted at his place in the noosphere: The
Suburban Ecstasies in 2005.  That choice led me
to Reginald Shepherd, Slicker Chumway, Ron Silliman,
and to sending an email to Seth.  I didn't raise myself
into bed until after midnight.  This morning I continued
my journey, and have so far been to Josh Corey's place
after having gone back to the comments on Silliman's
Blog pertaining to Seth's "rant".  I may insert a part or
all of my email to Seth as that constitutes my short
response to what he wrote.  Here:
-
Blessings Seth,
 
Your rant is amazing, but I think your background in
Sociology and Law seriously, and in many ways valuably,
provided you the wherewithal to construct that rant 
as you did.  I would not have thought to ask 1/5 of the
questions you did, and certainly not the way you did.
I recently turned 66.  I presently have a web log at 
AOL, most of which I--as certain other poets are--am
using to post poems I have written.  Some of them are
in books.  There is so much I want to say here, but I
am saying all that in my online space.  I know few even
know I am online, though I've been online since early
April of 2000.  Do I want to be read?  Of course.  Do I
want those who read what I write to be somehow
changed for the better?  Yes.  Yet, though I've been
the MFA route, and though, and though, I have long
been more a hermit poet than an aggressive poet.  I 
am an INFP who may be slowly becoming an ENFP, and
I am quite eclectic.  I read Ron Silliman's Blog because
there is so much information there.  There are others I
read, and soon there will be more; but if I spent all my
time reading the writings of others I would be forced
to stop doing any writing of my own.  Why do I bother
anyway?  I do what I do because I must, and because
I enjoy it, even when I may be dissatisfied with a
sentence I've penciled, penned, or typed years later,
and even when a re-visionI make is worse than the
vision I first or earlier had.  Ashbery said in an interview
that we (meaning human beings) do not "know"  any-
thing.  I once wrote a poem to him.  Itis in my online
Postures 2007 book.  I'm sure he does not know about
it.  As to posterity, who really knows if there is even
going to be such.  This whole wondrous planet could
suddenly blow apart at any moment.
 
Thank you.  I expect to be reading more at your place
in the noosphere.
Brian A. J. Salchert
 
*
 
Due to blogspot's first 6 Profile questions, I have put
similar information at the bottom of my "All About Me"
sidebar space.  Their request for Zodiac Year infor-
mation seemed a bit odd to me, though I recently did
take the time to read a history of the Chinese Zodiac
Calendar.  However, I did not at that time attempt 
to ascertain what Zodiac Year I was born in.  So, I
was initially shocked when I learned today that I was
born in the Year of the Dragon, and the metal Dragon
at that.  The last time I was weighed, which was 3
days ago, I was a massive 101 lbs., and my height
that day was an amazing 4'11.75"; and I am a what?
Back in the late 1970's I decided to start a press,
and I named it: Thinking Lizard.  It still exists and I
have been using it online.  I once had a book I gave
to someone else, but for a long time have wished I
hadn't.  It is no longer in print, but its title is:
Maps of the Mind.  There is one mind-map in that
book which illustrates the reptile/mammal/new-brain
structure of the human brain.  It was the catalyst
for my Thinking Lizard idea.  It now seems uncanny,
in light of the Zodiac Year revelation, how well my
Thinking Lizard decision fits me.  Beyond all that, I
long ago read Pere Teilhard de Chardin's seminal book:
The Phenomenon of Man, and have ever since been
a disciple of his, especially of his prophetic envisioning
of our Earth wrapped in what he called a noosphere
(a sphere of knowledge), the very manifestation the
WWW/Internet--to me--is.  If some disaster, either
natural or man-made, does not end it and/or end us, I 
believe it will come to be seen as an evolutionary
advance, a fourth fold of thehuman brain, if you will.
There is one person whose name I'm no longer able to 
recall who has predicted that by the year 2040 we will
be many thousands of times more intelligent than we 
presently are.  It brings phaneronoemikon to mind, that
mysterious occasional visitor to Silliman's Blog.  I have
not yet visited
 
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/dna.jpg
 
but I am going to try to.
-
4:49 PM:  I just did, and I read, and I saw, but I am not
going to tell you what my response was.   
 
*
 
Almost fell into a laughing jag last night when the
following sprung into my above-ground (a-g) brain:
-
Look!
 
that wench
is waving
 
a white flag!
-
-
Why that struck me as funny I cannot say.
It does not now.  Maybe it had to do with
the suddenness of its appearance and the
thought of a "street walker" waving a white
flag.  Should I blame it on my epilepsy?  I
should blame it on my unwillingness to
keep it to myself.
 
 
*  



Brian A. J. Salchert                      

sw00181olp-poets

Poet Presences: Kyger / Rich


 2007 041 02 2 6

 Yesterday was Joanne Kyger day.  It may also have been
 Adrienne Rich day.  (I've been reading about them and 
poems by them.)  Certainly, Kyger--similar to Rich--is not
afraid to reveal what she thinks or to deliver to a reader
the tracks of her emotions.  I could say more, but I would
rather you read a few of their poems, and come to your
own conclusions.  There is a set of "political" poems by
Joanne Kyger online, and there is a set of "love" poems by
Adrienne Rich in volume 2 of The Norton Anthology of
Modern and Contemporary Poetry.



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                      

sw00059olp-poet

Poets & Writers Magazine Note


 On page 21 of Volume 35 - Issue 1 - Jan/Feb 2007
 an introduction to a prized phantom poet begins.
 Written by one John Freeman, president of the 
 National Book Critics Circle, the introduction is
 entitled: "The Art of Reading Frederick Seidel".
 Two comments:
             1)  It seems to me 
                  Frederick Seidel
                  is a cosmopolite.
             2)  I recommend
                  you find and read
                  John Freeman's
                  "The Art of Reading
                  Frederick Seidel".



Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00010olp-2poets

2 Poets: David Antin and Denise Levertov


 Late last night into early this morning I read the
 better part of a David Antin interview.  Blessedly, 
 he has a sharp mind, otherwise he would not be able 
 to handle the threads of logic and intuition his
 talk performances require.  It is difficult to do
 what he does, but he believes that as poetry began
 as an oral art/ so should it remain.  His sense of
 poetry on the page is/ that it becomes drier and
 drier over time.  I, as you may already know, do
 not have that sense; but due to the comic in me, I
 find what he does attractive.  I even imagine myself
 now and again as an associative stand-up comedian,
 though if I ever do attempt to be one/ I will have
 my wee body brought on stage on a stretcher.  An
 opposing view comes from the late Denise Levertov.
 She felt poems should be written with a pen or a 
 pencil, then vocalized to catch "awkwardnesses".  
 I tend to write mine that way.  Lately I have been
 writing them on notepad paper.  She further felt/
 a poet should be in a kind of meditative silence
 when composing a poem, and that it is best if a
 reader is in a similar state.  I believe imagination
 can be revealed and enjoyed in as many ways as one
 can imagine.
 - - -
 Two clarifications
 -
 Antin does not see himself as a stand-up comedian,
 but neither does he disparage humor.  He would say
 one must go with the flow, or alter the flow as
 best seems fit.  What he does is not automatic
 writing, although the quickness of his mind may
 sometimes make it seem so.  The art he practices
 is highly active and interactive, and getting
 each passing moment right is the challenge.  Unless
 one has a photographic memory, Antin must be caught
 on tape, a fact he fully realizes.  Tape time is
 important, therefore, as well as is attention span
 and his intuition of the intelligence level of a
 given audience.  Gather ye forces as ye may. . . .
 -
 Works resulting from some ways of imagining are not
 what I would class as poems, even if the authors 
 of them think they are.  Hey! I can be a versifier
 as easily as anyone else can.  I've probably used
 all or part of the first line of "Mary Had a Little
 Lamb" a dozen times as a starting point to express
 another view.  I have also done the like with other
 nursery rhymes.  Once, when I read that Hamlet had
 a weight problem, I changed the famous "To be or 
 not to be" soliloquy to: 
 Tubby, or not tubby,
 "that is the question.
 Whether 'tis better to"
 go on a diet,
 or build a kite,
 and fly it.
 -
 I hope Shakespeare doesn't mind.
 = = = = = = =

 Sites to visit -
 www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.593/
      antin.593
 -
 pw.org/mag/levertov.htm
 (Nicholas O'Connell, interviewer)



Brian A. J. Salchert                    
 

sw00009olp-poet

Bill Knott, poet


 Silliman's Blog led me this evening to Bill Knott's
Blog.  I found out he has placed there most of the
poems he has written over the past 40 years.  I
intend to return to read some of them.  After I
left his home on the web, I found and read an
interview with former students of his.  Either
there or at another place I learned he was an
outsider.  I know I am an outsider.  I do not know
about Mr. Knott, but I, somewhat like Mr. Bromige,
am not tied to a particular vision of what a poem
should be like.  Auden purportedly said: "How can I
know what I think until I see what I say."  I am
with him on that.  Something stirs, and a poem
begins; and once it has begun it provides a sense
of where it wants to go.  The poet can decide not
to go with it, but only at the peril of losing what
is coming next.  I sometimes feel a poem has already
been written by the universe, and is just waiting
for the right person to recognize its existence.
Often, when I read a piece I've written, be it one
I wrote yesterday or 45 years ago, I wonder inside
myself: where did that come from?

Sites to see -
billknott.typepad.com
-
lighthousewriters.com/newslett/knott.htm
-
bookslut.com/features/2005_02_004302.php



Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00006olp-18poets

their place in the heat



 In the spring of 1971, Doug Flaherty edited a
special issue of his Road Apple Review.  It 
was Vol. III, no. 1, a gathering of eighteen
soul-exploring contemporary poetics statements.  
The subject of this entry was its title,
which was found in the poetic statement by

Besmilr Brigham.  I did that issue's cover design.
                          Last month I reread the 
                          statements therein.  Here
                          are the names of the  
                          other poets whose poetic
                          statements appear in that issue: 

     Gene Frumkin
     Tom McKeown
     Phillip Hey
     John Haines
     Victor Contoski
     Douglas Blazek
     Lucien Stryk
     Greg Kuzma
     Colette Inez
     Howard McCord
     William Matthews
     Dick Lourie
     Alan Brilliant
     Edward Oliphant
     Doug Flaherty
     Keith Wilson
     Peter Wild

To me, the core value of this gathering is the
resulting provocativeness.  These poets are not
of a kind.  I would like to pass on to you some
of their thoughts, but I feel I do not have the
right to.  I am sure I am not the only one who 
has a copy of their place in the heat but I
am equally sure it would be difficult to find a
copy.  Were I given the go-ahead to, I would 
reissue it in PDF format.



Brian A. J. Salchert