Chuck Close O Rly Owl

Dear Keith,

O rly?

Love,

Brittany

PS- Ya rly!

***

Dear Brittany,



Love,

Keith

Bukowski interview

I have a love/hate relationship with Bukowski, but there's a lot of wisdom here anyway.

"Poets, coerts, hoets, carrots." I might write a poem based on that.

Sound poetry lecture by Steve McCaffery

I saw Steve McCaffery speak on sound poetry. It was a really brilliant talk. My favorite part was the reassembling of the sounds in a Shakespeare sonnet using a chemistry theory of the congregation of molecules. I asked him what the difference between sound poetry and music is, and he gave me a simple and frustrating answer: it's how the author defines it. He also claims that sound poetry has no meaning or message, but I think that's impossible. He talked about how he almost gave up writing sound poetry after an audience member went crazy during one of his readings. The sounds and sequence of sounds that we hear automatically trigger neurological responses that are connected to certain emotional responses. It is literally impossible to have a meaningless sound poem, simply because of the way the brain functions. All in all, it was really quite a fascinating talk. Sound poetry is weird. I like weird.

I wrote the following notes/poems during the talk:

Their (sp?)
favorite (sp?)
odor (sp?)
of
color (sp?)

Every time you sneeze,
you have recited 1/80th of
a poem.
Those sick
post-modern poets.

This poem will change your life
See,
not every is
psychosomatic.

Alphabet of smells:
Home, sex, clean, color air, hospital, garden, bathroom (clean), bathroom (dirty), airplane, fall, winter, spring, summer, book (old), book (new), cat, dog, rodents (clean), rodents (dirty), fire, lake, ocean, theater, school, playground, rain (light), rain (heavy), early morning, evening, breeze, shower, Christmas, new car, dentist, father's coat, mother's perfume, skin, city, country, bus (clean), bus (dirty), museum, attic, swimming pool, hair, baby (clean), baby (dirty), Flordia, grandparent's house, work, guns, church, fear, the zoo, cigarettes, money, hot breakfast, sunblock...

Post-modern avant-garde play by John Morse

Nick: "That hurts my feelings."

Person 2: "COITUS HURTS MY FEELINGS"

Nick: "What?

Person 2: "NICK? LIKE, THE TV CHANNEL FOR KIDS? AIN'T NO COITUS TO BE FOUND THERE, NIGGA. Y'ALL OUT MY LEAGUE."

John: "Fin."

***

Addition--John and I had this conversation after I posted his play and he re-read it.

John: Oh my god.

Brittany: What??

John: I just never knew before tonight that I'm a fucking genius.

Hexapus!

I wrote this poem just now after reading this article on a six-legged octopus, which is now a hexapus . Scientists have named the creature "Henry," which I found to be very interesting. This is my first draft:


You were named Henry.
This was cruel.

Your life in France ended
in insanity.
Shakespeare only wanted
you dead.

How awful to compare you
to your eighth brother,
with six wives,
when they captured you for
having none.

How fortunate that
books are water soluble.
How fortunate that you
fascinate us.

Henry would be beaked and cupped
already for having a name.

We are protecting you, Henry.
You are so beautiful
and lonely, like us.

Poem by Yue Pang that wasn't meant as a poem, but it is a poem

i had this dream the other day
about fabric softerner
and then the scene cut to
george clooney
sitting outside a hotel room
in a suit
with his head in his hands
and i heard tim gunn saying
what a well-dressed man
and then my alarm went off

- Yue Pang