For Sol Hashemi's birthday

It's Sol Hashemi's birthday! He turns twenty two today. I'm going with him to dine at the Taco Truck later, during which I will probably buy him a burrito as a birthday present. To supplement, I dedicate this post to him.

***

Even though Sol is a visual artist (and sometimes performance artist, I suppose), he sometimes likes to write me poems. Here are my three favorites:

1. A pale yellow paint chip from Home Depot, the color of "poetic light." On it he wrote,

"A poem,
for you"

2. Sol took a scrap piece of cardboard, twisted it into a loop, said "I wrote you a poem," held it out to me, and then threw it in the trash.

3. This poem he wrote while we were driving to Carpet Liquidators.

The Fuck You Poem
"Fuck You"

***

And THAT, friends, is why you don't lend Richard Brautigan books to artists!

Inaugural poem

I was going to write something about Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural* poem, but it seems that Paul Constant has beat me to everything I wanted to say.

As Stranger writer Brenden Kiley points out, her books are selling fantastically.

How interesting to see the critics--and especially the supposed supporters of poetry--publicly berate her poem and performance, while so many people who "never read poetry" loved it. It's safe to assume it's these people who are going out and buying her books. Taste aside, her poem at least reached out to those who are poetry "amateurs"; the borrowed imagery and theme, and simple language, made the poem easily digestible. You have to admit, it seems fitting that a poem for the inauguration does well to speak to the lowest common denominator. Because of this poem, people are actually supporting poetry by buying her book and keeping smaller poetry presses in business. So...I'm not complaining.



*CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE BARACK OBAMA IS OUR PRESIDENT NOW? IT'S LIKE THE BEST THING EVER WOW.

Oh hello, I didn't see you come in

I have a cold. Being sick feels like the perfect time to revive something I had...killed? To quote a friend, Mr. Francois Briand,

"Have you ever thought about [internet death]...on WEED?"

Anyway, back to sickness and close to deathness. I'm very ill, which means that

1. I have time on my hands to sit around and do whatever,
2. it seems so nicely new critical, dontcha think?

I realized that having a blog was actually a productive way to get me to think of poetry in critical and articulate (and typo ridden) terms. Plus, my blog was getting crazy hits for posting that picture of Lisa Loeb's butt. I'm not sure if that's a reason to resume blogging or to donate all my money to Bitch Magazine out of guilt. (I hope five dollars will suffice).

Things that I learned from my hiatus:

1. New York is not as wonderful as I had assumed. Seattle is the most wonderful place I've even been and I don't want to leave.
2. I need to write a manifesto before I start any new project.
3. Writing communities cannot be forced, or even coerced.
4. What I thought was "bad writing" was actually "mediocre writing," and real "bad writing" gets recycled in lots of agenting offices.

Nudge has been replaced by This is Nutella. We had our first meeting today about our winter issue, which should be available in...March? Here we are outside of Bumbershoot:


(Clockwise: Jason Hirata, Sol Hashemi, international super model Brittany Dennison, Claire Fox.) I tried to use the photo that was equally unflattering for all of us. I don't think this photo is an accurate representation of what we actually look like--in most cases this would throw off the paparazzi, but not in our case, because in Seattle the paparazzi are illegal. In fact, all photography is illegal here. I'm beginning to think that's why we have so many talented photographers.

Before I go take a bath, I have to tell you to read The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, by Eugene Ostashevsky, as it is the best book of poetry I read in 2008. Enter Morris Imposternak, Pursued by Ironies is also fantastic. I think he's one of my favorite poets, despite the fact that his "Morris Imposternak" videos scare me so much I make a triple chin face on accident.