Crg Hill's poetry scorecard

It's Out! The First Hay(na)ku Anthology

edited by Jean Vengua & Mark Young, co-published by Meritage Press and xPress(ed). It's available now from Small Press Distribution. Copies can be obtained from Meritage Press publisher, Eileen Tabios, as well. Eileen can be reached at Ertabios@aol.com.

Check out Tom Beckett's blog for some commentary on the anthology.

Can't wait meself to clear out from under end of semester papier to read the book, wondering how the reading will differ from the first blush with many of the poems on-line.

Chri$tmass W@rz

1. Use a lot of edible things as decorations

2. The lake by boat and handed

3. Neighbors ready to fight to keep

4. Look for oblique solution, salutation

5. Wrong impression, for there is nothing

6. These people described with anything

7. Educated, they don't go in for a home

Three inaugural releases from Critical Documents

: : : :

1) Plantarchy 1
2) Holiday in Tikrit
3) Two Film-Texts

- - -

Plantarchy 1
a new journal of poetry and poetics
108 pgs, $10 / 7 lbs

- Featuring -

Poetry: Tom Raworth, Jow Lindsay, Lisa Jarnot, William R. Howe, Alan Sondheim, Matthew Klane, Rodrigo Toscano, Andrew Topel, Sheila E. Murphy, Chris Stroffolino, 405-12-3415, Maria Damon, mIEKAL aND, Kevin R. Hollo,  and Christophe Casamassima. Verbo-Visual Work: Camille Martin, John M. Bennett & Jim Leftwich, Geof Huth, Ritchie A. Katko, and Jeff Hansen. An essay on Neoism: Stephen Perkins.

Editor: jUStin!katKO

4-issue sub: $25 / 17 lbs

(now accepting submissions for 'issue 2: performance and performativity'
until March 1, 2006)

- - -

Holiday in Tikrit
Keith Tuma & jUStin!katKO

20 pgs, $5 / 2.50 lbs
html version at eratio #6

- - -

Two Film-Texts
Keith Tuma & jUStin!katKO

Ornithoooneiric & Swarm Intelligence
dvd-r, 12 min, $10 / 8 lbs

soon to be online at Drunken Boat #8

- - -

trades welcome / paypal via website / cash or check (payable to jUStin!katKO)

Critical Documents
112 North College #4
Oxford, Ohio 45056 USA

- - -

http://plantarchy.us

Postcard Collection 4

Dan Waber rocks my mailbox. Here's four of his recent postcards:

Good News! Newest IZEN Publications

've always loved the playfulness of IZEN. 've got some small cards displayed on me bookshelves. One says,

inspiration

SUCKS

on one side, and

aspiration

BLOWS

on the other. Another small square red card says,

War:

fair game

on one side, and on the other says,

Love:

fair play

So it's always good news to see more IZEN work afield. First the first new IZEN chapbook in a decade, entitled _Machine Language_, consisting of 24 pages of cutup random texts (aka "paratexts" in my terminology, to differentiate from the sales pitch, or text) collected from spam emails, lightly edited, with an introduction on how endwar sees these paratexts and their function as communications from one machine to another in imitation of human language. 

32 pages including introduction.  $5

Post cards of images from 2005 visual poetry exhibit (hanging minds :^) at Neopolis in Cleveland.  $1 each:
"Open Your I" (I ][)
"for KMR" (CRSH!)
"for DW" (Gobble, with o swallowed by G)
"Communist Evolution" (Hammer and sickle as registered trademark)

There are also cards from the previous two exhibits, which can be viewed online at Dan Waber's minimalist concrete blog:
http://www.logolalia.com/minimalistconcretepoetry/archives/cat_endwar.html

and the older items in the catalog are listed in the old IZEN catalog
http://www.phys.psu.edu/~endwar/izen/izen.html
For excerpts click on the titles.

When You Teach,

when you meet young people at their most potent yet also most vulnerable moments, you can't help but be marked by their lives. Good teachers I argue are as marked by the lives of their students as their students are marked by their teaching.

I'd been teaching for about six years when I met Bart (a bald pseudonym; this young man is the least likely person to be named Bart). From day one, he saw right into me -- there was no bullshitting him -- and he reciprocated: he gave me no bullshit. Bart never made excuses when he missed assignments, never falling back on the travails of his personal life as an explanation of his spotty schoolwork. This guy was hands-down the most frank student I had ever encountered. In class, for almost two years, I valued his commentary, his questions, his relentless challenges; he kept me and his classes honest, open.

I was crushed when just a few years after he left high school his sweetheart of several years, also a former student, was murdered, shot as she opened the door to their home. Months after her death, I will never forget holding this man, man-among-men as he had heretofore portrayed himself, wracked by sobs, inconsolable.

I was stunned about eight months later when Bart, along with another man, was arrested for his sweetheart's murder. The local newspaper reported he paid $1000 for her murder with a $100 bonus if the killing was done before Christmas.

I was stunned. Bart?

I was stunned.  Bart?

$1000 for a human life? $1100 for expediency, a stocking stuffer? Bart?

Though he was eventually released because of insufficient evidence, I remain conflicted. Was what I shared with him grief -- GRIEF, irreparable loss of a loved one -- or was it cover-up, denial, the guilt of the guilty? Will we/I ever know the truth?

A couple nights ago, Bart and I crossed paths for the third time since his arrest. What I have wanted to say to him: " Bart, either way, this sucks. If you did what the local newspaper has convicted you of, it sucks. How the hell could you have killed her? How the hell can you take a human life so casually? If you didn't do what they claim you did, it sucks. You've already had to live the life of a convict, ostracized, hounded in your home town (you spoke of having your tires slashed days before). You're life will never be the same. You're life will never be the same."

I wonder how honest Bart can be. I wonder why I haven't been as honest as I would like to be. I wonder how honest any human being can be.

I Beg Your Pardon? Freedom Because of Our Military?

Between Grangeville and Cragmont, this billboard: a photo of a military jet taking off accompanied by two words – FREEDOM (at the top) and NAVY (in the bottom right hand corner).

I contend we do not experience freedom if we have a military. Or, at the least, our freedom is limited by our military needs, by its unseen implications. We are not free of fear, we are not free from the possibility of attack, we are not free of the possibility that our leaders may make unwarranted attacks on other countires, we are not free from the potential of a military take over in this country, we are not free from violence. (That's a lot of nots to get free of even if you are some mental houdini.)

The military drugs us, our government drugs us, through these ads. We’re supposed to feel better, buzzed by the knowledge that our top-of-the-line military protects our hard-won freedoms.

I’d like to know what freedoms won through peace (whatever the hell that means anyway/ anymore) would feel like.

Impossible Ladders

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