Thursday, March 29, 2012


Was asked by the great magazine (previously paper but now online (like no other) Caliban, to make a comment for their “contributors’ advice” segment:


Recently started a blog (languageknows.blogspot.com) in which I'm talking about poetry, language as medium, other mysteries and frustrations of trying to find a place/ path whit this.  a poet I'd never met before, who I e-mailed  about how fine it was to meet him, wrote back that the feeling was mutual and "You take delivering your poems to a whole new level." more accurately is that my poems require me to deliver them that way. energy and physicality. the voice and body aren't just changing channels every phrase, they’re changing dimensions, by which I mean slightly alternative realities (as often dealt with in sci fi as well as 1Q84. For me its all about the energy, the imagination (as well as being tight/efficient/clean) This is a time and place needing massive imagination.


imagination—what can be made up, out of raw material, pink slime, dark matter, genetic code, what the eyes have no words for. whether imagining whole worlds like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars or just coming up with some phrase/image/chord no one had memory of. if no one remembers this being then someone made it up. “no one like me ever lived here before.”
maybe need to revise my definition a little coz then the past would just be imagination, no one who could remember is alive. as I’ve heard that no one lives past grandchildren. unless something of your life lives. like a form of radiation encouraging mutants

Tuesday, March 27, 2012


3/27   a bit of poetry immersion last Saturday at the Cascadia poetry festival (hearty huzzahs to paul nelson, the other organizers and sponsors for getting this off the ground with so much fine content and energy), I don’t get out much around other poets and been a long time since listening to even the slightest critical discussion on poets, schools, connections.
and among the scholars, teachers, politicians and writers who were also poets I felt a little outside as my paid work has nothing to do with poetry. so add to that the gregarious visions of my work (though I selected poems connected with the environment and related issues)

“a dogs voice from above like a recycled blimp
a cloud as big as a loaf of bread with thousands of aromas,
some from things that no longer exist, processes that were banned or forgotten”
(from Aloft)---
what do you think when you read or hear that. I am presenting what I imagine. one can maybe get into the voice and state of the speaker/perceiver, but how comfortable a place is it? is it just surrealism? a loaf of bread, the history of transformation
re-visioning, changing pieces, like a flip book that was out a while back with drawings of animals and each page split into three horizontally so you could mix up parts of three different beings, & their names divided up too
“the schoolyard across the street is the ocean tonight” as if I can be at a place that functions for me like an ocean wherever I am? or the schoolyard is different things at different times?
fold reality til something cracks through, something hidden in the weaving/ formation (from recycled parts) of it. hallucinating a world of more interesting possibilities. create and enjoy, be involved, make, listening, providing what you can provide.

Monday, March 26, 2012


3/26  community/language/role. the trumpet considers itself alone. poetry evolving through media—readings on you-tube, open mikers reading off their phones/devices/laptops.
instance exchange, spontaneous publication. statement as spark as attractant. it’s like I see so many more telephone conversations, ubiquitous, and I don’t feel we’re communicating any better. granted there’s some efficiency in errand running, in last minute changes. and never has there been a better device for organizing interested people.
but my concerns are more artistic/evolutionary than political (which at some point could also be evolutionary but we’re a long way from that.)
if no one sees my work how can it do anything? curdle of language-energy flaring into an already busy weekend.
sometimes I worry that my skill in performing my poetry diminishes the value of my work on the page, or even my work as a writer. the way a good comedian could make you laugh by reading the phone book.
no, its my relationship with language that matters, and it’s a relationship trying to operate across a full spectrum—not just the intellectual and directly communicating aspects of language but its historical resonances, personal trip wires and unlimited imagination. poetry as language art, while still maintaining the contact of the spoken language.

Saturday, March 17, 2012


3/17   the public knocks me out. like I’m too empathetic or hungry/intrusive--what roles this person is playing in the world, how they are or not typical of their age group and status, as if I’d know typical, other than my decent sample from working at the dmv. everyone comes to the dmv but people who just moved here come a little more often. new blood coming in, from all around the world. While Portland is a pretty white place, my work is the most diverse place I go (2nd most diverse is the 72 bus I sometimes take, travelling the commercial artery of 82nd, whose biggest positive to me is the wide range of excellent asian restaurants.) And for a good % of my customers I know their age, where they were born, address, mom’s maiden name.
not that I don’t get vibes from people outside of work, see their interactions, their style and clouds. how I could be them or who I was when in their age or state. as we are all a mix of ages, with the majority aligning with our physical age,
I think of parts from Song of Myself, Ginsberg’s Whitman in the Supermarket. maybe a buddhist compassion arises from opening up to language, needing a proclivity to compassion to be able to open to language, and experience widening mutually. language is of us.
and I have excellent hearing, a fairly phonographic memory except for names, memory needing context. the name you go by is not your name. I’m sucking up language every where it comes from. had a co-worker chastise me for responding to comments not directed at me, a conversation I wasn’t part of. language bait & hunger.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012


3/14 (pi day)   the need to express, to let it out. how the outlets have expanded. one obvious example this blog. we have more ways to get our feelings/words/ideas/trivia out there, to specific people as well as to maybe no one but potentially anyone. I’m now carrying around (bound paper) journal #60, though am going through a lot slower than ever. (note here that I have terrible handwriting, and though my typing isnt much better, it is legible. so frustrating at times--since I often write the poem, catch that outburst, on paper—to have no idea what an occasional word is supposed to be)
open mikes. I don’t often go to them but those I do go to are full of folks who’ve been doing this awhile and are respectful of the vent, not so in extreme need.  the other night two of the 7 readers went long, one excruciatingly so. language does this. you write, you want others to hear it. open mike sculpture? I imagine musical open nights can have their excruciating moments as well. open mike comedy.
we live in isolated cubicles and have too few opportunities for human and humane interaction. for people being people.

Sunday, March 11, 2012


3/11  Jim G talking to me about the intelligence of the cells, how they know what to do, to be, are the designers/ of course we can enhance the cells by going along with them, being in tune with. this relates to tao and Buddhism. letting it be. the harder you chase the faster it runs. as ive said before, this micro-dimension that is our universe has a number of set parameters, and as all us beings and things are also set to these parameters, we are part of the substance of our existence, the buddha-nature. trying to control/shape the flow from our perceived needs is to interfere with the fuller potential, impeding its progress or setting growth off in an inappropriate direction.
I’d like to take the receptive attitude toward my poetry—let it come; since language knows more than I do I can’t force it—toward my life but I can’t afford to wait that long, have many more decisions to make than poems I will ever write. selective freedom.
embracing opposites—capable of the dull, deliberate actions of bureaucratic work, step by rote step, fill in all the proper areas of the form, while experience these momentary blasts of the language universe. I drink malt liquor and high end micro crews, belgians. best reference to this being fritjof capras tao of physics. the einsteinian curvature where all parts are circular (or spiral, or from another perspective discontinuous), what you think you know can keep you from realizing other things/truths/possibilities.
as the story goes adam & eve were thrown out of paradise coz they ate of three of knowledge of good and evil. before they realized there was a difference they were in paradise. once you separate yourself from the universe, make imaginary distinctions/separations your world changes. already knew we were in trouble when god had adam name the creatures and all, names are signs of separation and control. I train my dog to come when I say her name. my cat says I’m untrainable..
it’s difficult to believe fully in a life that you know will end, no ones knows what’s next or if next is. hence religion, acquisition, art other things as ways of extending our existence. if perception can changes universes what can faith do. when people commit to the world view of a strict religion, they can shut out the rest of the worlds. this can help explain the delusional statements of right wing american politicians (and others elsewhere I am sure)—of course some of these politicians are just saying what will please their donors, but many in the audience accept the lie/deception as truth because of the extra rules/parameters that control the sub-sub-dimension they’ve committed to.