George Carlin

"I'm a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke-free, a diversified multi-cultural post-modern deconstructionist, politically, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect. I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I'm a high-tech lowlife, a cutting edge state-of-the-art bi-coastal multitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond. I'm new wave, but I'm old school, and my inner child is outward bound. I'm a hot-wired, heat-seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice-activated and biodegradable. I interface with my database, and my database is in cyberspace, so I'm interactive, I'm hyperactive, and from time to time, I'm radioactive. Behind the 8-ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave, dodging the bullet, pushing the envelope. I'm on point, on task, on message, and off drugs. I got no need for coke and speed. I have no urge to binge and purge. I'm in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistics missionary. A street-wise smart bomb, a top-gun bottom-feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps. I'm a totally ongoing bigfoot slamdunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach. A raging workaholic, a working rageaholic, out of rehab and in denial. I got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda. You can't shut me up, you can't dumb me down, 'cause I'm tireless, and I'm wireless. I'm an alphamale on beta blockers. I'm a non-believer and an overachiever, laid back, but fashion forward, up front, down home, low rent, high maintenance; super size, long lasting, high definition, fast acting, oven ready, and built to last. I'm a hands-on, footloose, kneejerk headcase, prematurely post-traumatic, and I have a love child who sends me hate mail. But I'm feeling, I'm caring, I'm healing, I'm sharing, a supportive, bonding, nurturing, primary caregiver. My output is down, but my income is up. I take a short position on the long bond, and my revenue stream has its own cash flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds, I watch trash sports. I'm gender specific, capital intensive, user friendly, and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex, I like tough love, I use the F-word in my e-mails, and the software on my hard drive is hardcore, no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a minimall, I bought a minivan at a megastore, I eat fast food in the slow lane. I'm tollfree, bite size, ready to wear, and I come in all sizes. A fully equipped, factory authorized, hospital tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle. I've been prewashed, precooked, preheated, prescreened, preapproved, prepackeged, postdated, freeze dried, double wrapped, vacuum packed, and I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I'm a rude dude, but I'm the real deal, lean and mean, cocked, locked, and ready to rock; rough, tough, and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide, I got glide in my stride. Drivin' and movin', sailin' and spinnin', jivin' and groovin', wailin' and winnin'. I don't snooze, so I don't lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hardy, and lunch time is crunch time. I'm hangin' in, there ain't no doubt, and I'm hangin' tough, over and out."

Deadwood Finale

It's only fitting that the best show on television, Deadwood, should have its season finale on the same night that television, bereft of any aesthetic or literary conscience, celebrates (in such maudline fasion, too) the life's "work" of Aaron Spelling, the man responsible for such mindless fare as Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, and Dynasty, and who, as an actor in or writer for Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Zane Gray Theatre, had a hand in the very Western myth-making of the late 50's and early 60's that Deadwood has mercilessly deconstructed over the past three seasons.

I know I shouldn't be surprised how mediocrity triumphed over artistry, the pedestrian over originality, but really . . . just take a look at the winners. Putting aside (or at least trying to) the new Emmy "rules" that would snub Deadwood in all categories . . .

24 over The Sopranos for Best Drama? The Office over Curb Your Enthusiasm, or Arrested Development for Best Comedy seires? Tony Shaloub winning his third Emmy over Larry David?! That's just wrong . . .

Three bright bright spots: The Daily Show picking up two more statues, Jeremy Piven FINALLY winning for Entourage and the nod for best supporting actor to the inimitable Alan Alda who almost single-handedly resuscitated the last two seasons of The West Wing.

And is there anyone funnier than Conan O'Brien? If you haven't seen the opening sketch, it's absolutely hilarious. He spoofs those ubiquitous Dateline on-line pedophilia stings. Absolutely brilliant . . .

CUE News

We're starting to put together the 5th issue of CUE which we hope to have out no later than the first week of October.

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Received in the mail today a giant sheef of poems from Campbell McGrath. One of the first prose poets I ever really loved. This new work doesn't disappoint.

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A new website is in the works. One that doesn't piggy-back off of my arizona server space.

Free, Free at Last!

I'm out of the hospital and kickin some serious poetry ass. A new poem that's pretty much finished, and I found out yesterday that NoTell Motel has accepted a poem for its second incarnation of The Bedside Guide, due out this january. More soon...

News

Octopusbooks has selected its first 8 chapbooks. Zach has also handed out some honorable mentions that are verrrrry interesting...

Violence and Poetry 2

Sitting in here, surrounded by sick people and doctors who look through us rather than at us, I've been thinking again about violence and poetry. Violence and my poetry, to be exact. It's got me thinking about what I want out of my work, which, I think, is what both Hopkins and Bacon wanted from their art--that is to play the nerve ends. Both (and this comes more from Bacon's mouth than mine) wanted an art, or at least the possibility of an art (a method perhaps) that shoots straight for the senses, doing away with the boredom of conveyance. An assault upon the nervous system is how, I think, Bacon put it, though of course working with paint obviously has the greater advantage in terms of immediacy.

What I want from my own work comes down to this: to speak at once both brokenly and reparably. Thus, the need for a language that gropes and grinds, thus the need for an aggravated language full of contraversions of sense and syntax. I've been reading Celan again and have come to realize in his work a kindred poetics. This is by no means meant to imply I can understand the absolute terrors of his life, as profound and, ultimately, unendurable as they were. To have one's language implicated in the the mass extermination of an entire people is nearly unfathomable. But his need to go after language, to wrench it, wrestle it, to put his knee on its neck and go through it is as admirable as it is excitingly scary. That kind of brilliant and afflicted invention amazes me. As Celan put it, I'm looking for a language "wounded by and seeking reality." Hopkins, too, has his say; he speaks of a language "tonguetrue, vaunt- and tauntless."

So all that concussing, all the invention and retro-fitting that I want to do in my work needs to represent a rescuing of breath from suffocation as much as it is an attempt, too, to overwhelm the reader, to leave him breathless. Ideally I want the poems to work with air and its absence, joy and lust and headfirst-ness, and everything that is counterpoint to that.

On a not completely unrelated side-note, I think I need to read more Olson. Are there any on-line versions of "Proprioception" out there? And what about his essay on projective verse? Oh, and while I'm at it, is there anywhere I can find an on-line version of Call Me Ishmael?

Priest of the Imagination

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families . . . re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body . . . . . . . . . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work . . . What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy . . . he leaves room ahead of himself."

-WW

Interview

This interview with Bill Knott is hard to read at times.