Genji Monogatari: The Lady at the Bridge

His style & technique
were never a major
concern for her—they
were experimental
uncertainties, & a suite
of concern-sensitive
heuristic rules for the
detection of design flaws
helped smooth them
out. Much more
worrying were the lack
of temporal direction, the
reliance on binary opposites,
the infinite impossibility
of the text. There can be no
peaceful coexistence—the
privileged term is defined
by what it suppresses. Men
& women are portrayed
differently in Genji.

writrying
wtryting
trying
tyring
writing

Genji Monogatari: Flares

Critical decisions concerning
land use are made outside
the realm of knowledge. Paved
surfaces increase, ethanol
tanks displace the water table,
riparian trees have disappeared
diminishing wildlife habitat.
Only the north-central Texas
section retains a clear pattern
of the flux of meanings in
modern society, & it remains
stranded in a snow storm. "I
must be abstemious," said
Genji. "Old men have a way
of saying things they regret
when they drink too much."

Genji Monogatari: The Typhoon

The destruction of
text rather than
the deconstruction
of it. An automatic
book scanner hard
at work in the
next room, Linnaeus
on the platen, other
botanical treatises
before, after. With the
typhoon now not far
away he had hoped
not to save the garden
but a description of
what was in it. But.
Old fonts not suited
to OCR—the bloffoms
are not diptinguifhed.
and feeds are laid
to be ftrongly
odoriferous. Behind
lowered shutters
Akikonomu worried
about her autumn flowers.

Genji Monogatari: Fireflies

If the GPS was dis-
playing correctly, he
was now passing through
the electrical contractors
section of the Bangladesh
Yellow Pages. Perhaps the
Buddha Mind at work
again, everything so
fleeting & insubstantial.
His IT specialist would
likely disagree, would posit
insufficient satellite
acquisition or transient
planet waves. New stories
are so different from the
old, thought Genji.

beings punctual

a'postrophe

hy-
phen

e( ... )ipsis

sem;colon

col:on

fullst.p

exc!amation mark

nuançe

Genji Monogatari: The First Warbler

The first events in the nursery are metamorphosis & settlement. Vertical fluxes vary over various timescales but retain the essential features of prediction equations—satisfying the conservation of mass & total energy. Any method that alters the data, whether by swapping, random noise or erasure decoding, is rejected by the differential circuitry. A monosyllabic type must produce harmony if the enclitic is unelided. As yet, there are no significant rock/non-rock preferences.

It's all pretty standard practice, but it's no surprise that a lot of money & brainpower are going toward customizing supply chain solutions. Restrooms are open to the public & are wheelchair accessible—motorcycle seats can be very uncomfortable. The saving grace of the nuclear family in history was the extended family that surrounded it.

By the time that David Bowie took his final bow from the whole touring scene at London's Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973, efforts to bridge the gap between phenomenology & the principles derived from perturbative & nonperturbative quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD) were an essential part of American pop culture.

New Year's Day this year fell on the Day of the Rat. The force between quarks does not diminish as they are separated.

Genji Monogatari: The Maiden

The garden, for
Hegel, had too much
of nature in it. Rich
autumn colors, spring
water singing in the
distance over rocks
designed to enhance
its music. An excess
of seasonality: that's
how he saw it. His
preference was for
some static stones
with raked pebbles
swirling round
them. The rhythm of
it, no sign of melody.

Today the
postman brought
me a brochure
from Monsanto
that claims the
use of genetically-
modified crops
will break
the cycle of
poetry that is
endemic in
some third world
countries. Should
that happen, I
see the entire
world being
a poorer place.

FForTifYY

sph₂onge

Genji Monogatari: The Eastern Cottage

Put a Miles Davis
compilation on the
CD player, then
settled down to read
how Médecins Sans
Frontières were hoping
to halt the persistent
poverty in Appalachia
by using a new class of
luminescent "quantum dot"
nanoparticles. The People
of Light vs the People of
Darkness—two radically
divergent self-defining
narratives yet simultaneously
lived. Perhaps a paradigm, a
path to a unified theory of
everything, whose syntax
encompasses divergent
metaphors but is incapable
of uttering a syllable that
strikes the cultivated ear
as correct. He caught a
glimpse, in the bright
moonlight, of a poem
in a shaky old hand.

              Λ
di  ot
V

pivot
Λ

Eileen Tabios

has hung the results of her survey on poetry-book buying from the walls of her chateau for all to see.

Interested?

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nowthatsfuckedup.

Genji Monogatari: The Morning Glory

Why is Winston-Salem
so rarely mentioned
in any extended
elaboration & defense
of modal realism?
                                          He
waited for a reply,
but she was busying
herself with the little girl.

A Cautionary Tale for PODiatrists

http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

Today the
postman brought
me a rabbit
farm. It had
been beautifully
maintained,
not a hare
out of place.

A / piece of / trivia. A passing.

Bobby Darin's Splish Splash was banned from New Zealand radio when it was released in the late fifties — & how soon before we have to prefix the decade with the century? — because a man wearing only a towel could be construed as nudity &/or exposure.

& one of the seminal influences on my musical tastes — though at one remove because he was the man behind the glass — has died. Jerry Wexler, producer of Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin & Wilson Pickett & Dusty Springfield et. al. during his time at Atlantic Records. & let's not overlook my two favourite Darin tracks, the Brecht/Weill Mack the Knife & the Charles Trenet song La Mer, both imbued with that Wexler magic.

Genji Monogatari: The Gatehouse

Embodied energy is
not what is brought
along but what
it cost to get it
there. Few machines
are capable of drilling
large diameter shafts
in one pass. Later he
said that deconstruction
is justice. Repetitions may
occur, &, besides,
repetitions may occur;
that's why redundancy
may also be unavoidable.
These impacts are rarely
apparent at the point of
purchase or use. Look
seaward into the deep
blue water & see large
pelagic fish pass by.
πέλαγος, or pélagos,
means open sea. How very
attentive he was to these
details, thought Kogimi.

Genji Monogatari: Evening Mist

The mine closes
down. So, too,
a line of verse
that ends with
an unstressed
syllable. It's a trial
& error tuning
procedure that's
part of the fuzzy
rule design for
modern nuclear
reactors. He has
harnessed one to
power the three
coiled fluorescent
lights he is using
to take photos
of his daughter's
jewelry. Viewed
in real time such
procedures involve
much needless
repetition. Ranch
hands tell western
stories & recite
cowboy poetry
during dinner. The
Eighth Month
is almost over.

f r a c t    u r e
f r a c    t u r e
f r a c t    u r e
f r a c    t u r e
f r a    c t u r e
f r a c t    u r e
f r a c t u    r e
f r a c t    u r e

an addendum to the book-buying list

One thing I overlooked mentioning in my previous post about poetry books I've bought in the last twelve months is that, with print on demand, if you want to have a copy of a book you've published, then you have to buy it.

So, my list needs to be augmented with the list of books I've published & which I've subsequently bought for myself. But, rather than indulge in an orgy of self-(ap)praisal (because I'm rather proud of what I've published), I'll content myself with a link to The Otoliths Storefront.

o      o
Ѫ

x      e
Y

let's plug this again

via The Continental Review

Three poems from Series Magritte



Read by Miia Toivio & with graphics by Marko Niemi

Genji Monogatari: The Orange Blossoms

His first thought was of
the Gosechi dancer. Then
he became her, &
the surrounding Court.
The undercurrents. Was
scent the trigger? Or
the military jewelry
continually updated
from thousands of sources
on the web? Or was it
simply the evanescence &
hostile change he sensed
around him that caused
this bricolage, this making
things out of the materials
that were lying about? He
recalled the tanka that
accompanied the dance—
the degree of difficulty that
a mountain climber faces
is unimportant to the tourist
whose only interest is
filming the mountain from a
distance. Which one was he?

decim●l



fr
_______

action

Who's Cracker(s)?

POLICE in New Zealand have used a photo of 58-year-old British actor Robbie Coltrane on a wanted poster for a teenage burglar because the law prevents them from identifying a minor.

A politician said the move by police in Christchurch was "an exercise in absurdity made necessary by a daft law" and said the British press were having a field day with the "joke".

A wanted poster featuring Coltrane, star of the criminal series Cracker, is being used by police because he resembles the young burglar.

Police are not able to publish pictures of anyone under the age of 16, so they are doing the next best thing by posting pictures of lookalikes.

Genji Monogatari: The Wind in the Pines

Being arises. What
is an anthropologist
to do? Finding a duplex
in Durban for under
1500 Rand was never
going to be easy. The
wind plucks the koto pine
wrote Basho. Xeriscaping
is big this year. Dams
halt the spawning
runs: but since the
function of the image
is to depict not
through reproduction
but through a process
of dismantling it doesn't
matter. The scans of
military designs were
large on the page &
there were several of
them. She took out the
seven-stringed Chinese
koto which Genji had
left with her &
played a brief strain
as they loaded. An
outside accompaniment.
The pines. Calling forth
rain. Basho again.

The poetry-book-buying survey

I am preparing a poetry survey related to purchases (purchases, not trades or comps or thefts) of poetry publications; that will be my next blog post. But for now, here's part of my answer to that survey: "What poetry publications have you bought recently?"

Eileen Tabios has just posted a three-question survey enquiring about the patterns & motives of people for buying — or not buying — books of poetry. The questions can be found here, Eileen's own answers & reasons behind the survey can be found at the link embedded in her statement above.

As a publisher who is quite amazed at the lack of a genuine poetry book-buying public out there, I'll be very interested in what she turns up. & yet, knowing some of my own reasons for why I buy or don't buy, I really shouldn't be amazed.

I do read a lot of poetry, partially because, as an editor, an awful lot of poetry — & a lot of awful poetry — traverses my monitor; I read a lot of stuff on blogs & e-zines; I tend to get a number of books sent to me; many of the books I would be tempted to buy are actually the books I publish. I also live in a geographically isolated place — only one bookstore which doesn't stock poetry unless it's "famous Australian" (& my thoughts on that category can be ascertained by a post not too far below this one); a substantive postal impost on anything bought on line — which tends to make for buying books on my, increasingly less frequent, trips to something that approximates a big city, the leave-home-with-an-empty-suitcase / come-back-with-an-overweight-one method. All of which means that I don't really buy much poetry, instead tend towards detective fiction with, if I'm buying on line, maybe a book, generally a selected/collected, of poetry added to my purchase.

BUT.

a.) The books that I sell most of are those from poets who are young & energetic & who have the ability to self-promote, & those sell mainly at readings.

b.) There are a lot of people out there who expect to be given a copy of a book because they have a nodding acquaintance with the author & who, put out by not being considered worthy of gift, won't actually support the poet by buying a book.

c.) There are a number of sneaky people out there who write asking for copies so they can review the book, but never do. (& I'm willing to bet that if you asked a number of small press publishers who made such requests of them, the same names would continue to appear.)

d.) As Ron Silliman continues to remind us, there are an enormous number of books of poetry being published.

For the record, these are the books of poetry I've bought in the past year.

The Gary Snyder Reader
The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
David Shapiro: New & Selected Poems
Unfathoms by Kirsten Kaschock
Thing of Beauty by Jackson Mac Low
These are my Rivers by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The Age of Huts (compleat) by Ron Silliman

So please help Eileen — & every other publisher — by responding to her survey.

I've never been happy

with the original cover I did for my the allegrezza ficcione. It was basically the screendump of a page from a Word .doc, turned into a jpeg.

So I've just had harry k stammer design a new one for me



& have purloined part of a review by Eileen Tabios, posted to her Galatea Resurrects book review blog, to act as backblurb.

"I admire this book and not just because I wish I wrote it. I admire it because I am glad I read it. Not only is it an enjoyable romp which extends modernism but, as great literature often effects in its readers who happen to be writers, it raises the bar for me in my own attempts to write the novel in a fresh way.

The effects of blogging on literature are obviously still being written. Mark Young's the allegrezza ficcione is undisputably one which will reflect how history, poetry, speculative fiction and magical realism were alchemized into something differently-modern through the existence of poetry blogland and the internet.

That’s right — you heard it here first: Mark Young’s the allegrezza ficcione is historic and will come to be considered a 21st century classic."

It's a book I'm proud of, contains what I think is some of my best writing, is available here.

They're fucking serious?

from The Australian newspaper today:

"HEAVYWEIGHT authors including Germaine Greer and Clive James have made the short list for the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

The short lists for the $100,000 fiction and nonfiction prizes, to be given next month, were announced by federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett in Sydney yesterday."

A poem by the above-mentioned Clive James, from the Australian Literary Review, a liftout in the above-mentioned newspaper, yesterday.

Grace Cossington Smith's Post-Impressionist Harbour Bridge

Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Cossington Smith,
Your name is yet one to be conjured with.
You painted the Bridge well before it was finished
And still the excitement remains undiminshed,
Your patchwork of pigments enhancing its myth.
Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Cossington Smith,
Your skill was the essence, the fulcrum and pith
Of all that we love about classical art
Embracing the modern and making it part
Of the total adventure that starts in the heart.

Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Cossington Smith,
Your moniker honours your kin and your kith.
The studies you made of the Bridge uncompleted
Add up to a triumph that can't be repeated:
The lattice-work elements reach for each other
Like Damon and Pythias, brother to brother,
Imprinting the sky with the future before it
Was certain, and you were the one who foresaw it.
The polychrome grains of our grey megalith—
Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Cossington Smith.

The Dominant Eye

Nothing to do with egocentricity.

Learnt yesterday that just as a person is left– or right-handed, so, too, are they left- or right-eyed—we have a dominant eye. There's some information about it at—though this is generally a reference source I refrain from citing—wikipedia.

Learnt also that "ocular" is one of those words that looks to me as if it's spelt incorrectly. I keep going to add another c to it. Maybe it's because I have more occasion to use words like occur or occupy, even though I have no problems with binoculars.

Currently

eye, cloudius.

Come Monday, I turn into a Native American.....

A PA_tCH_ed E_ye

Genji Monogatari: A Branch of Plum

He looked in his rear-
view mirror to make
a lane change, only to
see both past & future
interrupt the present.
It was a concept he
recognized—what is
behind recedes from
what is in front; a
constitutive haunting of
the community of the
living—even though
the smilies were on &
American popular music
was in remission. What
he did not recognize
were the random phrases
on some of the walls he
passed. Those were
new, the exterior
manifestations of the
current hip element in
interior design. "They
gave me $5 for a $100
textbook." "Lingerie is
just another wallpaper."
"Can the dead travel
back in time?" His walls
were mainly unadorned:
too much traveling to
bring much with him. A
single painting of a branch
of plum she'd rendered
with great represent-
ational clarity. The
poem of appreciation
he had added later.

A nice piece

on one of my favourite books, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, posted by Adam Fieled to his Stoning the Devil blog.

&, while you're there, check out the cover of his new collection of poetry which will be coming out in the next round of Otoliths books.

Genji Monogatari: Trefoil Knots

A string circle is the
simplest knot, is
trivial in the math-
ematical tongue. Trefoil
is simplest non-trivial,
but is Möbius before
Möbius, Escher
before Escher, a unique
prime knot with three
crossings, a (3, 2)-
torus. In Japanese
is agemaki, 総角, locks
of hair/four cornered;
"an elaborate three-
looped knot that also
designates a young girl's
coiffure." Is used to
decorate a gift, or, later,
armor. We knot these
braids in trefoil. May our
fates be joined. Old poems
have much to say about the
unchanging human heart.

Trefoil Knots

Agemaki


M. C. Escher

Genji Monogatari: The Sacred Tree

Affirmation blankets, New World
flags, talismen, Native American
flutes, dowsing rods, statues for the
musically inclined among you. &
for jam band fans who are there
more for the event than the music
an automated teller machine
waiting to eat the nine nuts
of poetic wisdom dropped into
the sacred pool from the hazel tree
growing beside it. The Russian
guy sips his coffee from a plastic
cup, mentally mistranslating that
Phish song which reveals
Colonel Forbin's deep feelings
for Tela. She doesn't let go of his
hand. He can't let go of his terminal
cancer, beautifully embroidered on
100% linen. The pond is frozen
over. There is nothing outside
the text. Genji's visits, never
frequent, have stopped altogether.

Genji Monogatari: Wisteria Leaves

A proscenium arch. He
named it even though
he knew no Latin. Another
koan—is something dead if
never known to be alive—
or the dichotomy of mind/
reality in a state of flux? She
felt his singleness of purpose
had become obsessive; the
liminence phase of their
relationship was fading. Soon
he would go back to using
hydrogenated oils in their food.

Otoliths issue ten goes live

Issue ten of Otoliths has just gone live. Once again, it's full of variety. Poems—visual, text, concrete & prose—essays, short stories, photography, an interview, paintings both digital & manual, plus a few things that defy categorization. Included is work by Barry Schwabsky, Geof Huth, joanne burns, nick-e melville, Robert Gauldie, Thomas Fink, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, Bob Grumman, Bill Drennan, Kristen Orser, Obododimma Oha, Reed Altemus, Raymond Farr, Christopher Major, Mary Ellen Derwis, Douglas Barbour & Sheila E. Murphy, Felino Soriano, Matthew Stolte, Anne Gorrick, Caleb Puckett, Philip Byron Oakes, David-Baptiste Chirot, Sandy McIntosh, Jeff Harrison, Robert Lee Brewer, Ashley Capes, Angela Genusa, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen & John M. Bennett, Baron & John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Clint Frakes, Charles Freeland, Randy Thurman, Alexander Jorgensen, Ryan B. Richey, Ray Craig, Julian Jason Haladyn, Jennifer Karmin, Rebecca Eddy, Martin Edmond, MTC Cronin & Peter Boyle, Alan Ramón Clinton, Manas Bhattacharya, Tom Hibbard, Bobbi Lurie, Cecelia Chapman, Andrew Topel, Matthew Klane, Mark DuCharme, Laura Goldstein, Michelle Detorie, Joe Balaz, Paul Siegell, Kate Schapira, Vincent Ponka, m.R. koppp', Tom Beckett, and Nico Vassilakis. The cover is by Angela Genusa.



&, as a kind of "companion piece", Otoliths Books has just published From the Annual Records of the Cloud Appreciation Society, a chapbook "edited" by Márton Koppány & Nico Vassilakis. It's available in hardcopy at The Otoliths Storefront, & as a free downloadable pdf at the Otoliths Books Google site.

Probably only the fabled Prieure du Sion has guarded its secrets as closely as The Cloud Appreciation Society. Now some of its members, tired of the secrecy, have decided to open their texts and visions to the world. In this slim volume, edited by Márton Koppány and Nico Vassilakis, we see for the first time what has previously been hidden in the clouds.