Since I have a cold and sitting at the computer makes me woozy, it'll be a short post today:



One word: Guillotine.


from Reuters:

"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War...."

This is no joke, no funny numbers. This is for real. Read the rest at Reuters

  ¶ 9:43 PM

  q  ¶ 9:58 PM

 
Concept Drawing: The Virtual Coffeeshop

You are looking at the future: the online animated reading. Through the miracle of this revolutionary concept, poets and writers (or rather, the adorable animated alter-egos of poets and writers) will be able to perform world-wide readings to a limitless audience not bound by the pressures of time and space.

Finally someone has given writers and readers a compelling reason to stay home!!!

...oh, wait a minute...! d'oh!

The first performance shall be doubly exciting as it will involve raising a dead poet from the... um... dead.



I wonder who it shall be...??!!!   ¶ 1:51 AM

  GUEST BLOGGER: BRIAN

Yes, it is I the boyfriend here, subbing in for my lovely Miss Thang. So today at Stanford, I attended a colloqium as part of the Lane Lecture Series and the speaker was none other than rock-star poet Billy Collins. Now in case you think I exaggerate when I refer to him as "rock-star poet Billy Collins," let me elaborate.

The colloqium was held in the Terrace Room, a room that's often used as a regular classroom, designed to hold maybe 50 people comfortably max. Last week, Amy and I attended a similar event hosted by Thom Gunn (a much better poet than the rock star) and we were full to capacity, but not unpleasantly so. Today, more chairs were crammed in and there were probably 25 people on the floor--total crowd between 75 and 90, this after a reading the night before that reportedly held about 600, all of whom, and I am not making this up, applauded after every poem and sighed in unison at the point in every poem that Miller Williams likes to refer to as the "emotional fulcrum." I'm rather glad I missed it.



Oh yeah--he has groupies too. They vary from undergraduate English majors to middle-aged members of the community (male and female alike--unsure of sexual orientation), but they all have one thing in common--they think Billy's dreamy.


groupies

Now I realize I'm making this sound like something out of Dante--it wasn't. Despite all the hubbub and folderol (always wanted to use those words), the incessant praise and lavishing of affection, Billy Collins doesn't have an overwhelming ego. In fact, I'd say it's rather undersized for someone of his stature--former poet laureate and best-selling poet in the US that doesn't "bling bling" every other line. He's got a wicked, dead-pan sense of humor, and led us in an interesting discussion on the varying definitions of poetry.



The most interesting part of the discussion came when he was asked about his influences, especially among those people writing today. I thought for a while he would weasel out of the question, but he came up with hat I thought was a good criterion--he's influenced by those writers who make him jealous, who do something well that he's unable to do well, and he made sure to keep that definition in front of us when praising two contemporaries--Jorie Graham and Charles Simic. Of Jorie Graham, he says he's intrigued by her work, but not jealous of it because what she does so well, he has no interest in doing. Of Charles Simic he says that he gets red with jealousy whenever he reads Simic.

The only moment when Collins got a bit less congenial came when a person mentioned a question asked of Stephen Dunn as to what he thought of the charges leveled against Collins and Mary Oliver among others, that their poems were "too accessible." Dunn's answer, apparently, was that the critics were "dumb." But just before the comment was finished, Collins' face got grim, as though he was thinking "not this shit again." Fortunately for him, the crowd was sympathetic, and the comment allowed him to spin off his own ideas about the accessibility of poetry in general.



He said, basically, that he aims for accessibility in the beginning of his poems, much like the giant "E" on an eye chart--that's the door into a poem, and once the reader is in, then as the poet, you can do whatever you like with them, moving down the chart, as it were, into murkiness. The funny thing is that he claims that his poetry is in the middle of the continuum between accessibility and inaccessibility, when he's obviously more to one side than the other on that sliding scale. Maybe he believes that to be the case--he certainly didn't seem to be faking it.

Billy Collins will never be my favorite poet--to me, his poetry is more than just too accessible; it's too easy. There's no real expectation on the part of the reader to worm out something deeper than what's on the page. But considering the success he's had, and the plaudits that are heaped upon him, there is this consolation--he's not an asshole, and that's saying something in the world of poets. Dana Gioia anyone?

NOTE FROM AMY: Despite the recent remarks about Dana Gioia on this blog, this blog nonetheless denies any official anti-Gioia stance. Unofficial, I'm not sayin!   ¶ 3:39 AM

  Last time I told how I'm working with BushFlash-master Eric Blumrich on moveon.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" commercial contest...

Well, he was working with several writers, so I didn't know what percent of my text would make it into the ad, but last night he emailed and told me that, barring unforeseen circumstances, he will be going with my script, and crediting me fully. Pretty killer, huh?

The only part that I imagine will not be mine will be the last four seconds: the "tag" lines. The dum-dum-DUM kick-em-in-the-nuts lines right as the commercial fades to black. I came up with innumerable lines, but he hated them all. So, since they will never be otherwise seen, I offer them here, with the knowledge that the general theme of the ad is a car going the wrong way, headed towards destruction, and the info presented in the ad has to do with budget surpluses turning to deficits, and so on.

Here are a select few of the never-to-be-seen kick-em-in-the-nuts lines that SHALL NOT appear in the BushFlash submission for moveon's "Bush in 30 Seconds":

The first one I came up with (my favorite):

1: Hand over the keys, Junior: you've lost your driving privilages.

2: This isn't a car, this is a country. Once you crash it, we're through.

3: Bush's America: Totaled.

4: The Bush Economy: It's not just crashed, it's totaled.

5: George W Bush: Worst President, Ever.

6: George W Bush: The worst president in US History.

7: George W Bush: Had Enough Yet?

8: No more lies, no more losses, no more Bush.

9: It's not his father's presidency: It's much, much worse.

10: We decide whether this continues. VOTE in 2004.

11: Miss Bill yet?

12: Aren't you glad Gore won the election?

13: Reckless with our money. Reckless with the truth. George W. Bush: Reckless

14: Reckless with our money. Reckless with our lives. George W. Bush: Reckless

15: He's lost our surplus. He's lost our trust. George W. Bush: He's about to lose his job.

16: He's squandered everything we've put in his trust. Don't let him squander America's future. (George W. Bush: Squanderer! -- Okay, a little silly, but I figured it sounds close enough to "philanderer" to worry some in the Christian right!)

17: George W Bush: Not fit to be your grocer's deliver boy.

18: George W Bush: Would you even let him drive your daughter to the prom?

19: He stands for spending. He's eager for war. George W Bush: Disaster.

20: He dropped the economy. He started a war. George W Bush: Disaster.

21: He raided the treasury. He raided Iraq. George W Bush: Disaster.

Some of those come courtesy of Brian, as does:

22: George W Bush: Unsafe At Any Speed

...and these come courtesy of my brother, Bobby:

23: Bush - On a road to nowhere

24: Bush - On a road to ruin

25: Bush - Driving under the influence (Big money, upper class, etc...)

26: Running on Empty


You know, it isn't always easy constantly clamoring for the removal of oligarchic tyrrants and a return to American-style Democracy: but sloganeering has to be one of the better parts. I tip my hats to these guys, however. They take the cake in more ways than one.


"One Weekend A Month My Ass"  ¶ 9:32 PM

  If you are a member of moveon.org, then you have already heard about moveon's "Bush in 30 Seconds" Contest... if you're not a member of moveon.org, you should be!

The "Bush in 30 Seconds" is a call for 30-second ads to explain (very quickly!) how Bu$hCo is dismantling and misleading this country. I saw this, and I thought, COOL! I'm a creative type, right? I'd love to work on something like this! But alas, I haven't got clue-one how to make movies on a computer, and by the time I'd have figured it out, the contest would be over... but then one day, I was over at BUSHflash.com, which is a GREAT website owned and operated by a GREAT flash animator named Eric Blumrich. The next time you want to see great online video, go directly to BUSHFLASH.com. There is currently a magnificent animation of Rush Limbaugh singing "I'm a Nazi," a great dose of Bill Hicks, and a backlog of supurb animations.


See Hicks, Click Hicks, Dig Hicks

Anyway, I went over to Bushflash, and I saw that Eric Blumrich was working on the "Bush in 30 Second" ad, and he was looking for a writer... now, I'm not the only writer he's working with, so the final commercial may contain any conceivable percent of my actual text, but I'm totally psyched to be working on this! Blumrich is a great political animator, and I think he's got a good shot at the prize! (Which is having the ad televised the night of the state of the union speech! -- almost as good as mooning the asshole-in-chief to his smirking monkey face!!!)

It's judged by: Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, Gus Van Sant, Eddie Vedder, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Michael Stipe, Tony Shalhoub, Mark Pellington, Moby, Stan Greenberg, Hector Elizondo, Margaret Cho, and James Carville!

In the words of Casanova Frankenstein: It's really quite cool!

Check out BUSHFLASH and look forward to seeing this ad soon!!!   ¶ 12:01 AM

  Ladies and Gentlemen, the next president of the United States....


Howard Dean!

...isn't he adorable? Click him! You KNOW you want to!!!

Also, KNOW YOUR LEADER'S MASTERS! (Or in the case of the candidates towards the RIGHT (ha ha) on this graph, BE YOUR LEADER'S MASTER!!!

  ¶ 2:37 AM