Andrew-vs-Books

POEM HOW TO REPLANT A PLANT

2012-01-31T20:47:00.000-08:00

HOW TO REPLANT A PLANT

To replant the plant
that fell over last
summer you have to
go into the garage
and get the soil
the soil is in the
garage then you have to
go inside and call
home depot ask them
how to best replant
the plant and they'll
take it from there

POEM

2012-01-30T14:45:00.000-08:00

POEM (1/30/12)

If I were the speaker of the house, I'd speak of the house.

If I were speaker of the house, I'd drink coffee.

If it were night, I'd look at blueprints.

If providence granted me a special problem, I'd grant it a special solution.

If I were someone's nephew, I'd be bigger (taller).

If I had a family, we'd eat sandwiches.

If a family had me, I'd glide seamlessly in the background.

If they had a dog, I'd walk it.

months I've lived through

2012-01-29T19:08:00.000-08:00

january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december january february march april may june july august september october november december

Things I'm Looking Forward to in the New Year

2011-12-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

10. Falling asleep with my head in my palm
9. Waking up with a sore wrist
8. Looking at my wrist in a mirror
7. Convincing myself that my wrist needs surgery
6. Convincing a doctor that my wrist needs surgery
5. Saying something like "I'm not leaving here until you give my wrist surgery"
4. Surgery
3. Waking up from surgery to something funny on TV like Happy Gilmore
2. Self-administering morphine while reading Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park"
1. Not knowing whether I'm shitting or not

Email I got that's sort of like a weird-ass poem

2011-11-23T10:57:00.000-08:00

Good Afternoon

Would you please fill this out and return
to me as we build our vendors

With this information. We will need this
returned before we can pay

You for the work that you performed on
the XXX XXX-Blog. Thank

You for your time.

Various T-Shirts I Own

2011-10-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

This is a Gerald Wallace jersey shirt. I bought it at the NBA store on 5th avenue in New York City. I love this shirt. The text is a different material than the rest of the shirt; maybe it's mesh. The acne soap I use has stained the collar and one sleeve to the point that I don't wear this shirt in public anymore.

This is a t-shirt from the Skatepark of Tampa. I went there when I was 11, 12, or 13. I had just gotten my first skateboard and was not very good. A panoramic picture my mom took shows the entire skatepark with me on top of a ramp afraid to go down it. In the picture I am wearing this shirt which means I must have bought the shirt and changed into it before going skateboarding. A few years later I left this shirt in a golf bag where it remained for close to a decade. Now this shirt has several large holes around the neck and on the sleeves. I wear it often.

Kunst means "art" in German. My friend's t-shirt company made/makes this shirt. I've only worn it once and that was to an MFA workshop last year when I was kind of mad.

This is a relatively new t-shirt -- I got it at a rummage sale just a few months ago. I like it a lot. It feels like a John Ashbery poem.

This is a University of Illinois: Class of 2009 t-shirt. I got it when I visited my friend Pat before he started his freshman year there. I went to all of the orientation events with him which included a hotdog lunch and a tour of the football stadium which is where someone handed me this shirt.

I've only worn this shirt on the fourth of July and have done so for the past three years.

This is a band t-shirt from the band The Locust. I think I've seen them three times. One time the drummer wasn't feeling well or something and he puked on the cymbals and hit the cymbals which sent puke everywhere but mostly on himself. He also puked into a bucket, which I took a picture of.

I saw Less Than Jake and Fall Out Boy and I think Yellowcard play when I was 16 because this girl I was into at the time was going but it turned out she was friends or friends of friends with the people in Fall Out Boy so it became clear to me that I was of not much interest to her so I think I decided to try to have more fun than her to like show how much fun I was and I remember crowd surfing alone and sort of desperately a lot at this show. I haven't worn this shirt in a while, but I used to wear it often.

This is a t-shirt I caught at a White Sox game in 2007. The canon shot it at the person next to me but it bounced off his hands and I grabbed it out of the air in front of him. Catching a t-shirt at a baseball game is surprisingly thrilling and irony-free. The man sitting next to me left shortly after this happened and didn't return. I've only worn this shirt while sleeping because it's too big for me.

This is my friend Pat's shirt. I don't remember how I came into possession of it. It's from our intramural basketball team our senior year of high school. Our team name was called AP Basketball, which we thought was clever. I was banned from the league and arrested during our second game.

These are two identical LeBron James WITNESS t-shirts I bought off ebay in 2008 when LeBron was still with the Cavs. I once simultaneously threw two basketballs (one with each hand) into a basket while wearing one of these shirts, which prompted someone to shout "way to go LeBron". I don't wear these shirts ever anymore.

I'm a big fan of black t-shirts with plain white lettering on them (I used to know the name of this font but I can't remember now). The one on the right is my favorite t-shirt, and the one on the left is I think the funniest t-shirt I own. They're both too big for me.

This is a t-shirt of a sad-looking dog with a bird in its mouth. It's too small for me so I rarely wear it. I think I paid close to $30 for this shirt.

new poems / soon: tomes

2011-08-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have two new poems on Metazen. I like these poems a lot.

andrew vs bookshelves

2011-06-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start typing now. It's 3:17PM. I have 12:30 written on my arm and the telephone number for a karaoke place. Ok, done typing now.

made 3 bowel movements so far today

2011-05-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

I am reading at this tomorrow, have spent all day figuring out what I want to read... going to read a lot of things.

My mom is out of town at a frisbee tournament right now. I have turned the entire house into my desk and some of it is my food area also. This is what I'm looking at right now:

I have been productive on a small-medium scale recently. Blogged about C. Webb. Blogged about Borders closing. Published a year old story on MuuMuu House after a bunch of line edits, which feels like a weird thing to do (publish something so old), but I think that's how the world works and also I'm trying to think as little as possible about the things I do, which sounds bad but is good. Part of the reason I'm blogging this blog is to hopefully prolong the "shelf-life" of the aforementioned pieces. Mallory illustrated the story:

I watched/made Jordan eat this once, Mallory might have taken a bite, but I definitely did not:

One thing I left out of the Borders blog post is: their website used to claim they were the birthplace of Fallout Boy... whether that is true or not, I believe them. Two of my friends' brothers are in that band. (Were? Did they break up?) I'm beginning to realize contractions come into my work only during the revision process. The reason I'm typing now is I'm waiting for my phone to email my computer the picture of the thing Jordan ate, which is taking a while. My eyes really hurt from not leaving the house I think.

AR Ammons poem that illustrates the uselessness of poetry

2011-05-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

Motion

The word is
not the thing:
is
a construction of,
a tag for,
the thing: the
word in
no way
resembles
the thing, except
as sound
resembles,
as in whirr,
sound:
the relation
between what this
as words
is
and what is
is tenuous: we
agree upon
this as the net to
cast on what
is: the finger
to
point with: the
method of
distinguishing,
defining, limiting:
poems
are fingers, methods,
nets,
not what is or
was:
but the music
in poems
is different,
points to nothing,
traps no
realities, takes
no game, but
by the motion of
its motion
resembles
what, moving, is --
the wind
underleaf white against
the tree.

AR Ammons poem that illustrates the arbitrary nature of nature

2011-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

WCW

I turned in
by the bayshore
and parked,
the crosswind
hitting me hard
side the head,
the bay scrappy
and working:
what a
way to read
Williams! till
a woman came
and turned
her red dog loose
to sniff
(an piss
on)
the dead horseshoe
crabs.

SOME POEMS I WROTE DURING/FROM A STUDENT READING

2011-04-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

1.

one of my
poems has
a penis in it
and it wets
the bed yes
it's me at the
center of all
this beauty

2.

we talked about
sleds sledding
on other sleds
thank you for
that you small
town girl

3.

all you need to
know is Mick
a 400lbs
woman stuck
in the bathroom
is listening to
everything you
say

4.

raking the leaves
a regatta of
many colored
sails drinking
lemonade we're
talking about me
now swimming
naked in the ocean

5.

Thornton and
whatever his
name was
holstered their
pistols
everybody must
get stoned

6.

city of city
of circling crowds
someone stomps
his face out
with a golf shoe
I sing top 40
from his bicycle

7.

a few weeks ago
walking into a
corner store I
punched the
well-wisher
Keisha

8.

I stood in front
of a painting
too long I thought
maybe people
change I imagined
tomato farmers
flying everywhere

9.

eager as ever
I cash my birthday
check I am
only asking
to be remembered

10.

it wasn't easy
rotting away
in prison with
no hands on
the internet

11.

the FBI
ratted out everyone
they knew

nobody knew
what they
were talking
about

I HAVE BEEN DRAWN

2011-04-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

(from the creator of "knife girl" (and other things))

HELP ME WITH MY HOMEWORK

2011-04-10T21:54:00.001-07:00

I'm supposed to write 5 two-line poems or five 2-line poems. Here are some I came up with today, mostly from staring at and thinking about "The Oxford Book of American Poetry" edited by David Lehman, who is my teacher. Which 5/five should I do? (I have until Wednesday.)

W. H. Bacon

W. H. Auden
ate raw bacon

Seahorses are Awesome

Samuel Greenberg
is awesome

The Wasteland

Eliot
blows

Minor Poets

Laura (Riding)
Jackson

Elizabeth Bishop

In 1951 she went to Brazil
and lived there for 15 years.

Tithonus

Life’s a bitch
when you can’t die

2 Kinds of Poems

truth slants
riddle porn

A Question

can you count
to one?

Order

Key West,
Florida

War Poem

complex
war poem

[untitled]

a beached whale
yea whut?

FOUR TIMES I INTERACTED WITH MY MOM OVER WINTER BREAK

2011-03-05T01:34:00.000-08:00

FIRST TIME:

Mom-Winter-1 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

SECOND TIME:

Mom-Winter-2 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

THIRD TIME:

Mom-Winter-3 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

FOURTH TIME:

Mom-Winter-4 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

adjectives related to the word "knowledge" as told to me by thesaurus.com

2011-02-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

blue, sound, acataleptic, accomplished, acquainted with, acromatic, acuminous, acute, alive, alive to, aposterioristic, apprized of, arch, argute, ascertained, astute, at home in, autodidactic, awake, aware of, behind the curtain, behind the scenes, book-learned, bookish, bright, calculating, canny, clear-eyed, clear-headed, clear-sighted, clear-witted, clever, cognitive, cognizable, cognizant of, cognoscible, commonplace, commonsensible, conscious of, considerate, conversant with, cool, cool-headed, declaratory, deep, deep-read, discerning, educated, eleatic, enlightened, equitable, erudite, esoteric, expedient, fair, familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy, familiar with, far-sighted, forward in, fox-like, gnomic, hackneyed, hard-headed, heaven-born, heaven-directed, impartial, in advance of one's age, in one's right mind, in the secret, informed, informed of, inscient, instructed, intelligent, judicious, keen, keen-eyed, keen-sighted, keen-witted, knowing, known, learned, let into, lettered, long-headed, long-sighted, made acquainted with, metempirical, nasute, needle-witted, nimble-witted, no stranger to, noted, notorious, of unwarped judgment, omnilegent, omniscient, oracular, palpable, pancratic, panoptic, pedantic, penetrating, percipient, perspicacious, piercing, politic, prehensible, privy to, proficient in, profound, proverbial, provident, prudent, quick, quick of apprehension, quick-eyed, quick-sighted, quick-witted, rational, read in, reasonable, received, recognized, reflecting, reported, sagacious, sage, sapient, scholastic, scient, scious, scrutable, self-taught, sensible, sententious, sharp, sharp as a needle, sharp-eyed, sharp-sighted, sharp-witted, shrewd, sober, solid, staid, strong in, strong-headed, strong-minded, supraliminal, thoughtful, trite, unbiased, unbigoted, undazzled, undeceived, unperplexed, unprejudiced, unprepossessed, up to, versed in, watchful, well-advised, well-conned, well-educated, well-grounded, well-informed, well-judged, well-known, well-read, wide-awake, wise, wise as Solomon, wise as Solon, wise as a serpent, wise in one's generation

HORRIFYING THINGS I REALIZED WHILE READING FROST THIS AFTERNOON

2011-02-13T21:04:00.001-08:00

Both our last names sort of have to do with weather

The possibility of dying in an avalanche is not so unreasonable

I almost cut off my leg once using a chainsaw

I am (was) bleeding from my nose and hands

When I made out with M on New Years Eve 2008 I did so terribly

TEXT MESSAGES SENT TO MY FRIEND MIKE WHILE I WAS WAITING FOR THE SUBWAY (SO HE DIDN'T GET THEM UNTIL MUCH LATER AND ALL AT ONCE)

2011-02-12T22:36:00.000-08:00

A guy in the subway is playing the trombone

He's playing that "what if god is one of us" song

They should name that song "lonely jungle"

The m train just came but no one got on it

I'm listening to ELO by myself (ipod)

There are a bunch of asians quietly standing by the stairs

I think they're drunk

Or about to get drunk

And absent-mindedly rape each other

I'm running out of things to notice

I think I want to steal a bike sometime soon

Have you ever done that?

I think I did that 3 times in high school

And they are among my fondest memories

The trombone guy is still playing but I think he's just playing random notes

When I said I was listening to ELO earlier I was lying

A large crowd is around the trombone guy even though he's running out of ideas and energy I think

It would be funny if he got tired and went to sleep in his trombone case then everyone carried him out of the subway like a funeral or something

I'd help carry for sure

Today when I was peeing at a urinal my stomach growled like an airplane passing overhead

And for a moment I thought that what it was but it wasn't

Train is here

It's full of people

Probably won't get a seat

You don't have to read all of this

I was just entertaining myself

my dramatic debut

2011-01-31T07:06:00.000-08:00

Ana C. has published my first play at new wave vomit.

AvB gets some mail

2011-01-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

I had to walk for a while in the snow last night because the trains stopped running. I got home at ~2:30 am and had to be awake not that many hours later. This package was there when I got home. I did not know it was coming. I stayed up for a while reading Matthew Rohrer's poems, then went to sleep reading Matthew Rohrer's poems and had a dream in which I was reading Matthew Rohrer's poems. When I woke up I read Matthew Rohrer's poems.

This is what the world looked like:

A few weeks of 2011

2011-01-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

I am reading on January 25th at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Cornelia St.

Here is the facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171117042931424

Here is the email they sent me:

Dear Andrew Weatherhead,

I'm writing because I'm the co-curator of the Cornelia St Reading Series at Cornelia St Cafe and word-of-mouth has it that you are a very good reader and poet. I'd like to invite you to read on Tuesday, January 25th, at 6 pm, alongside Eric Weinstein from NYU and two other poets.

There's one catch: are you a recent graduate or currently enrolled in an MFA program? I'm technically only supposed to invite people to read if that is the case.

Anyway, I'm really hoping you can read for us. I personally won't be able to attend your reading, but my co-curator Jimin Seo and friend Abba Belgrave, who would be introducing you, would be really happy to have you. If you can come, I'd really like to have a couple things from you--a brief bio, and a sampling of some recent work (by file attachment or internet link, however you prefer). How does that sound?

Please let me know if this can happen!

Sincerely

Jennifer

I am also reading at this:

***UPDATE*** "Matthew L. Rohrer" is not the same as "Matthew Rohrer" -- there are two different Matthew Rohrers, "Matthew L. Roher" does not teach at NYU

I want to provide different reading experiences for both.

I think I never want to read the same poem (or thing) twice in front of people.

That's like a career goal I have.

Can I do it?

I want to do it.

I don't know what I'm going to read though.

Feel like all my poems suck dick.

I feel like I'm going to begrudgingly spend the next week - two weeks working really hard on poems to read.

But I feel especially bad at poems right now.

Like I wrote a poem the other day that felt really, really good at the time but then I looked at it today and it sucked dick.

Seems like a bad time to be bad at poems.

I've been reading things that aren't poems and maybe that's why I'm so bad at them (poems) right now.

I'm reading "Pee on Water" by Rachel B. Glaser and it's so good. I've laughed out loud several times while reading it. Laughed pretty hard too.

Is there like a poetry boot camp I can go through?

Or can someone just say 5-250 words to me that will make me write good poems?

I think I just need to write down my ideas as they come to me and then edit them until they don't suck dick anymore.

Is that a good idea?

I've been listening to these Jack Spicer lectures and he says "spooks" and/or "martians" invade his body and write his poems for him.

I need those things.

Where do I get them?

I turned 24.

2010-12-25T00:03:00.000-08:00

I engaged in a political discussion with my parents over dinner (we never do this).

I ate a pork tenderloin.

My friend picked me up.

We went to his house and I peed there and ate a few rectangular slices of pizza.

I have two poems at metazen.

We got on a train and drank on it.

We went to a large bar full of people I didn't know. I made eye contact with some of them.

I sat alone and drank and tweeted while my friends congregated in a crowded area.

Here are the slightly edited tweets. They are better when read together like this, I think.

•
When you high five the bartender (and the bartender high fives you too)

•
When the bartender hates you (and you hate the bartender too)

•
When you sit by yourself and tweet (and the waitress ignores you)

•
When frat guys collide

•
When frat guys listen to michael jackson

•
When you burp out of boredom

•
When your throw up has an audience

•
When brett favre moves his arm

•
When you burp up dough

•
When motion is captured

•
When laughter is sold

•
When shaking happens

•
When screaming displaces

•
When freezing gets buried

•
When your butt is stupid ((and you think it's stupid) and everyone else thinks it's stupid too)

•
When you teach me how to dougie

•
When you tweet about something you don't care about (but by tweeting about it demonstrate your care for it)

•
When your tweet about brett favre generates a response

•
When you're shaking uncontrollably due to cold (and other things)

Then I went to another bar with another friend.

We took a cab home and I was the last person to be dropped off but I didn't have any cash and the cab didn't take cards so we went to an ATM and I got money. When we got back to my house I saw that the meter was turned off so I didn't know how much to pay him. We started yelling at each other and I got out of the cab and the cab driver got out of the cab and we were yelling at each other a lot in front of my house. We pushed each other some too. Then the cab driver grabbed the money from my hand and tried to drive away. I stood in front of the cab and told him to run me over, feeling ok if that's what he chose to do. Then my dad came out of the house and was calm and the police arrived. I stood in the street with my dad while the police talked to me and then talked to cab driver. After maybe 30 minutes a policeman walked over to me and handed me two 5 dollar bills and said I could go. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I went inside and made my family watch my favorite youtube videos with me while trying to explain their relevance.

I'll be blogging for HTMLGiant some now too. If you guys have any ideas, shout them out.

blog laws

2010-12-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

i have a new thing on Thought Catalog: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/four-weird-interactions-i%E2%80%99ve-had-with-health-care-providers/

i went to a party last night

i threw up this morning

i watched part of a movie and then did something else

i went to trader joes and abandoned my cart but returned to it much later

i left the movie when a police woman was telling a woman covered in blood to take off her clothes and lift up her boobs to check for weapons

i might finish the movie now

i might not

i made this ebook with Jordan and Mallory - it's an animation, just watch it

have a good thanksgiving everybody

2010-11-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on Saturday Workshop

2010-11-14T16:10:00.000-08:00

The teacher was talking about Melville's use of a chimney as a metaphor for the male phallus in one of his (Melville's) short stories. A person sneezed and I turned my head towards the sneeze and saw a person with snot on most of their face and dripping from their nose. The person quickly applied a napkin to the affected area. I had met the person two or three weeks earlier at the New School MFA bar and he had claimed to have read all of the major plays of Shakespeare for fun. Then the person got up and went to the bathroom. As far as I could tell, I was the only person who saw this. I looked back at the teacher and felt amazed at how much his ear seemed to resemble his mouth. His neck moved when he talked. He had tattoos on his hands. He mentioned the Galapagos Islands and someone raised their hand and said "Darwin's Theory of Relativity." I couldn't stop thinking about how the Miami Heat defense repeatedly left Ray Allen wide open when they played the Boston Celtics last Thursday. Ray Allen shot 7 for 9 from behind the arc. The class ended when the fire alarm went off.

D.V. - POEMS

2010-11-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

For my "Literature Seminar" I made this chapbook of poems excerpted from Diana Vreeland's memoir D.V. Diana Vreeland is like this fashion icon thing. Here's a really weird interview with her on youtube. You don't have to watch it.

Anyways, you can download the chapbook here. There is an intro in the chapbook that says some things. 75% of the reason why the intro exists is so my professor, Mark Bibbins, won't hate me. He has us read a book each week and then we are supposed to give him a response paper for each book. This was was my response paper for D.V. At the beginning of the semester he told us not to do response papers like this.

There are 5 "hard copies" of the chapbook. In them "Vreeland" is misspelled as "Vreedland." Mark Bibbins has one copy. Ben Mirov has one copy. And I have the three others. They are numbered and can be signed. If you want one, make me an offer. I might give one to my mom.

excerpt of a gmail chat b/w david fishkind and i

2010-11-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

David: lol, that is hot
me: i think that's really awesome
David: seems that is really hot to me...
me: yeah
David: in seriousness
me: i'm not kidding
David: me either
damn
so hot
me: boner city
David: we should write novels about her...
ok peace
me: peace

Blog Post

2010-11-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

The FreeDarko book has been released. I played a small role in its creation. I helped research the sections "Go Forth and Dribble" and "The Knickerbookers." My name is in the back under "RESEARCH ASSISTANTS."

I had to buy my copy of the book at Barnes and Noble because Bloomsbury forgot to send me a complimentary copy. I think they're sending one now though. Soon I will have two copies. I think I'm going to give one to my dad for Christmas.

*

I have an article on Thought Catalog called "What I Did the Last Four Halloweens." I wrote it on Halloween. I wrote it and edited it very fast - probably in less than an hour - because I wanted to go to the gym before it closed. There are things in it I wish I had edited more, but there are also things I like in it that I don't think would have happened had I not written it very fast.

I'm going to keep writing things in groups of four like this until I get tired of it. Some other ones I'm thinking of doing are:

-Four Classes I Took in NYU Journalism School
-Four Times I've Pooped in my Pants
-Four Times I've Been Drunk Around Tao
-Four Dogs I Walk Sometimes
-Four Things I've Learned in my MFA Program so far
-Four Documentaries I Remember Watching Last Summer

Feel free to suggest more, if you want.

*

Last night after class I went to the bar with Mark Bibbins and like four other classmates. The bar is "Cafe Loup" on 13th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. It's where the New School MFA students + teachers go to drink and talk to each other. I remember someone was talking to me about "Beavis and Butthead" and kept using the word "epistemologically." At one point the person forgot what he was saying and said something like "I forgot what I was saying" so I said "epistemologically..." and then he remembered what he was saying and continued to say it. A little bit later, I was standing by myself in the middle of the bar and I didn't know what to do so I went over to Mark Bibbins and one of my classmates and I said "I was alone and didn't know what to do so I came over here" and they both looked at me and asked me to elaborate on what I had just said. I'm not sure if my face got red at that point but I feel like it probably did.

When I got home I started watching the documentary "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco" because I thought it would be about how the band got dropped from their record label before the album came out and 9/11 or something, but I only remember it being about Jeff Tweedy arguing with a guy whose face seemed to be retracted from his mouth.

*

I feel like I've been seeing a lot of people with non-costume eye patches recently. Do you think it's ok to laugh at them?

*

Last weekend I was walking West on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and decided to buy a houseplant. I went into a plant store and didn't buy anything. Then I went into another plant store and said I wanted a "Japanese Maple." The person behind the counter said "you'll have to excuse me, I just learned of a death in the family..." Then I noticed she was crying. There was no one else in the store. I asked to use the bathroom. She told me the Japanese Maple was expensive and high-maintenance so I bought a "Swiss Cheese Plant" instead and carried it ~7 blocks home. This is what the leaves look like:

*

On the subway today I couldn't stop staring at this Asian girl's hair part. It was really weird looking. If the width of a normal hair part could be described as 12 pt. font then this hair part was like 48 pt. font at least. It was like a strip of baldness running from the front of her head to her cowlick. I couldn't understand it.

Here is a representation of it:

*

My roommate sent me this video today:

Andrew-vs-Books goes digital

2010-10-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

from bro Joe Sloan:

Hello! Andrew Vs. Books . blogspot . com

I would just like you to know that I took your website into the 21st century today and 'read' it on an iPad. You will see in the attached file/document/photograph that I provided proof of this undertaking. Does it make you feel excited to know your website and thus, by extension, you are part of the 21st century? I ordered a copy of Blueprint 3 this week and look forward to its arrival.

Jhs

Kill Yo' Self

2010-09-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

Last week in class I made a joke about killing myself. Then I tweeted about it. The tweet generated a huge response (like 2 or 3 people) and my roommate asked me what happened.

Here's what happened: We were talking about parody/homage. We looked at a poem in The New Yorker that was either pardoy-ing or homage-ing Gertrude Stein. The teacher asked how we felt about parody/homage. I said I was ok with it if it got my poem in The New Yorker. A person turned to me and said something in a joking, non-standoffish manner like, "Is that your life goal? ...to get something in The New Yorker?" To which I said, in a vaguely dick-like manner, "Yes, yes it is." To which the person said something like, "What happens when you do that?" To which I said, "I'm going to kill myself." Then no one said anything for ~30 seconds.

Yesterday I went to a bar with two classmates who were present for the aforementioned exchange. We were talking and I asked them what they thought when I said I was going to kill myself. They said they didn't remember that happening.

2010-09-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

Should I have money for breakfast or should I print out THE POETRY OF BEN MIROV? What good is poetry with out a stapler? What good is breakfast without a stapler?

Got workshopped. Was told "[you're like a robot]."

ee cummings painted this:

"I Went to a WNBA Game"

2010-09-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

an article by me at "Thought Catalog": http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/wnba-sports-basketball-madison-square-garden/

comments are particularly good on this one, i feel

started school

summer ended

what's up?

2010-08-27T17:52:00.001-07:00

just talked a lot of shit in an email

am i 'pumped' for anything?

are you?

what's your favorite website?

mine's statcounter

2010-08-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

i'm sweating for no reason

i'm writing emails and drinking apple juice

i'm in the library

i'm only doing this because it seems like i get more hits when i update a lot

i need to figure out a way to go viral

i was thinking of filming myself listening to 'the marshall mathers lp' and eating a taco during each song

or taking a shot during each song

it has 18 songs, 4 of which are 'skits'

it is 72 minutes and 5 seconds long

it sold ~1.8 million copies in its first week

Lori makes a copy

2010-08-24T22:16:00.001-07:00

Lori makes a copy from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

2010-08-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

accomplished 3-5 goals today

in the gym, everything felt very quiet

outside my house, i startled someone with my existence

2010-08-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

went to central park, got rained on.
left central park, got rained on.

*

went to hug a girl and accidentally hit her in the face

*

only drank coffee one time yesterday,
played monopoly

2010-08-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

got my new school id card yesterday

didn't really have to wait in a line or anything

now i can stay in library past 1am

*

watched 15 mins of 'the waterboy' (1998) while on an elliptical machine at crunch fitness

had a three day guest pass there

it expired yesterday

*

just removed some dry blood from the inside of my ear

*

went to manhattan last night, maintained contact with 4-5 people

drank two whiskeys, one coors banquet, two presidentes, and a bunch of water, but not as much water as i would have liked

found myself waiting in line for the bathroom because it was something to 'do'

found this picture on the internet, seems kind of funny:

2010-08-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

had a dream that my hair was really long in back and only in back

woke up scratching the inside of my ear

this morning people were digging a hole outside my room

i realized i will never hump all the people i want to hump

MuuMuu House has published an article by me...

2010-08-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

"Four Times I've Interacted with Justin Taylor in Real Life"

Electric Literature No. 1-4

2010-08-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

I'm going to type a few sentences about each of the stories in each of the Electric Literatures:

Electric Literature No. 1

1. "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You" by Jim Shepard

I most distinctly remember reading this story while standing up in a subway car. It's about a family significantly affected by avalanches, among other things. I started this story in mid-July and didn't finish it until two days ago. It kind of reminded me of that mountain climbing movie with Chris O'Donnell.

2. "Three-Legged Dog" by Diana Wagman

The first line of this story is: "My girlfriend is missing her left breast." For a long time, I thought the narrator was female and they were lesbians, but it turned out the narrator was male and there were no lesbians. The girlfriend has/had cancer. Jim Abbott is mentioned.

3. "The Time Machine" by T Cooper

The narrator of this story is a jealous boyfriend. The story ends with a series of text messages.

4. "Olympia" (novel excerpt) by Michael Cunningham

This is about two brothers. The word "swan" is used in several different forms (i.e. noun, verb, adjective). They go to a lake house. The younger brother masturbates a lot and, at one point, puts a pair of panties on his head. He also stabs the brother with a screwdriver in a flashback.

5. "Sir Henry" by Lydia Millet

The protagonist of this story is David Hasselhoff's dogwalker. David Hasselhoff makes a cameo.

Electric Literature No. 2

1. "The Comedian" by Colson Whitehead

This story is 7 pages long and seems to cover ~5-15 years. In its construction, I was reminded of a story that a girl brought to an "Intro Creative Writing" class I took several years ago. In the story (the girl's) a girl becomes a famous pop star then realizes, while looking in the mirror, that she is shallow. "The Comedian" is like that, but different.

2. "Love" by Stephen O'Connor

This story is about a girl who moves to a lake house for a summer so she can finish her grad school thesis. This puts strain on her relationship with her more successful (financially) boyfriend. He visits her one weekend and they go boating and the boat tips over. The girl becomes paranoid that an old man is spying on her. She gets drunk and drives her car down a hill. I don't remember what happens to her thesis.

3. "The Slough" by Pasha Malla

I think this story is autobiographical because the main character's name is also "Pasha." There is a terminal illness in this story. Looking at the title, I feel a little confused. I'm not sure what a "slough" or "The Slough" is, and I don't remember that word being in the story. I guess I didn't figure this story to be the kind of story that would have a vague or enigmatic title.

4. "Three Girls" by Marisa Silver

This story is about a family. I remember the story alludes to the mom being a huge alcoholic and other families being afraid of her/them.

5. "The Cows" by Lydia Davis

This story is about cows. The paragraphs are generally short.

Electric Literature No. 3

1. "The Red Ribbon" by Aimee Bender

This story is about a wife, who, for some reason, starts demanding money from her husband for sex. She yells at a homeless person and insinuates that she is a prostitute. She buys a bunch of sweaters at the end.

2. "Little Things" by Matt Sumell

This story is about a terminal illness. There is a very high level of non-sequitor from sentence to sentence. This is my favorite story among all four issues of Electric Literature.

3. "Some Contemporary Characters" by Rick Moody

This story is told in the form of twitter updates from two characters that meet on OkCupid.com. They go to Coney Island and ride the rollercoaster a few times. They make out on the beach. The guy is much older than the girl. They get in a fight on the subway.

4. "Reed & Dinnerstein Moving"

This story is about two friends, Reed and Dinnerstein, who start a moving company. Dinnerstein is gay, Reed is not. While on the job, they watch a guy try to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge or onto a bridge or something. They get into a vague fight when Dinnerstein brings his Asian, non-English-speaking boyfriend to Reed's house for Thanksgiving. Reed runs into the kitchen crying at one point.

5. "The Tunnel" by Jenny Offill

This story is about a terminal illness. I don't really remember much more than that.

Electric Literature No. 4

1. "Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child" by Joy Williams

This story feels a lot like a fairy tale but without an obvious moral underpinning. (I think I read somewhere that this story is going to be included in an anthology of 'new fairy tales' or something.) In the story, a guy wants to paint the Pelican Child. At first, Baba Iaga doesn't let him in, then she does. The guy locks Baba Iaga and some other creatures in one room of the house while he stabs the Pelican Child. Something happens and the guy gets away. I was reminded of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People." Baba Iaga brings the Pelican Child back to life by sticking her in the oven, I think.

2. "The Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiesteban" by Javier Marias

This story is about a professor who becomes fascinated by a ghost-like thing. I think he becomes a ghost-like thing too at the end.

3. "Three Figures and a Dog" by Roberto Ransom

This story is about a fresco in Italy. It's about the guy painting the fresco and also the guy trying to restore it. The guy trying to restore the fresco ends up destroying it.

4. "Byzantium" by Ben Stroud

This story is about a guy with a crippled hand. The guy with the crippled hand is summoned by the Emperor and ordered to find a monk and cut his nuts off. The guy with the crippled hand finds the monk in a monk colony and, after many attempts, finally gets a chance to speak with him. When he goes to speak with the monk, he finds out that the monk is retarded. All the monk does is wail next a campfire while another monk translates for him. The guy with the crippled hand cuts off the nuts of the retarded monk. The guy with the crippled hand gets the retarded monk's blood on his crippled hand and it makes his hand better.

5. "The Bastard" by Patrick DeWitt

This story is about a guy (The Bastard) who swindles an entire town. I was reminded of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People."

"Four Times I've Seen People Have Seizures"

2010-08-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

"Thought Catalog" has published an article by me

July 2010 Playlist + Thing

2010-08-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

This one was ok:

Found this, bought this at BookCourt today:

A Page from "Bob the Gambler"

2010-07-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Possible interpretations: 1, 2

Books I'm Going to Try to Read by the End of the Summer

2010-07-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

*UPDATE*: I read some of these. (See right.) I think I'm just going to read non-fiction basketball books for the rest of summer though.

What I'm Going to Read Next

2010-07-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Today I bought "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami and read 12 pages of it. I have never read a Haruki Murakami novel before. I remember one time someone mentioned him and his work in a short story that I had to read for a fiction workshop at NYU and in the margins of the story I remember writing "nice reference" and then mentioning it in class, saying something like "nice reference" or something. That was ~9 months ago. Yesterday, I text messaged David Fishkind asking him which Haruki Murakami book he thought I should read first because he's read at least two Haruki Murakami books and he said that I should read the one I bought today. I bought it today and carried it from BookCourt in Cobble Hill to a different part of Brooklyn where someone got shot in the leg. I started reading it on the subway a little bit later. At home, I took a shower and ate a salad.

Later, I went to the library and gmail chatted with David Fishkind and he said his mom also started reading "Norwegian Wood" today. He said that his mom and I were reading the same book.

After David Fishkind signed off of gmail chat, I felt hungry and I decided I wanted to read "Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: a memoir" by Bill Clegg. I watched the book trailer on the internet somewhere. I googled "the strand" and saw that The Strand was closing in a half hour. I walked quickly to The Strand and while I was walking there I thought the words "functional crack addict" to myself and laughed out loud in a sparsely populated area of NYU's campus. In The Strand, I stood next to a man who was breathing heavily and sweating a lot and staring at a pile of books with a determination that seemed indicative of a mental disorder or something. He was wearing brown corduroy pants with stains on them, a yellow short-sleeve button up shirt, and a tie. I don't remember what color the tie was. I picked up "Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: a memoir" and walked away quickly, thinking combinations of "fuck," "shit," and "jesus" to myself.

I had read an excerpt from the book in "New York Magazine" once while eating breakfast in my old apartment and sweating a little bit because it was hot and I was drinking coffee. I remember reading the whole excerpt and feeling alert and excited. I was primarily excited, I think, because the main character of the book, the author, is a literary agent. I don't think I would be interested in the book at all if he was anything but a literary agent. He is young and gay and a successful literary agent and his favorite thing to do is smoke crack. I don't think I would be interested in the book at all if it was anything but crack. In the excerpt, he missed a very important flight to Europe because he was having too much fun smoking crack and having sex. He booked another flight for the next day and he even made it to the airport, but decided he'd rather be smoking crack than flying to Europe, so he did that. I think he smoked crack with his cab driver and I think they had sex also. In two days he spent [a very large amount of money] on crack and airplane tickets. I remember feeling excited and maybe a little bit jealous that someone could love something as much as he loved smoking crack. I imagined what it would be like to love books as much as he loved smoking crack.

I'm in the library right now and I'm drinking coffee.

Jordan Castro + Richard Wehrenberg Jr Interview

2010-07-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

On the occasion of the 2nd edition printing of their chapbook "think tank for human beings in general," I emailed Jordan Castro and Richard Wehrenberg Jr about Ohio.

*START INTERVIEW*

You guys are from Ohio. I have been in that state maybe 3-10 times. I'm going to recount a few of those times and maybe you guys can respond with your own stories or ideas. Feel free to not address anything relating to my experiences, if that feels necessary. Feel free to not even talk about Ohio, if you want. These are "free response."

Canton

When I was driving to college for the first time with my mom and dad, we stopped at the "Pro Football Hall of Fame" in Canton but it was closed. It was really early in the morning. I think we got there before it opened. It's possible that I'm confusing this with the "College Football Hall of Fame" in South Bend, Indiana. It's possible that I've never been to Canton.

JC: a punk band i used to be in played at an indoor skatepark in canton with some cool bands, i remember. i played bass and sang. we may or may not have covered ‘we laugh at danger (and break all the rules)’ by against me!. other bands that i remember playing include the sidekicks, two hand fools, and asinine.

RWJ: You know, I have mostly just driven through Canton. I don't know much about that place. Just tried to search for a relevant fact or interesting political movement or something else interesting / important related to Canton and ended up on the Wikipedia page for Marilyn Manson. How symptomatic. Canton is twenty minutes south of Akron. My old band used to play at a skate park in North Canton called Evolution Skate Park. Canton seems, like most cities in Ohio, to fluctuate or diverge into this kind of liberal arts colllege-y kind of place and a more sequestered, secluded, & conservative community. Chain stores and corn fields rubbing against each other. A close childhood friend of mine went to a religious college there called Walsh University and disliked it, because well, he wasn't raised religious and all soccer players on the team had to attend Sunday mass. I think right as one goes into Canton from 77 South there is a sign for a road called Lovers Lane. No apostrophe.

Cleveland

On the same 'driving to college for the first time' road trip, we went to the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" in Cleveland. There was a special exhibit on "The Who" and I remember they were playing, on a big TV, a performance of "The Who" at the "Isle of Wight Festival" from 1970. I remember this because I have a DVD of that performance, have watched it multiple times (freshman year of high school...), and recognized it immediately at the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." I remember, at first, being excited that I recognized the performance, but then feeling 'cheated' because I had gone to the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" to watch a DVD that I already owned.

JC: rock and roll hall of fame seems pretty bad. some facts about cleveland in regards to me are i have never been denied the sale of alcohol in cleveland, the city i live in (solon) is considered a suburb of cleveland, and i saw ‘run d.m.c’ live at ‘the gravity games’ once in cleveland.

RWJ: Cleveland is a dilapidated city, in a good way; at least, that is what I find myself saying most of the time when someone asks me about Cleveland. For those of us who grew up in the suburbs, we never knew the violence of the city, really. We did know a separate violence though: that of not being able to escape our own boring and outdated neighborhoods, the hiding places of our parents' generation. I mostly visited Cleveland for punk shows at decrepit venues and houses. The thrill of a forty ounce and distorted guitars, identifying enemies, those others who had done this to us. Rarely was I downtown for long. Cleveland Heights and Lakewood (the east and west outlying areas, respectively) were / are the major destinations for a middle class kid who didn't know how to talk to people, but knew how to buy things. How do we collapse the binary of our ostensibly inherent differences? I find myself questioning this more and more, and the answer I feel, or one of many possible conclusions we may reach, lies in the understanding of the difficulty it takes to relinquish our personal histories, to dispel our subjective environments and come together in a new way, beyond what the superstructure, the economic system we are caged within, prescribes to us as appropriate behavior. To know Cleveland is to know disappointment; it is to look askance at our living situation together as human beings, but still trudge onward with a certain candor, a constructive cynicism. We still, to quote a friend's band, swim in the city's septic tank (Lake Erie) and know there is something in Cleveland that will burst forth one day, despite others' disgust at its economic depravity.

Youngstown

My friend and I, driving from New York to Chicago, stopped in Youngstown and ate at a restaurant called "Armandos." It was kind of late (~10 PM maybe) and we were the only two people in the restaurant. There were two waitress, both really hot, 'hovering' around our table and flirting with us a lot. It seemed like we were being 'lured into some shit (via "Hostel")' or something. At the end of the meal, this old woman (I think she ran or owned the place) came and sat down with us and tried to convince us that it was a bad idea to keep driving and that we should spend the night in Youngstown. We kept driving and then my friend got a speeding ticket in Indiana.

JC: noah cicero is from youngstown and often tells me stories about the people in youngstown. youngstown seems ‘the most ghetto’ of the three cities you have listed. based on what noah has told me, the chances of the two females you encountered being addicted to cocaine is high, the chance of them attending ‘ysu’ and passing with d’s is high, and the chance of them having children is high.

RWJ: Have never been to Youngstown, though I lived in Kent for three and a half years, which is a forty-five minute drive or so away. It seems another former thriving and now destitute city, from what I have read. Plucked of its fossil fuels. A pleasant looking state college. On election day in May I was canvassing in Austintown Township outside of Youngstown. It was very hot and I was riding a bike back and forth between a south neighborhood and a north neighborhood knocking on doors to see if people had voted on the issue I was asking them about. I road along a bike path and into a large area of soccer fields where multiple games were happening at once. At the voting place the old ladies grinned at me, their eyes taut in that geriatric way. Wrinkled hands patting my shoulder. A war veteran outside came up to me and commented on how long / big my hair was. I nodded and he walked on, though not before stopping his pace and staring at me for a good two minutes.

General / Cleveland again kind of

On the same road trip as the 'Youngstown/"Armandos" thing,' my friend and I listened to game 5 of the 2007 NBA Eastern Conference Finals on the radio in our car. LeBron James scored 29 of his team's last 30 points and the Cavs ended up beating the Detroit Pistons in double overtime. The Cavs went on to win the series, but lost in the finals to the San Antonio Spurs.

JC: i don’t think i watched that game, or basketball (or t.v.) at all, in 2007. i am 100% sure that i didn’t listen to it on the radio. in 2008 i remember watching ‘bits and pieces’ of cavs games on the t.v., like if it was already on or something. in 2008 or 2009 i watched the cavs lose in the playoffs to the orlando magic. i remember thinking things about dwight howards’ shoulders. during the most recent season (i feel really confused about if the most recent season is the 2009 or the 2010 season), i watched many of the cavs playoff games. i watched the cavs beat the celtics by ~50 or something and then i listened to them lose the next game by ~50 or something on the radio at work. eventually the cavs lost the series.

RWJ: Cleveland sports teams have always been an odd phenomenon to me. Of course, I grew up going to the games and cheering for our, quite often, terrible teams. I grew up, meaning of course, I internalized certain subjective truths, certain ways of seeing the world and understanding it that would, one day, I could not know, I had to know, be transgressed. Every team since I was a kid has been at least in some way bad, the underdog some might say, but for some reason Cleveland fans kept on ruthlessly with them, with a kind of unconditional faith, is the way I'd like to put it. People here act as though sports can save them, as a religious figure might save them; days and nights and attitudes are invested, behavior is based on the whim of the movements and contractions of the muscles of the members of a team. Billboards on apartment buildings with LeBron, arms all Jesus. It's absurd to me, but I have become inured to it. Being involved with sports, watching and playing them, talking about them, seeing how they affected my peers, allowed for one of the first times where I felt an odd disconnect, felt something unnatural about the way I was interacting with people, how they were interacting with me, in which I had feelings where logic did not manifest, and I began to think (finally!), I began to, and I felt it, I remember, as something like this, as understanding an illogical thing: a switching of my mind onto a new plane, a questing (in long robe, with walking stick) for a new language, a letting go of previous presuppositions that let me believe a certain thing, see things in a certain (= stifled) way, crumble out of my pockets. Of course, this was merely me losing my interest in sports, naive and excitable at the age of fourteen, but what I would not foresee is how this thought process would essentially become my framework, my mindset, my blueprint for assessing most all other institutions for many years onward in my thinking. I'm not against sports, per se, perhaps just feeling askance about how an institution, how anything really, sports here could be substituted for almost anything, can replace a feeling, can be a stand-in for collective-meaning, when it is we, ourselves, our relations with each other, our diggings into one another, that is the meaning. If anything I have come to understand the power of will, the utter negation of the Other that is action, that is decision, in people's lives—and consequently, I have come to understand fear, how it is rooted in myself and others, how it hides us from one another, too.

June 2010 Playlist + "BP2" Artwork Website

2010-06-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

PLAYLIST

I listened to Title Fight's "The Last Thing You Forget" all month. There were some days when I listened to it 4 or 5 times a day, but at different volumes.

COVER:

TRACK LIST:
(as it appears on my ipod)

1. Symmetry
2. Introvert
3. No One Stays At the Top Forever
4. Memorial Field
5. Loud and Clear
6. Youreyeah
7. Room 200
8. Anaconda Sniper
9. Evander
10. Goldwaite
11. Neck Deep
12. Western Haikus

WEBSITE

I have created a website for art I've received as payment for "The Blueprint 2." It can be viewed here.

THE BLUEPRINT 2 IS HERE NOW

2010-06-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

"The Blueprint 2" is available now.

I have made a short film to promote the book and this is it:

The Blueprint 2 Trailer from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

ORDERING INFORMATION:

THERE ARE TWO ORDERING OPTIONS:

1) Paypal $3 to me (shipping and handling included) by clicking on the button in the sidebar and doing what it says.

OR

2) If you mail/email me a piece of original artwork, I will mail you a copy of the book for free. The artwork does not have to be 'good' or take up much of your time. In fact, the less time you spend on it, the better, I think. If you want to draw a penis on a piece of paper and send it to me, that would be cool, maybe ideal. MS Paint encouraged.* Here is my address:

Andrew Weatherhead
211 Clinton St., Apt 1A
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Here is my Email: Weeatherhead@gmail.com

*I will retain rights to all artwork sent to me.

Thank you

THE BLUEPRINT 2 - JUNE 17TH

2010-06-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

"The Blueprint 2" (a chapbook, by me) will be 'released' on June 17th.

I have created a website for my previous chapbook, "The Blueprint 3" (2009): http://thebp3.blogspot.com/

June 17th is the day the NBA finals end, if it goes to a game 7.

Here is something cool that happened:

Formspring + Andrew Weatherhead

2010-06-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

I 'inadvertently' created 'a formspring' ~3 days ago while trying to ask Miles a question and succeeding in doing so.

http://www.formspring.me/Weeatherhead

It's really fun, y'all.

May 2010 Playlist + Other Things

2010-06-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

This kind of lost steam towards the end of the month:

I'm in an NYU computer lab right now and a former 'English' professor of mine - mid 30's, balding, slightly overweight, w/ 'tired' British accent - is sitting at a computer in front of me. I'm wearing my glasses right now so I can see 'better than normal,' esp. 'at distance.' He has been looking at New England Patriots blogs for the last 20 minutes, maybe longer. He is looking at a New England Patriots messageboard on "Patsfan.com." He's scrolling very slowly, I think he's reading the thread in its entirety. He is slouching a great deal. I feel extremely excited writing this. Ok, now he just googled "Victorian Poetry Journal." Now he is writing emails.

NEWS

Part of this blog has been published on "Gulper Eel."

I have two poems in "Her Royal Majesty: Issue 8."

Think I'm going to go back to non-British quotation mark usage after a brief (~6 mo.) experiment in British quotation mark usage.

Feel Free to Help Me Choose My Workshop Professor, I Have Until June 1st

2010-05-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

Having a hard time deciding whose workshop I want to be in / which one would be the best for me. Here are my choices for instructors. There will be a poll at the end of this.

Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2004 Whiting Writers’ Award, the 2004 Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart Prize. Her book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, won the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award and was published in spring 2004 by Alice James Books. Her poems have been published in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The Washington Post, Barrow Street, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review, and The Iowa Review.

Born in New York City David Lehman was educated at Columbia University and spent two years in England as a Kellett Fellow at Cambridge University. He received his MA in 1972 (Cambridge) and his PhD in English and comparative literature in 1978 (Columbia). His books of poetry include Yeshiva Boys (2008), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), and The Daily Mirror (2000), all from Scribner. Lehman has edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003), among other collections. He has written six nonfiction books, including A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Nextbook / Schocken), The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday) and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (Simon and Schuster). He initiated The Best American Poetry series in 1988 and continues as the anthology’s general editor. With Star Black, Lehman originated and was co-director of the famed KGB Bar Monday night poetry series. He has written on a wide variety of subjects for numerous journals ranging from The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal to American Heritage, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Art in America. He has taught in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City since the program's inception in 1996 and has served as poetry coordinator since 2003.

Meghan O'Rourke is the author of the collection of poems Halflife (W.W. Norton), a finalist for the 2008 May Sarton Award from the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and her second book of poems, Once, will be published in 2010. She is a co-poetry editor of The Paris Review and a literary critic for the online magazine Slate. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and more, and she is at work on a nonfiction book about grief. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she earned her BA from Yale University and an MFA from Warren Wilson.

Paul Violi is the author of twelve books of poems, including Overnight and The Curious Builder from Hanging Loose Press and Breakers, a selection of his longer poems, from Coffee House Press. He also published a book of prose, Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes. He has received the Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as grants from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, The Fund for Poetry, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and two poetry fellowships from The New York State Foundation for the Arts and two from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I'm supposed to hand in my top 2 choices by June 1st. Here are some thoughts:

I like Catherine Barnett. I was in 'a Catherine Barnett workshop' when I was at NYU. She's like a really cool mom. She wrote a recommendation for me. I gave her a $15 Starbucks gift card that was tiny. I interviewed her for a journalism class. From what I've read, her poems are probably my favorite out of the four. However, one could easily argue that I should 'take advantage' of [something] and 'experience something new' via a workshop instructor that I haven't 'had' before.

David Lehman and Meghan O'Rourke both seem important and good to have on my 'side', assuming they like me/my poetry. I was reading Meghan's book last night and I realized I have no idea what a "picture window" really is, so she could tell me about that, if nothing else.

Not sure if Paul Violi is 'right' for me right now.

I kind of feel like having a female workshop instructor for some reason.

Seems like I can't really go wrong, though.

I don't know, what do y'all think:

*UPDATE*: I have gone with 1) Meghan O'Rourke, 2) Catherine Barnett. Thank you for your help.

**UPDATE**: I am in Catherine Barnett's class. Also, Meghan O'Rourke's class got canceled.

Matthew Rohrer Interview

2010-05-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

Let's start with the most pressing matter: Have you ever written a poem or part of a poem in your sleep? I don't mean, like, dreaming something that would later be used in a poem, but actually, in dreamworld, sitting down and writing a poem...has that ever happened to you?

Yes, definitely. But usually I can’t remember much of it when I wake up. But the feeling of writing – that’s there. Once I remember writing a poem in a dream and reading it to someone in a bookstore in the dream and it was just hugely grand and the ending built and built until it was too much to bear, and the person listening was reduced to a kind of ecstatic wonder.
But then when I woke up I could remember the end, and it was basically like:

The end
Peace
Everthing’s fine

While doing some research for this interview, I found this painting of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on wikipedia. It seems like Coleridge is on some sort of hallucinogen here. I read that Coleridge became an opium addict at some point in his lifetime, but his pupils, mouth, and general facial expression in this painting, to me, seem specifically suggestive of a hallucinogen. Any comment?

Well, that’s very funny but as far as I know which is basically having read 4 biographies of him that he never took hallucinogens or really had much access to them as I suspect most British people didn’t unless they were sailors. But he DID get involved in some serious experiments with Humphry Davy when Davy discovered nitrous oxide. They did literally liters and liters of it in Davy’s lab. There are beautiful scenes related in Richard Holmes’ amazing latest book THE AGE OF WONDER. Holmes also wrote the 2 volume biography of Coleridge. The 2nd volume of which is sad from beginning to end.

It seems like a lot of your poems take place in the summer, and, when I brought this up to you in person, you told me that "A Plate Full of Chicken" was written in like 6 or 8 weeks in the summertime. Is the summer your favorite season? Do you write more or feel more inspired in the summer? I assume you teach less in the summer, does this have anything to do with anything? Are you looking forward to this summer, do you have any special plans?

It didn’t have anything to do with teaching, because it was only in the last 3 years that I taught regularly enough for summer to have any meaning in that way. I guess I do like summer a lot, especially in New York with a small apartment you start to go crazy in the winter and in the summer you feel like you have an enormous backyard. Especially in Brooklyn. But having said that, I really hate being hot and am often really miserable in the summer. That’s where the poems in A PLATE OF CHICKEN came from, largely – a feeling that I was so miserable that I was going to stick it to the heat by showing it that I could turn its malevolent oppression into something useful. There’s also a long poem in RISE UP that I just looked at again recently that’s all about being extremely miserable in August New York heat.

You have a new book coming out on Wave soon. Is there a release date yet? I'm pretty sure I remember the name, but I don't want to screw it up. What is the name?

It’s called DESTROYER & PRESERVER and it should be out next spring.

In preparing your new book, or, really, any of your books, how do you know when you're done? Do you impose any sort of limits on yourself, or do you just go until it 'feels right'? Is this where having an editor helps?

Yes, having an editor makes all the difference for someone like me. I write a lot, and for instance for this next book I printed out everything I wanted to consider since my last book, and it was 560 pages. Obviously most of it was bad. But still, that’s a lot of pages. And so the way my books get put together is basically after enough time has passed I look through what’s there to see if there are any themes or likenesses that become apparent. And then Matthew Zapruder who’s such an amazing, intuitive editor takes a look at what I put together and comes back with another version of it. I guess kind of doing the same thing –looking for themes or things he wants to call out or rearrange.

Conversely, where does the book start? Is it in the realization that you have a more or less consistent group of poems sitting around or do you write poems with a book in mind?

Well I think a lot of poets write much less than I do, and probably write a lot more carefully, or revise more, so that at any given moment they have a smaller but much more solid body of work that is heading towards their next book. I think if you write more slowly like this, and are doing more careful work along the way, then the idea that you have a book going is much easier to see much sooner.

Something that I've been stealing from your poetry a lot recently is the use of a non-narrative sort of list of things that suddenly breaks into a more focused narrative. For example, "Sharp" from "Rise Up":

Music all day on the stereo. And the rain
in the streets, it's like I'm with friends.
It is hard not to pour a glass of wine in the morning.
I am raining. A red-tailed hawk settles
on an old antenna behind the house
and looks right into my eyes
while I'm on the phone with Ellen. Ellen
I say slowly, I'm sure you will succeed
in your endeavors. Those are
not the words I planned to say.
I was still awakening from a dream of the distant war.

Or, conversely, a narrative thread that 'devolves' into a non-narrative list. For example, "Abbot" from "A Green Light":

Other people's rules amuse me.
It's nice to be kissed without asking
for it. And dream of taking the exit off the freeway
to Buddhism. Anyone who breaks
stupid rules is a hero.
But what of a man
who willfully separates himself
from sex for the rest of his life?
There is something wrong
with him. He is like Yellowstone
National Park.
The bears.
Condors of eternal vigilance.
Only from a great height can he be forgiven.

I guess my question is this: how do you balance narrative and non-narrative? Logical progression and non-sequitur? I realize that there is probably no solid answer to this, that if you could definitively answer this question you would have discovered 'the secret of poetry' or be delusional or something, but do you think you could discuss how you construct a poem on a line by line basis?

I don’t think I can do that line by line. I could walk you through the poems you cited but for some reason I don’t feel like doing that. I don’t know that knowing the specifics would answer the question. But I think it’s basically that I am always very aware of a sense of balance in a poem. I just really think that there is an invisible scale beneath every poem you write, and that if you are attentive to what you’re doing and what you’ve written, that you can tell if it’s tipped too far in one way, and if that’s useful or not. Sometimes that can work, of course. And I guess the 2 sides of the balance are those things you mentioned: narrative and non-narrative. I guess it comes from my own reading. I tolerate a lot of jibber-jabber if I feel like I am also being spoken to directly and sensibly.

But it’s more complicated than this, because there are ideas or emotions that a poem can sometimes best express in a non-linear way. Linearity, when done really well, can be great. But there are just some things that linearity can’t express that well – maybe I don’t mean “linearity” but narrative. And so there are moments that demand something else. That’s where the balance comes in. Because even in the most narrative, personal, confessional poems, there will probably be things expressed that really need to be expressed non-narratively, non-personally, non-confessionally. So the balance is off in a confessional poem that never transcends that one mode. And the balance is off in a poem that is only expressing the ineffable something that the something is doing with the notion of whatever. Sometimes people explain their poems that way and it seems very sad. And imbalanced.

Anyone looking for a roommate?

2010-05-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

About me: clean/responsible/will not get your laptop stolen

Looking for: clean/responsible/will not get my laptop stolen

When: ~June 1st

thanks

UPDATE: I'm good.

April 2010 Playlist

2010-05-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

This got me through much of April 2010.

Seems like old news, but The Rumpus published my review of Tao Lin's "you are a little bit happier than i am".

I saw the "Magna Carta" yesterday.

[Something]

[Something else]

I went to an Indian wedding last night. Thought about blogging about it, probably won't. The food was really spicy.

Think I slept on my penis wrong.

Do y'all avoid certain clothes when you're hungover? I think I do, but I can't tell. Haven't really thought about it much.

Comprehensive "Selling 'slightly used' loaf of bread on Craigslist" Post

2010-04-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Original listing:
(click to enlarge)

Emails:

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

hello
i hope you are really serious about it and would like to have it depends on your location
i am around Styvesant town
thanks
T

from: me
to: Asian woman w/ cast on her foot

hey,

yeah i'm totally serious. i'm at stanton and bowery, by the whole foods.

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

understood
what time is good for you?
also if you don't mind would you tell me why you are doing it?
thanks

from: me
to: asian woman w/ cast on her foot

the sooner, the better

like i said in the post, i got tired of it...it was too much bread.

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

ok
i can come around 4PM
how does it sound?
i just do not know where to meet with you?

from: me
to: asian woman w/ cast on her foot

i'm going to be gone then. are you around tomorrow?

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

what time is good for you today?

from: me
to: asian woman w/ cast on her foot

between now and 2:30/3

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

ok
can i meet around 2.30-3
where?
do you have cell #?
thanks

from: me
to: asian woman w/ cast on her foot

let's meet in front of the bowery ymca (273 bowery, corner of bowery and houston) at 2:30. i'll be wearing a navy blue 'youngstown state' shirt with red lettering. i will be prompt.

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

ok
if you need XXX-XXX-XXXX my cell

from: asian woman w/ cast on her foot
to: me

sorry
are you man or woman?

from: me
to: asian woman w/ cast on her foot

man

I also got this email:

To Whom It May Concern:

I would love to come and take a look at your nearly mint condition bread. Judging by the size of the bag (which may be very large), I may have to take the bread home in small chunks. I am worried, however, that I will also get sick of the bread once I have started eating it, so I'm curious if you received a lot of emails for it? Because if you did, maybe I could try the bread and when I grew tired of it, I could pass it on to someone else. Would that be okay?

Sincerely,

XXXXXX XXXXXXX

Here's a graph:
(click to enlarge)

Last night I dreamt about wearing a white tie with a denim shirt and this morning I awoke clutching a pillow that was also white

2010-04-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have posted a "slightly used" loaf of bread on craigslist. The listing can be viewed here. Please contact me if you are interested. It's free.

UPDATE: The loaf of bread is no longer available. Blog post forthcoming.

One of my Neuroscience professors has appeared on Canadian television, talking about a class that I was in. The clip can be viewed here. Sorry, no "embed code."

My friend Griffin has summarized "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving via "Delicious." It can be viewed here:

Some old guy wanders away from his bitch-ass wife, and just happens to stumble upon a sweet bunch of ghosts who are drinking and bowling. The guy then passes out due to the immense number of shots he had taken, only to wake up twenty years later with no hangover - his biiitch of a wife now dead and the American Revolution long since past.

"Notnostrums" Issue 4 has been published, featuring Matthew Rohrer, "among others." It can be viewed here.

"Noon" 2010 has been published, featuring Tao Lin, Lydia Davis, Dylan Nice, and Deb Olin Unferth, "among others." More info here.

"Can You Relax in My House" by Michael Earl Craig

2010-04-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

I don't remember much about this book except that I liked it. I felt distracted for a variety of reasons while reading it and, as a result, I think, the book just passed over me as a pleasurable experience that I can't really describe or elaborate on. I think my reading of "Can You Relax in My House" was like going to a waterpark 10 years ago in that it was really sweet, but I can't remember the names of any of the waterslides or really anything about it except for what I generally understand to be consistent of waterparks like wave pools and fat people and that they're sweet. Likewise, I can say of Michael Earl Craig's book that there were most likely a lot of horses and many of the poems probably took place outdoors. I like the title very much.

"you are a little bit happier than i am" by Tao Lin

2010-04-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

this is a review I submitted to "The Rumpus" when they were soliciting poetry reviews at one point, I never heard back from them so I'm publishing it here

Introductory Facts

# of poems: 48
# of page numbers: 0
# of times I thought the table of contents was a poem: ~2

Other things I purchased when I purchased this book:

• “The Difficult Farm” by Heather Christle
• “Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty” by Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman (collaborative CD)

Where Do the Poems Take Place?

As illustrated above, the majority of “you are a little bit happier than i am” takes place in “reality,” i.e. within “the world” defined by the book in which things happen concretely. Tao has previously said that this book is, he thinks, “a non-fiction poetry book.” Thus, we, the readers, can take lines like “I emailed people and ate cereal and that took three hours because I took my time” and “on the way home i am driving and i make this very wide turn through this massive intersection; and i am driving very fast and i am a little out of control and while i am making this insane turn, sideswiping across three or four lanes, i look at my mom and i grin at her really big and her face looks a little blank and i feel really happy and really sad at the same time” as things that happen concretely within the book’s “reality.”

Alternatively, a not insignificant portion of the poems take place inside the imagination of the author/narrator/Tao within this defined “reality.” For example, the poem “i want to start a band” follows the title’s premise by elaborating on what the narrator/author/Tao would want his imaginary band to be like. None of the poem “actually” happens, as far as the book is concerned. It’s all in the narrator’s/author’s/Tao’s head. Roughly 30% of the book is like this. This imagination is not limited to statements of desire. It also includes the future tense, conditional statements, and hypothetical situations.

Additionally, these imaginative passages are often complicated by the unreliability of the narrator/author/Tao. Lines, statements, and sometimes large passages are negated with phrases like “just kidding” or “i lied” or, as in the poem “i am about to express myself”: “i want to end my life / i don’t want to end my life anymore / i changed”. This flippancy, besides providing some of the funniest moments in the book, seems characteristic of the “fast-paced, information superhighway” that is, to many, “the modern condition,” which Tao seems to express better than anybody.

These imaginative elements, within the “reality” context, generally seem to serve a therapeutic function for the narrator/author/Tao. Instead of killing his literary agent, a desire expressed in the poem “i am about to kill my literary agent”, the narrator/author/Tao can write a poem about it, thus acknowledging his emotions while using them in a productive way that further detaches himself from violent or self-destructive behavior. In addition, these moments are funny and easy to graph.

What is the Emotional Content of “you are a little bit happier than i am”?

Despite the title and, perhaps, first impressions of Tao Lin, I don’t think “you are a little bit happier than i am” is a book that conveys overwhelming sadness or depression. The narrator/author/Tao seems to treat his feelings and emotions relatively analytically such that the resulting expression of those feelings and emotions is fairly calm and detached. Feelings of sadness, loneliness, and depression are acknowledged in the book, however, they seem to be treated no different from any other emotion, and the existence of these emotions is in some way “life-affirming” in that these emotions exist and the narrator/author/Tao is alive and because he is alive he has these emotions.

How “Identifiable” Do I Think The Poems Are?

To measure this, I established an “Identifiability” Scale, roughly defined as how familiar the poem feels to me situationally, emotionally, or cognitively, and how accurately I think the poem expresses those thoughts/feelings/emotions. (See the “Notes on the Methods” section for a more in-depth explanation of the scale, including basic facts about me to better understand my “demographic.”) Each of the 48 poems received an “Identifiability” Score and these scores were averaged to come up with this index.

Average “Identifiability” Index: 5.86

How “Inspiring” Do I Think The Poems Are? (How Badly Do I Wish I Had Thought of That First?)

This was measured by an “Inspiration” Scale (see “Notes on the Methods” section for a detailed explanation), which is defined as how “inspiring” each poem is to my own writing. “Inspiration,” to me, falls into a few different categories and they are, in descending order of significance (which generally equates to palpability): “damn, I wish I had thought of that,” rhetorical/stylistic/content inspiration, and thematic/conceptual inspiration. Each of the 48 poems was assigned an “Inspiration” Score and these scores were averaged to produce this index.

Average Inspiration Index: 6.53

How Funny Do I Think The Poems Are?

Each poem was given a score (1-10, 10 being the most funny) based on how funny I think the poem is. These scores were averaged across the 48 poems to come up with this “Average Funny Score.”

Average Funny Score: 6.52

How Enjoyable Do I Think The Poems Are?

Each poem was given a score (1-10, 10 being the most enjoyable) based on how enjoyable I think the poem is. These scores were averaged across the 48 poems to come up with this “Average Enjoyable Score”.

Average Enjoyable Score: 6.88

Conclusion

As evidenced by the above measures, this book feels highly identifiable/accurate, inspiring, funny, and enjoyable. I think it’s important to note that I tried as hard as possible to score the poems relative to all of the poetry I’ve ever read as opposed to scoring the poems relative to each other. For comparison’s sake, here are approximate scores for all of the poetry I’ve ever read:

Identifiability: 2.1
Inspiration: 3.3
Funny: 4.0
Enjoyable: 5.0

Additionally, these measures were created for the purpose of reviewing this book, so it’s only natural that this book “performed” above average in these categories. I just wanted to make some points numerically.

Furthermore, a correlation analysis shows that the “Funny Scores” are significantly correlated to the “Enjoyment Scores,” which is perhaps to be expected. However, more interestingly, the “Inspiration Scores” are significantly correlated with both the “Funny Scores” and the “Enjoyment Scores.” I think this is indicative of the way I enjoy poetry. My theory is that the best books are the ones that make you want to write and these correlations seem to prove that.

Tao Lin gets “shit talked” a lot, I think, because his writing style is a highly reproducible/imitatable/infectious one, however I prefer to think of the poems in “you are a little bit happier than i am” in a more positive, constructive manner. Namely, I see this book as one big writing prompt. Reading these poems makes me want to write and this is a book that I will probably come back to often when I feel uninspired. The poems in “you are a little bit happier than i am” feel genuinely exciting and I would rather read a book that is inspiring and exciting than a book that is not that.

Notes on the Methods

Where Do the Poems Take Place? >>> Each poem was assigned as either taking place in “reality” or in the narrator’s/author’s/Tao’s imagination. One poem seemed to take place in both in roughly equal amounts, so it was given a ½ point in each category.

Emotional Content >>> Each poem was assigned 1 to 3 words to describe its emotional content. Each word was counted equally and categorized “post hoc.”

“Identifiability” Scale >>>

My “Demographics”

“Inspiration” Scale >>>

ESPN Publishes End-of-the-Regular-Season Awards Thing

2010-04-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

Phase 2 is Complete

2010-04-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'm going to The New School next fall. I got a scholarship for something. I got rejected from 81.81818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181 percent of the schools I applied to. Here's a graph:

I feel relieved that my next 2 + 4/12 years has some certainty to it, though I also feel like my life isn't going to change at all by going to The New School, which is maybe the point of non-professional graduate school.

Blog Post

2010-04-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

I've been awake for one hour. I had to put socks on because it was/is a little cold.

Here's something I've been thinking about recently:

k, thanks

"Rabbit, Run" by John Updike

2010-04-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

I started reading this book because I want to read every basketball book ever written, both fiction and non, and this seems to be regarded as a 'classic' re: literary depictions of basketball and literature in general. Someone told me, and wikipedia just confirmed, that two (2) of the four and a half (4.5) "Rabbit" novels won Pulitzer Prizes. "Rabbit, Run" is not one of them. I am looking at the Pulitzer Prize wikipedia entry right now. I see that Saul Bellow's "Humboldt's Gift" won a Pulitzer Prize. I recently started reading that book but stopped reading it because I didn't like it. I'm not sure why I started reading it. I read "The Adventures of Augie March" a few years ago and I remember liking it. Is Saul Bellow dead? I've started and stopped reading a lot of books recently. I don't normally do this and I don't like doing this. Here's a list of books I've 'abandoned' for various reasons:

"Humboldt's Gift" by Saul Bellow (didn't like it)

"Steal Away: New and Selected Poems" by CD Wright (it seemed too long (240 pgs), didn't feel ready to dive into a CD Wright anthology although I like her work a lot)

"Light in August" by William Faulkner (borrowed this from my roommate - the cover fell off, felt bad, didn't want to ruin it more)

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver (library recalled it)

"Inter Ice Age IV" by Kobo Abe (read the first two pages, will probably read it in its entirety soon)

"Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy" by William Barrett (I'm reading this in spurts/chunks because it's non-fiction and this approach seems 'ok' for this kind of non-fiction)

I thought about abandoning "Rabbit, Run", but I finished it. A lot of times when I read novels, I go into 'fuck you mode' with about 100 pgs to go where my primary goal for the next 24-48 hrs is to finish the book whether I'm enjoying it or not. I did that with this book. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say by saying that. I enjoyed parts of this book. I felt some things. The narration seemed a bit inconsistent, but on purpose - like sometimes Updike would quote a character saying something then close the quote but ostensibly continue the dialogue via narration. He also used umlauts on the word "coordination", which was used 3 times in the book, I think.

I think I'd like to read the rest of the "Rabbit" books at some point not because I care about Rabbit Angstrom that much but because I'm interested to see where Updike takes things, whether all of the books are the same or not. Seems like serialized things don't usually maintain critical integrity, but "Rabbit" books do, at least according to the Pulitzer bros. Here's a meme, I think:

Andrew Weatherhead gets into Queens College, Wins Award, Paints 9 Foot Glass of Wine

2010-03-29T00:31:00.000-07:00

I got into Queens College, still waiting to hear from some other colleges.

I won the "West 10th Editors' Award"/$200 for my poem, "St. Patrick's Day".

I painted a 9 foot tall glass of wine to hang somewhere in my apartment.

Sitting in on Queens College MFA Workshop + 3 books of contemporary poetry

2010-03-07T14:40:00.001-08:00

A week and a half ago I sat in on a Queens College MFA workshop. Queens College is a great distance from where I live. I took the F train until there was no more F train and then I had to take a bus then I had to walk a little bit. While walking, I saw an African American couple screaming gibberish at each other. I couldn't tell if they were serious or not, or if they were mad at each other or not. I bypassed them quickly.

Once inside of Queens College, I went to the Student Union. I was over an hour early. I went to the bookstore. In the bookstore, I heard a 'Sublime' song and then a popular rap song from, like, 2002. I sent a few text messages that said things like "I'm at Queens College" and "this bookstore doesn't make sense". I walked through the aisles and thought about becoming really good at philosophy.

Then I hung out in the cafeteria quietly before going to the workshop. I ate a clif bar and drank some coffee.

In the English Department, I sat in a chair and waited for the program director. A guy sat next to me and asked me questions in a foreign accent. He made me feel a little nervous - he seemed emotionally unstable or something - and I tried to answer his questions tersely and definitively. I got out of my chair and looked at a window until he went away.

In the workshop, a gay guy talked to me at length about the Queens College MFA program. At one point, I stopped listening to him. Later, he made a joke to me and I looked at him.

I was told that I was not allowed to participate in the workshop. The workshop discussed 3 books. I will blog a little bit about each book now.

"School of The Arts" by Mark Doty

The poems in this book seem to be heavily based on Mark Doty's experience of reality. In one poem, the author/Mark Doty experiences the filming of "The Hours". He experiences his dog often. He does yoga in one poem, maybe two. On a piece of paper, I have written re: this book, "If dogs lived longer than humans we probably wouldn't like them as much."

"Wind in a Box" by Terrance Hayes

I read this book in the fall for Matthew Rohrer's "Advanced Poetry Workshop" and wrote 1-2 pages about it. Rereading those 1-2 pages is slightly embarrassing. I used the word "weltanschauung" at one point. I think I concluded that the book works really well "as a whole".

"Deepstep Come Shining" by C.D. Wright

I think this book is supposed to be one long poem, although I have seen parts of it 'anthologized' in her collected poems. A lot is made of eyes throughout the book/poem - things with eyes and things without eyes. I feel like C.D. Wright probably did a lot of research about eyes while writing this. At one point, a swan explodes or something. I think it's hit by lightning. There is also a recurring piano. A lot of phrases are repeated, although maybe 5-10 pages apart. This seems like a good way to make a large poem/book make sense in an 'intuitive' and maybe 'visceral' manner.

"Harmonium" by Wallace Stevens

2010-03-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

I read this because I'm going to attend as much of this Wallace Stevens conference as I can this weekend. Seems like a good opportunity. I don't have a job. I read on wikipedia that Wallace Stevens once got into a fistfight with Ernest Hemingway.

Here's a list of words in "Harmonium" that I don't know:

aspic
labials
girandoles
puissant
marguerite
coquelicot
tinct
lacustrine
unburgherly
prinks
fecund
nincompated
quotha
panoply
tanagers
demesne
rucks
coign
catechize
divagation
niggling
gemmy
invidious
paladin
prolegomena
propounding
psaltery
bibbing
pampean
dits
afflatus
verd
cozener
carked
chits
yarrow
suzerain
matinal
arointing
duenna
condign
ribaldries
ribands
tomtit
crimoline
exchequering
piebald
anabasis
halidom
cantilene
douceur
phylactery
palankeens
hibs
capuchins
gewgaws
buffo
convolvulus
caracoles
nave
citherns
grackles
princox
concupiscent
thridding
peignoir
rattapallax
alguazil
plinths
dithyramb
kermess

"The Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe

2010-02-23T13:08:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that the Japanese really like trapping people. In this book, a guy goes to some sand dunes and gets trapped. Some sand people put him in the bottom of a sand pit with this woman and he's supposed to help the woman shovel sand pretty much forever. A lot is made of sand, like how sand is kind of the opposite of water. I don't know, I think that's my own interpretation. Very early in the book, the point is made that sand had to come from something and that, before sand, there wasn't sand.

The guy seems incredulous all the time. He keeps asking the woman why she would want to spend her entire life shoveling sand, why she doesn't want to leave her sand pit, but she never really answers him. He gets really made at her. Soon, they start having sex.

The guy tries to escape every chance he gets. Pretty much the entire book is him trying to get out of the sand pit. He makes it out at one point, but then gets trapped again. His persistence is funny, depressing, and a little inspiring. I think he comes to realize that his life is better inside the sand pit, with the woman, than outside of the sand pit, without the woman, because there are a bunch of flashbacks when he's really dehydrated about how he "contracted" a "psychological venereal disease" from a prostitute or something in his life outside the sand pit. By the end of the book, I'm not sure if he really wants to escape even though he says he does.

Here are my favorite sentences:

Perhaps he would feel better if he slapped the naked woman.

The man felt sated, as if he had eaten too much sugar.

If they had ordered him to, he would have dropped his trousers and defecated before their very eyes.

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

2010-02-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

It took me maybe seven (7) months to finish this book. I started it in August when I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, Georgia, where my mom was born and where Carson McCullers was born. I went to Carson McCullers's house. There is a picture of it on my cell phone. For a long time I thought her name was Carson McCuthers.

I read half the book then put it away for a while then finished it later. I read somewhere that Carson McCullers's real first name is "Lula", but she renounced her feminism or something and decided to go by Carson instead. Carson is her middle name. One of the characters, "Mick", a girl, kind of seems androgynous for parts of the book. I think she's supposed to be a somewhat autobiographical representation of the author. Mick enjoys fighting and being "tomboyish" and loses her virginity to a Jewish boy who runs away afterward. At one point, Mick's little brother, "Bubber", shoots a girl in the face. After that, they don't call him "Bubber" anymore.

There are a lot of characters in this book, like "Infinite Jest", but the main character is, I think, a deaf-mute named Singer. At one point while reading the book I thought 'there is nothing sadder than a sad deaf-mute'. At the beginning of the book, Singer lives with his best friend, another deaf-mute named Antonapoulos, but then Antonapoulos goes away for some reason. Everyone in the town really likes Singer and they come and talk to him despite his being a deaf-mute, but, secretly, I guess, Singer doesn't like them that much. He only likes Antonapoulos. He spends a lot of time worrying about Antonapoulos, sending him gifts, and writing him letters that he never sends. (I think Antonapoulus was illiterate. I'm pretty sure he was.) At one point, the author 'reveals' a letter written by Singer to Antonapoulus. The letter is the saddest part of the book, I think, because Carson McCullers sets it up by saying how much Singer misses Antonapoulus, then, in the letter, Singer just 'rambles', about 'nothing'. It seems like Singer's loneliness is palpable here or something. I read this part on a subway and almost started crying.

Here are some of my favorite sentences, maybe in the comments section someone can arrange them to make a poem:

Since 1928 he had not enjoyed music.

'Pshaw! Double pshaw!' said Doctor Copeland furiously.

A little girl on the right combed her hair with a sticky red lollipop.

He was very dead.

I think this is my favorite book. I think this for a number of reasons, but I like the circumstantial reason of my mom's/Carson McCullers's birth place the best. Seems good, like this being my favorite book is not up to me. Also seems like a book not that many people read, might make me seem cool/different or something. It's got a pretty good title.

Phase 1 is Complete

2010-02-19T22:34:00.000-08:00

I sent in my final MFA application this week. These are the schools I applied to, in alphabetical order:

-Amherst
-Brooklyn College
-Brown
-Florida
-Houston
-Hunter College
-Iowa
-New School
-NYU
-Queens College
-UT Austin

The application process took roughly three (3) months.

Here's a graph:

Also, David Fishkind blogged about meeting me, my chapbook, and every poem in my chapbook.

Should I Go To This?

2010-02-17T13:49:00.001-08:00

If five (5) or more people type "yes" in the comments section, I will go to this, alone, and blog about it later.

Turnstyle Reading Series @ CUNY Graduate Center (2-9-10)

2010-02-13T20:11:00.000-08:00

This reading took place at 365 5th "Avenue", but I went to 365 5th "Street" instead. I went to 365 5th Street and it didn't exist. With little/no deliberation/hesitation, I calmly took a cab to 365 5th Avenue, found the reading, and went to the reading. I felt slightly proud of this decision making - like I had been "imbued", temporarily, with exceptional problem solving and stress reduction skills that would be useful in a standardized testing situation or a treasure hunt, or something. I missed the first two readers.

There were readers from each of the CUNY MFA Programs. I applied to all of the CUNY MFA Programs except City College because I didn't know they had an MFA program. Had I known, I would have applied. I tried to think of this reading as "scouting". Here is one sentence for each reader I saw:

Karen Clark read a poem about going to a Tina Turner concert.

Amy Veach read a story about the Netherlands.

John Weir read a story that included an "emo musical" at one point.

Ken L. Walker referred to the F train as a "pleasure worm".

Kaitlyn Greenidge read a story about a family that, as part of a science experiment, raised a monkey, from birth, as a sibling to normal human kids. (This may have been autobiographical.)

Robert Wargas was "a private investigator, a boxer, and a journalist before joining the Queens College MFA community."

Kevin Mullany read a poem called "The Rape of A Bicycle".

Jan Heller Levi wore a scarf, I think, maybe two.

"Eat When You Feel Sad" by Zachary German

2010-02-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

I bought this book at "Spoonbill and Sugartown" while it was snowing heavily and I received a 20% discount because they had an "impromptu" "snow sale". I started reading this book at "New York Muffins" where I ate a muffin and used the bathroom. Here is something I "tweeted" while at "New York Muffins". I finished this book the next day at NYU's library while eating a clif bar and drinking a coffee.

This book made me feel like I was playing "The Sims" computer game, or maybe like I was watching someone play "The Sims" computer game. This book is about "Robert". I just read an interview with Zachary German and he said that he split up all compound sentences and tried to make every sentence a fact. I had previously read excerpts from this book on bearparade.com and I was greatly excited by a moment in which the author inserts himself, in the first person, into the story. This moment was not in the book. I think this moment made me want to read Kurt Vonnegut and feel "young and naive" again. I never read "Slaughterhouse-Five".

Here is my favorite part of the book:

It's Thanksgiving. Robert is walking. He is next to train tracks. He is smoking a cigarette. He sees people. He is walking towards the people. He is near the people. The people are boys. One of the boys says "Hey, you have an extra cigarette?" Robert looks at the boy.

Robert says "Sor- uh, yeah." The boy walks to Robert. Robert hands the boy a cigarette.

The boy says "Thanks." The boy turns. The boy walks to the boys.

Robert says "Do you need a light?"

The boy says "Oh. Yeah." The boy turns. He looks at Robert. He walks to Robert. Robert strikes a match. He holds it to the boy's cigarette. The cigarette doesn't light.

Robert says "Shit. Sorry."

One of the boys says "I have a lighter." The boy turns. He walks to the boys.

Robert says "See ya." Robert walks. He drops his cigarette. Robert is near a bridge. There is a man and a woman. The man and the woman are holding fishing rods. Robert says "Any luck?"

The woman says "Some babies. Had to throw 'em back."

The man says "Got one nice one, though." The man lifts his hands in the air. He holds them a distance apart from one another. The man smiles. Robert smiles.

Robert says "Well, good luck."

The woman says "Thanks, baby." The woman looks at Robert. Robert walks.

There is also a good scene with a car crash and a scene in which Robert questions his sexuality. Reading this book made me feel like I feel when I watch the movie "Kids", I think.

This review seems relevant.

"Yes, Master" by Michael Earl Craig

2010-02-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

Of Michael Earl Craig, Matthew Rohrer has said, on two different occasions, about two months apart, in front of a roomful of people, "He works as a farrier, one who shoes horses." I have seen maybe two or three pictures of Michael Earl Craig and I imagine him looking like this:

No I don't. I don't know. Maybe.

Michael Earl Craig is probably really funny. Funny like Matthew Rohrer is funny. Michael Earl Craig went to Amherst. I'd like to go to Amherst. I applied to Amherst. I hear back in a few weeks. Michael Earl Craig is part of the reason I applied to Amherst. Tao Lin once asked him a really good question. Michael Earl Craig's poetry makes me want to do things that I sometimes feel like doing like drink whiskey, alone, in moderation, on a really windy night, while wearing blue sweatpants, and, read Michael Earl Craig's poetry. It's hard for me to classify "Yes, Master" as anything other than "ideal", I think. I wished it would go on forever.

While I was reading "Yes, Master" I kept track of my favorite lines/images, but there were too many so I stopped. Here are two of my favorite lines/images from the first half of the book:

A good anvil does not move, ever.

a bird no bigger than a grenade.

One poem is titled "Right Eye Is Hampered". One poem is about military officials crying and embracing while wearing wristwatches. My favorite poem is "Patron of the Buses". I'm going to type it and color code it to indicate what different sections reminded me of:

"Patron of the Buses"

The driver said we had five more minutes.
Some of us smoked. Someone passed around
a large bag of Cheetos.

The driver closed a book he'd been reading.
He said we were each like a single straight pin
moving noiselessly through a black hole.
And that this is how it would always be.

A shoe...a kind of slipper
was in the road.
As I bent down I thought:
no heel strap- and
no strap to fit around the heel.

We call that a mule said the driver.
(I had no idea why.)

I had no idea why.
I cleared my throat and indicated this.
I had Christopher Walken hair.
He said to get back on the bus,
to get back on the bus now.

*

Things seen from a bus at night:

through a narrow window
the blood-red walls of a study;

farmgrade yardlights raping
the January branches of
a Japanese maple;
a screaming woman running,
then stopping, then
turning around-

for I am a patron of the buses.

What else do you see? someone asked.
I said I saw a silk scarf dusted with talc.
I said I saw Belgian waffles, and lapsang souchong.
I said I saw a girl with a tattoo on her chest
of a beautiful bench, a bench in the garden.
It looked sturdy.
And I said that I could see now
that a child was out climbing
a very important elephant,
in the elephant's winter prison.

KEY/LEGEND

This time I took a bus to Boston and my friend threw up on the bus

Boy Scouts

This time someone in my poetry workshop wrote a poem about black holes and I wikipedia'd black holes and then watched a video about black holes on hulu

This girl I dated briefly who recently got a DUI

Not sure, maybe a homeless guy/talking to a homeless guy

Christopher Walken

This time I made a kid from my Boy Scout troop cry in the back of my mom's minivan when I threw a soda can at his head because he was being annoying

My old apartment on 1st Ave.

This time I took a train from New York to Chicago, alone. Also, this

My friend, Lisa

Michael Earl Craig

This time I found a scarf in the bathroom of the NYU Computer Lab, took the scarf, yet have never worn the scarf.

The Washington Square Diner. I don't know what lapsang souchong is.

Bushwick, Brooklyn

The last part reminds me of this and this

I Haven't Done a Link Post Yet

2010-02-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

This is cool.

This is good. I have discovered Chelsea Martin.

Those are some things I read this morning.

I made $1.80 by selling my chapbook at St. Mark's Bookshop.

"Gun, With Occasional Music" by Jonathan Lethem + Reading @ NYU (1-29-10)

2010-02-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

Reading

Jonathan Lethem read at NYU. He teaches at NYU. Before the reading I found this drawing by Matthew Rohrer's son:

I talked to Matthew Rohrer before the reading, but I don't remember if anything of note was said. Jonathan Lethem read from his new book, "Chronic City". There were funny parts, people laughed. I was kind of reminded of "Seinfeld" in that a series of inconveniences and coincidences built upon each other to lead to 'ludicrous' dialogue. At one point I was 'overcome' by the idea of killing an Eagle by throwing a mouse at it really hard. I think I laughed out loud at this, but it was appropriate because Jonathan Lethem was reading a funny passage at the time. Afterwards I overheard him say that he's read every drug novel ever.

Gun, With Occasional Music

While reading this book and after reading this book, I listened to this, watched this, and read an interview in "The Missouri Review", although I'm not sure to what end because none of these things mentioned "Gun, With Occasional Music". These things talked about his recent work, which is far more critically acclaimed, I think. Maybe I should have read "Chronic City" for relevancy purposes. At one point, it was made aware to me that he wrote a short story about wearing an exoskeleton that gives you the powers of Michael Jordan. I want to read this.

'That said', "Gun, With Occasional Music" is a really good book title. The book has talking animals and genetically altered babies called "Babyheads". The babyheads are really pissed about being babyheads, so they sit around and drink all day in "Babybars", but they still wear jammies and onesies and, I think, talk in baby voices. Here's a really good sentence:

I thought about apes killing kangaroos, and maybe kangaroos killing sheep.

The book is narrated by a Private "Inquisitor" and he goes around asking a lot of questions in the future, when questions are deemed offensive. He spends the entire book trying to solve a crime. He is somewhat sexually impotent because his penis nerve endings were replaced with vagina nerve endings for some reason. He solves the crime. I'm not really sure what the crime was. The crime feels abstract and inconsequential for ~95% of the book. I think it was a murder or something. The characters did a lot of drugs, but the drugs were legal most of the time.

Lydia Davis @ NYU (1-28-10)

2010-02-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

Lydia Davis is vaguely distressing to me. When I studied abroad in Paris, she spoke to my fiction workshop. I don't know how this happened. I remember thinking at the time that she was, perhaps, a little bit pretentious. After she spoke to our class, I walked away quickly and ate the French version of a salami sandwich by myself. I think the title "Samuel Johnson is Indignant" is the worst book title ever - I thought this then and I think this now - but I think it would be good for me to write things and title them "_________ is Indignant" over and over again until I get sick of it, but keep doing it, then stop, and then start doing it again maybe five years later.

I read my first Lydia Davis story approximately two years ago, in preparation for her speaking to my class in Paris. I don't remember what it was or anything about it. I bought her recently published "Collected Stories" at 'The Strand' and read 66 pages in preparation for the NYU reading. Her wikipedia page seems disproportionate to her literary career/importance, or at least my perception of it.

Lydia Davis is vaguely distressing to me, I think, because many of her stories aren't plot driven, it seems. It's hard to say how they're constructed. I can't identify their construction. The construction is 'transparent', maybe. They seem like very elaborate character/philosophical sketches that still manage to be 'worthwhile' and 'significant' and 'intriguing'. If a teacher asked me to write a short story in the style of Lydia Davis, I would have a very hard time doing that. I could read more maybe.

There was one story in the 66 pages that I read before the NYU reading that I liked a lot, much more than the other ones that I read. It's called "Break it Down". I've read it two or three times now. It's about a guy who is trying to count up the monetary value of the time he spent with this one girl, whom he seems desperately in love with, though she doesn't seem as in love with him. The story begins in third person, then alternates between a hypothetical second person and first person, which kind of feels like a Borges exercise or something. I like Lydia Davis's 'reckless disregard' of sentences in this story. Sometimes a sentence lasts for an entire page, it seems. I also think that Lydia Davis does a really good 'job' of writing as a man. The first time I read it, I got a 1/2, non-abstract, boner, I think. I remember thinking "this is so good" and wanting to show it to someone else in the NYU gym lobby, preferably a girl, but I didn't do this.

Lydia Davis read at NYU and I took some notes to blog about in a homemade moleskin notebook, including, I think, the phrase "metaphysical bleakness", but I accidentally dropped the homemade moleskin into a toilet at the NYU library after I pooped in it. I still have the notebook, but it's wrapped in paper towels and I'm afraid to unwrap it. I remember the first piece she read was an autobiography based on facts that people had 'fucked up' re: her. For example, one part of the 'piece' was called "Occupation" or something and she listed a bunch of occupations that she's been 'accused' (falsely) of 'holding', some of which were humorous/ironic. I feel like John Ashbery could also get away with this kind of 'piece'. She read some other things, then the last thing she read was a series of 10 'shorts' inspired by/originated from parts of her forthcoming translation of "Madame Bovary". The phrase "metaphysical bleakness" was used in reference to the translation process, I think. She signed my book.

"The Ancient Book of Hip" by D.W. Lichtenberg + Reading @ Book Thug Nation (1-23-10)

2010-02-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

I took one to two shots of whiskey, alone, on a street in Brooklyn, before this reading. I 'traded' a brand new paperback copy of Jonathan Lethem's "Gun, with Occasional Music" and two dollars for the first edition hardcover of the same book, which I found on a shelf. Shortly after this transaction, someone told me to read Donald Barthelme, and I said I would. I spent roughly 15 minutes waiting for someone to open the complimentary bottle of wine before I realized that it was a 'screw-top' bottle of wine and that it had already been open for an indefinite amount of time.

Someone read before D.W.L. but I don't remember his name. He was kind of old. He said that he had written a book called "Tiny Fucking Tim", which seemed pretty sweet. I think he almost started crying during his reading, but it was hard to tell. I remember thinking during his reading that it would be 'totally sweet' if "hockey" were, abstractly, a genre of literature, and I became very disappointed when I realized that this would probably never happen. I also noticed that it's really hard to take a drink of water in front of a crowd of people without looking 'retarded'.

D.W.L. read a story that I think I'd heard part of before on youtube, then he read some poems from his book "The Ancient Book of Hip", which is about Williamsburg, primarily, which is where the reading took place. In the author bio, D.W.L. writes that "he hopes one day to meet J.D. Salinger." Sometimes he removes the spaces in between words in his poems and at one point while reading this book I forgot if "New Zealand" was/is a state or a country.

This was my second time seeing D.W.L read. The first time was at the NYU Undergraduate Reading in December, which I read at. I sat next to D.W.L. at that reading and I remember thinking that his 'demeanor' kind of reminded me of 'The Beastie Boys'. After I read, he gave me a thumbs up, so I 'presented' him with a copy of my book when I saw him this time (@ Book Thug Nation, 1-23-10). He reviewed it favorably via twitter.

"Blind Huber" by Nick Flynn + Reading at Strand (1-25-10)

2010-01-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

Blind Huber

This book is about bees. One poem is about a wasp. I think I learned a lot about bees by reading this book. Nick Flynn explains the preceding 80 pages in the last two pages of the book:

Conjecture, text fragments and carbon dating suggest the rise of human civilization coninciding with the rise of bee-culture. Entire libraries, it is said, were devoted to the study of the honeybee, though most of these libraries were burnt and plundered, along with the rest of the ancient world, and the knowledge is lost. Francois Huber, the 18th-century French beekeeper, blind since childhood as a result of scarlet fever, discovered, or rediscovered, much of what is now known about the honeybee. Some of what is known is that the majority of the hive is made up of workers, who assume a variety of roles for the maintenance of the hive. All workers are female: genetically, each worker is considered identical. Drones are males, somewhat graceless and clumsy, larger than any worker, yet compromising only a small percentage of the hive's overall inhabitants. They neither guard nor forage, their role being solely to impregnate the virgin queen, after which they die or are killed. Huber focused much of his energies on solving what he called the queen's mystery, specifically, how she becomes impregnated, what transpires in the air. After her initial nuptial flight as a virgin, the queen spends the rest of her life as a virtual slave, never leaving the darkness of the hive, continuously laying the eggs that will become the workers. The only difference between the queen and a worker is that the queen is raised on a diet of royal jelly, which transforms her, the composition of which is still somewhat mysterious. Only one queen at a time can exist in each hive. A queen can live for three or four years; a worker, depending upon the level of activity, lives from two months to a year. Burnens (his first name lost) was Huber's lifelong assistant. Their experiments spanned fifty years.

This book made me reconsider the 'career-arc' of bees, which is slightly more complicated than I originally imagined. For example, if you see a bee on the street or whatever, it's hive was probably destroyed and it will die soon. Also, bees will sometimes enter foreign hives to steal honey. This was detailed in a poem called "Workers (robbers)".

Reading @ Strand

Nick Flynn read from his new book, "The Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir". He was introduced by the guy who wrote "Jarhead" and Stephen Elliott asked questions on two different occaisons. One audience member, in asking a question, described Nick Flynn's book as "candid" and "honest". The audience seemed to be full of 30-somethings who wanted to write but they weren't sure how. There was a lot of head nodding and people made "hmm!" sounds often. At one point, the guy sitting next to me put a dollar bill in his mouth and held it there for some time.

Franchesca Chabrier and Christopher Cheney @ The Poetry Project (1-22-10)

2010-01-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

First Franchesca and Chris read together, then Chris read by himself, then Franchesca read by herself. Here's Franchesca on "RateMyProfessors.com". I ate a Clif Bar before this reading. I think I was tired. Here's a list of things I thought during the reading. (I'm going to write them in the present tense.)

Franchesca+Chris

-I want to be alone on a commercial airplane while it's in the air, like I want no one else to be on the plane but for it to be flying somehow. I would sit as close to the center of the plane as I could and stare directly in front of me.

-I wonder if they've ever put a vending machine on an airplane.

-I wonder what it would be like to witness someone giving birth on an airplane. I wonder if this has ever happened ('it must've, right?')

-How will the Amherst MFA program be remembered in like 10 years? 100? Is it a scene/movement? Will it be 'classified' one day?

-Sometimes Franchesca and Chris read the same poem twice in succession, that's nice.

Chris

-Was my Paris Review subscription a mistake?

-Before the reading, I overheard Chris talking to his friend in the bathroom about wanting to see "The Wolfman", "badly", and I'm pretty sure I judged him for this.

Franchesca

-It would be cool/interesting to put a baby in a time machine and send it somewhere. It wouldn't know the difference.

-When I'm alone in my airplane, I'd like to see a flock of orcas fly by the window.

-It seems like Franchesca might cry or might want to cry even though her poems are good and kind of funny...maybe I am misunderstanding them, maybe they are actually really sad poems. This seems to be something that authors struggle with frequently: having their work mistook as funny when it's actually so sad.

Here's a poem by Franchesca that's really good. She read it. It was published by notnostrums.

Cheek Against Soft Pumpkin Fur

I am me, but I am a cow.
You are a river.
You think I am cute.
You call me kitten-cow.
You are a river, but your water
looks like a hologram,
and when I look at you,
I see a fake reflection.
You tell me I am wearing
five scarves even though
I have mittens on.
I throw a coin at you,
but you are not a fountain.
You ask me to meow
for you, but I won’t.
I feed you chocolate, and we play that game
where I write on your leg with my finger.
You brush my hair for 2 hours
while I spell things like:
cheek against soft pumpkin fur, and
I would come to you on a rubber gull.
The eyes and the faces become less easy
to make out in the night,
but we go on and on.
Wax ponyfish. Japanese fog.
I am stupid at stopping.

Olga Ast and Matvei Yankelevich @ Bluestockings Bookstore (1-22-10)

2010-01-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

Olga Ast

I had never heard of Olga Ast before. She's roughly 50 years old and Russian. She gave a lecture/reading about visual representations of time. There was a video and a slideshow. I'm pretty sure the slideshow was just the PDF manuscript of her book. She seemed very nervous and 'hurried'. She, herself, seemed like a visual representation of time, but I don't think she realized it. At one point she discussed the nature of time in the title of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", calling it, for example, "Crime, then Punishment" and "Crime/Punishment". While Olga was lecturing/reading, the bookstore passed around a donation tray and there was a $2 bill in the tray, I noticed.

Matvei Yankelevich

Matvei runs Ugly Duckling Presse and one time I interviewed him for a piece of journalism that ended up being existentially very depressing for me. When I interviewed him, he gave me a large stack of promotional Ugly Duckling titles that now take up ~1/2 of a shelf in my room. Matvei read from his translations of Daniil Kharms, who seems existentially fucked and 'really sweet'. Here are some "excerpts" published in Octopus Magazine #5 that I just found and read:

from THE BLUE NOTEBOOK

1.

My opinion of traveling is succinct: when traveling, do not go too far or else you might see something that will even be impossible to forget. And if anything settles in the memory too stubbornly, a person first starts to feel uneasy, and then it gets quite difficult to keep up the vivacity of the soul.

2.

So, for instance: one watchmaker, Comrade Badaev, could not forget a phrase he heard once long ago: “If the sky were crooked, it wouldn’t make it any lower.” Comrade Badaev didn’t really get this saying, it irritated him, he found it unreasonable, even lacking any kind of sense, malignant even, because its claim was obviously incorrect (Comrade Badaev felt that a knowledgeable physicist could say something regarding “the height of the sky” and would question the expression “the sky is crooked.” Were this phrase to get to Pearlman, Comrade Badaev was certain, Pearlman would tear its meaning to shreds, the way a young pup tears up house slippers), obviously antagonistic to the normal pattern of European thought. If indeed the claim contained in this saying were true, then it was too unimportant and worthless to speak of. And in any case, hearing this phrase just once, one ought right away to forget it. But he couldn’t make that happen: Comrade Badaev constantly remembered this phrase and suffered greatly.

3.

It is healthy for a person to know only that which he is supposed to. I can offer the following incident as an example: one person knew a little more, and another a bit less than they were supposed to know. And what happened? The one that knew a bit less got rich, and the one that knew a little more lived his whole life with simply adequate means.

4.

Since ancient times, people have wondered about what was smart and what was stupid. In that regard, I remember this incident: when my aunt gave me a writing desk as a gift, I said to myself: “Well now I’ll sit down at this desk and the first thought I come up with at this desk will be especially smart.” But I could not come up with an especially smart thought. Then I said to myself: “Okay. I wasn’t able to come up with an especially smart thought, so I’ll come up with an especially stupid one.” But I couldn’t come up with an especially stupid thought either.

5.

Everything that’s extreme is difficult. The middle parts are done more easily. The very center requires no effort at all. The center is equal to equilibrium. There’s no fight in it.

6.

Is it necessary to get out of equilibrium?

7.

While traveling, do not give yourself over to daydreams, but fantasize and pay attention to everything, even the insignificant details.

8.

When sitting in place do not kick your feet.

9.

Any old wisdom is good if somebody has understood it. A wisdom that hasn’t been understood may get covered in dust.

10.

There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him any more.

January 7, 1937

Daniil Kharms seems to transcend genre (i.e. poetry/fiction). He was imprisoned because he was too crazy for his time/place. He died in prison. I have a strong desire to read the Daniil Kharms oeuvre and also to delete the first sentence of this paragraph.

Matvei also read from his own book, Boris by the Sea.

After the reading, I did nothing for about 15 minutes and then I approached Matvei and reminded him about the time that I interviewed him. Then I asked him a question that I already knew the answer to. I felt good about this - 'networking' maybe.

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (Book+Movie)

2010-01-24T18:02:00.001-08:00

Book

I read the majority of this book at the Walgreens on Union Square, alternately waiting to get a prescription filled and dealing with an insurance issue. I think this book is good because it made this decidedly 'bleak' situation seem far less 'bleak' by comparison. Maybe this book is about the 'daily grind'. I recommend this book to people who are having trouble living, because the characters in "The Road" are having a lot of trouble living and you can either a) sympathize, or b) realize that the pre-apocalypse is better than the post-apocalypse.

I think the greatest disappointment of this book comes in the realization that "the fire", which "the man" and "the boy" are carrying, is an abstraction. There are many such moments of abstract 'cryptic'/'biblical' language, and I think "the man" called "the boy" "God" at one point.

I really like that the book features 1.5 line spacing (1st edition hardcover), which is the ideal line spacing, I think. I also like that there aren't chapters or anything, just an extra space in between paragraphs every so often. Felt very 'readable'.

Movie

I watched the movie while slightly hungover on a Sunday morning over a span of approximately 4 to 5 hours on my computer in my room. I pooped once during the course of watching the movie and played guitar for roughly 45 minutes at one point.

Earlier in the week, before watching the movie, I wrote this to my friend over Gmail chat: 'mccarthy wrote a book with a film adaptation in mind, but he wrote the book in such a way that the book would inevitably be superior to the film'. I still think this is true. "The fire" was abstracted from the very beginning of the movie.

I'm told that Nick Cave did the music, but I didn't think the music was that good. I repeatedly thought it would be really funny/good if there were 'strange' extradiegetic sounds inserted into the soundtrack or if the soundtrack were less 'obvious', like if it were 'jazz' or something instead of sad violins. Maybe a bunch of accordions playing the same thing the violins played would have been sweet.

There were several things that were in the movie but were not in the book, like backpacks. Backpacks weren't in the book. Also, for some reason, everyone in the movie that wasn't "the man" or "the boy" had fucked up thumbs, like really short thumbs that were 'barely' opposable and the movie made sure you saw their thumbs and how fucked up they were. I didn't understand this.

Also, at one point in the movie, "the man" uses a stapler, I think, to close a wound on his leg. In the book, he just sewed it up with some string or something. I'm not sure why this change was made, but I like it.

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