Foundation Pit

2011-09-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

Life then bounces through a soiled hallway
A repeated joke at the end of the table
That gathers more and more laughs
With every drink

The Consensus

2011-06-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

He, that is I, that is you

Have unmet obligations looming digitally

In a cloud of future scenarios, which the experts agree

Augur ruin or at the very least highly unpleasant circumstances

Little it seems has been done to either cause

Or prevent these events

No one is to blame, despite what many say

And everyone is accountable, despite what many do not say

At this juncture it would be advisable to cease all activity

But it would mean an end to the entire endeavor, and although this

Is probably the only way to avoid the collapse of the entire system

Few are willing to even consider the course of action

One can be certain that everyone agrees on one thing

We are on the brink of something, but since this has always been the only point of consensus

And since nothing really has changed for the worse or the better

The plan continues to be drawn by the very actions it is meant to deter

Tiger Beckett

2009-01-17T16:47:00.000-08:00

in the jungles of the tigers's heart

the same jungles are burning

while your mother draws calligrams

with a wooden spoon

the soup of her heart

fogs the eyes of her windows

she hears the songs in the subway

they are inaudible

II.

the tunnels of this imagined city sleep in the ground

a thousand years before their construction

in the dumb myths of the savages

who skin the most beautiful princess for their gods

she rises with agni’s smoke

into cerulean blue

the drums keeping time

the air is full of our cries

CHECK OUT THE NEW ANTHOLOGY

2009-01-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

CAPITALIST PIGS!

GO TO JACKET MAGAZINE

AND CHECK OUT THE NEW CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY!

New Year

2008-12-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

With things almost ending/But not quite ending /Nothing seems to end /Through the white noise of last week’s dream /The relatives come /An eager spirit haunts us /Like a pornographic treatise from the 18th century / We feel old /And Babble incoherently / Snow falls /It is December 26th 2008 /A pink headless corpse with two bright blue eyeballs watches our every move /At the mall /A limousine makes a wide ox cart turn /With nowhere to park /The driver slowly circumambulates the lot /An hour later he is still there /In the car /On the way back from shopping /A female reporter tells the usual story of a recent natural disaster /Figures and numbers /7.8; 7.9; 1976; 1989; 9000, 250,000; 70,000 /The curious part of the story is that the Chinese Decided to make the place into a park /And tourism is predicted to go up by 25% /At around this time /A fat baby grabs a plastic toy off the tree /Dogs throw up grandmas’ fudge /Anxious step-moms step out for a cigarette /At one point you stand at the mirror /Thinking somewhere else /And then notice the equable look /Of a cheap plastic Buddha

Fish

2008-12-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

gregorovius thought that somewhere chestov had written about aquariums
with a removable glass partition which could be taken out any time
and that the fish, who was accustomed to his compartment, would
never try to go over to the other side. he would come to a point in the water,
turn around, and swim back, without discovering that the obstacle was gone,
that all he had to do was to keep on going forward...

Danse Russe

2008-11-25T11:22:00.000-08:00

when grandma is sleeping
and the cat in the kitchen
is sleeping
and the moon is a pale-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if i in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my bookshelves
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"i am eating, eating.
i was born to eat borsch,
i am best so!"
if i admire the sour cream, my spoon,
your cabbage, beets, potatoes
against the yellow drawn shades—

who shall say i am not
the happy genius of my household?

Man in the Park

2008-11-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

The Voice of the Angels

Everything
you say
may be used
against you.

Yippee!

2008-11-04T20:05:00.001-08:00

The Wedding

2008-10-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Eastward and the Orangutan

I.

Eastward and the orangutan sing a song
In a bar outside of the world.
They do not engage history.
The internet has been down for two days.

II.

They are at a wedding.
The bride looks stunning in her
Narrow notch lapel with boutonnière.

The orangutan takes a sip from a 32 oz. plastic mug
Full of vermouth.

Two women sit chatting with Eastward about his new film.
The women look stunning
In their narrow notch lapel with boutonnière.

Only Jojo notices the sadness in Eastward’s eyes.
He can hear those ghostly Morricone whistles
Which his great-grandmother would send across the Atlantic.

And where did they bury her?
And why am I making another order?
And who is Jojo?

The Pillory

2008-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

If we could only use the pillory to reprimand bad executive decisions, I would have more faith in laissez faire capitalism.

Как Писать Как Сорокин

2008-09-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

when i was at the university
in the professor's office
the grey haired professor said
that i should be careful about becoming an academic
looking down at me from his wizard's accent
he said that if i wanted to be a writer
i should probably pick some job that wouldn't drain my mind
he said that he once also wrote
and i imagine him in 1965
writing sorokin shorts
lying in a long coat, perhaps on a bed
perhaps in a large old bathtub
half full, a bottle of jameson's or some other cheap brown
next to his left hand, which hangs over the tub
twitching to some obscure baroque tune
once played in a stuffy hall by his ex-lover

South Ossetia

2008-08-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

The initial coverage of the war between Russia and Georgia was quite terrible, and once again made me question the integrity of the west's finest news organizations. The thing most troubling about this coverage was that it almost completely ignored the Battle of Tskhinvali and the injuries suffered by the Ossetian people.

I support neither Saakashvili or Putin. However, in this case Saakashvili is clearly the principle aggressor -there is nothing more craven than using civilian lives in order to instill pity in your allies. Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't love Georgia, or that I support Medvedev or Putin.

As always it is the politics that is rotten.

Recently I went on the radio to talk about the conflict, and I think it was a pretty good show. Check it out at RadioActive.

On the Anniversary of Prigov's Death

2008-07-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

Prigov and Rubenstein fighting in the Kitchen

It's been a long time since I've written anything here. Things have been busy and busty, surreptitious and pulchritude, osculation, and recently I've been told to use a little craven Tact...anyway... Here is to Prigov and Rubenstein, for adding a playful, gamesome, absurd, happy, face to the generally morose often complacent face of Russian poetry.

Kids These Days

2008-05-23T10:44:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time I stood in line at the grocery store to buy cat food, and heard this time honored phrase: "I just don't get it: what is it with kids these days anyway?" I thought about the answer: MTV, Reality TV, Tevo, (i.e. television, television, Dante, The Karate Kid, kids these days, etc...my mind wandered). Then I looked over to see a newspaper with the image of a Muslim woman holding a baby. The message being: "Look they have little babies just like the rest of us."

Walking home, my backpack full of ground up animal byproduct I would feed the large black cat sleeping on my porch, I thought about kids and Muslims. I soon came to the thought that kids are like Muslims. They get a bad rap because of the loud obnoxious ones, or the ones who can't write a decent short story so they turn to the gun, but all in all the majority of them are quietly masturbating with their mother's lotion, or scribbling obsenities on the pages of Vogue. They are an oppressed people sure, but most aren't nearly as irksome or truculent as the bad ones make them out to be. Most can even spell, and actually want to be part of the larger world of responsibilities. They want to vote, travel, and have decent paying jobs with good health care benefits. So the next time you see a kid, don't cower in fear or think about what he really wants to do if he were only given the resources, but remember that you were like that once --you too were once not allowed to vote, walk the city during a school day, or purchase a bottle of wine for your loved ones.

The Critics

2008-05-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

most critics know almost nothing about art because they constantly use the criteria of the past
when art is obviously an experimental thing that happens only in the present
so that the critic is always necessarily at best one step behind

the argument would be that there are laws
and archetypes
that are the critics heuristic bag

well that is true
and in this way innovation can be measured
but still when something truly new and important comes along

the critics are almost always at a loss
but of course
just because the critics are at a loss doesn't mean something interesting is happening

2008

2008-03-18T21:50:00.001-07:00

I am returning to this abandoned project. Look for poems in Jacket and Word Without Borders sometime next month. There should also be an entire issue of Jacket, dedicated to contemporary Russian poetry, in the fall.
Here is a piece I translated the other day:
A Room

good-man. grew. and people
do the right thing for the wrong reasons. don’t follow someone
just because they have a good track record. the divine approach is so that every word is not the author’s i.e. the work excavated is placed inside the museum with no tag. thus it is not a recording of the past, but a reference inside the present. giving up the ghost. giving up whatever thrill the past had held. giving up being what it is. it is not our failure which strikes us as remarkable but our impunity. I say these things alone in a small crowded room full of books and other debris. I say these words into a small crowded room at 7 pm on a March morning. it is cold outside. my neighbor seems to have lost his mind. an odd thing to say. today I feel as if I am talking with other people’s words, that everything is an unknowing quotation from a book I probably wouldn’t read unless I was on a plane or a toilet. my neighbor seems to have lost his mind. he is riding circles around his house on a motorcycle, tearing up the brown muddy lawn, his lips moving something incomprehensible. now he circles around a leafless cherry tree in the backyard. I saw this through the chainlink fence, which replaced the old red wood fence that I loved as a kid. or did I hate it, because even then it was brittle, and threatened to break under my weight. I can see this through the chainlink fence, which replaced the red, wooden, fence that fell last year under the weight of a three day snow storm. that day in the snow, everything subsumed by it. Simon and I went to the park and found a mound of snow on a bench. the brilliant quiet air was so magic and still that for one of the only times in our time together we both walked attune and in silence. there was no one in the park, and our tracks meandered between trees as if we were Adam and Eve –good enough to see the transformation of the garden from life to peace. in this sublime mood we passed a bench with a large mound of snow, vaguely possessing the contours of a man on his side. we stopped, and I stuck the shape with a stick. it was indeed a man, and underneath the bench was an old yellow suitcase. we opened it. we opened it and it was full of clean linens. that was all. that day everything was magic and separate under the snow. we found a mound of snow on a bench in the park and when I hit it with a stick it was a man. the papers said he must have been there before the beginning of the storm—froze the night before—froze the night before the storm. they said that it was highly unusual for a man to have been left like that for nearly four days in such a public area. how little we see of death these days. even in the form of snowmen. I am thinking of the galleys now, or even the lack of proper medical facilities, when men and women died dying in the rooms of the house where everyone else did their living. it is almost impossible to think of children dying, because it is only morons who believe a boy of four years doesn’t understand death, or that while watching his dying sister he sees a little girl and not a woman. the papers said he was there for nearly four days. how little we see of death, and when we do see death we mistake it for sleep or something else entirely. I was thinking of the galleys just now, and what public execution must have taught small children, besides the obvious things not worth mentioning. or for instance consider the Indian practice of bride burning. what is all this? finding some connection and justification in some ancient text for the atrocity our souls still desire despite the façade of political progress usually referred to as “democracy.” take the books you like and burn them. it is best if the books you burn were written by someone you love –for instance a past lover, whose story involves words like “absconder” “timidity” “encumbrance” “bemused” “love” “magic” “mysticism” “child” “fear” “a loss of decency and growing heartache no one could have predicted.” these are your words soldier –that sun ain’t going anywhere. you abandon her for a chance at peace or a younger lover who waited for you night and day month after month year after year who loved you. take her letters, the clothes she wore, the pills she left in the cupboards, and burn them in the privacy of your own home, in the kitchen sink or the toilet. as the small fire grows take your own letters, the books you read, any money laying around the house, the photos in your late father’s desk, the cigarettes you only have the courage to smoke when drunk, the grey rhino hanging from a tree above the flood waters, the Bolshevik spy in the same tree with a camera in his shoe when the negro blind women walked the shores of Martinique thinking about her late husband who had always been faithful to her or so she thought, the words floating in the white space pinned to the wall with remarkable computerized precision, a trail of wagons headed for Treblinka, a trail of wagons headed for California, a dumb Jew walking from Moscow to Paris in 1937 during the height of Stalin’s terror, which he believed, and in a way was right to believe, believing to the day he died that it was essential for the survival of everything, officer after officer shooting themselves, or flying planes into buildings, while their families waited it out at home or in some mass grave on a Japanese island now claimed by the Russians who fought in Afghanistan and lost. who standing over the small fire feeding it pencils, receipts, holiday cards///eventually if you keep this up
eventually
who is that man
the lips he has
when was the last time
you remember
think
faster pig
hurry hog
who is he
you want it more
you want more
say it
who is he
who is the man responsible
look harder think better
the books burning in every room now
the sound of the motorcycle circling in the back as April crawls out again
from under winter that no longer can contain not knowing whether the circumstances or the recourse is to blame

By A.S. Pushkin

A Response

2008-01-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

I believe the contemporary poet must have some of the character qualities depicted above. A friend of mine sent me an email about my November 19th post. Here was my reply: I think you are completely right. I was just throwing some ideas out there. But I certainly believe good poetry is ostensive in that it points to things and then leaves. Instead of telling a linear story it says:

Here is this
and this
and this

ok bye

Let the reader piece it all together -that is the fun in reading poetry. Also, I truly believe any poet writing today must believe she is sincerely better, at expressing the current condition, than any predecessor, if not, then what is the point of reading contemporary poetry. Of course, as you say: why should the contemporary poet think she is better if she is only adding "changing" the canon? Here is a question: Is Einstein a "better" physicist than Isaac Newton? I think a lot of people would say the question is nonsensical, because the two geniuses shouldn't be compared. I agree, but I also think that when a contemporary artist (be she scientist, poet, pastry chef, etc.) must truly think that what she is doing is the best, better than anything before her.

Publications

2007-12-26T17:57:00.000-08:00

Looking back on the year I feel like I've barely achieved anything: most of the authors I wanted to translate are still on the to do list, I have no idea which PhD programs fit my interests and needs, and I haven't applied to any translation grants. However, the publication side of things is not entirely hopeless. My own book came out in Moscow, I've had something like 15 translations accepted for various magazines, and my attendance at ALTA made me feel that my efforts may be obscure, but are not entirely isolated. For those of you who read Russian I encourage you to check out some of my poems on LitKarta or TextOnly. For those of you who have $5 to spare go buy My Imagined Funeral (my book) online. (Although, the site that carries it is in Russian. HA! Good luck.) Merry Merry.

Davydov Reading

2007-12-15T19:16:00.001-08:00

I just did a little editing on the Davydov interview I posted so long ago. Reading through it reminded me that Davydov, like many Russian poets, is a protean character --impossible to contain in any specific category. He is both a traditional formalist and ceaseless experimenter. For those of you who are interested here is a video of him reading. He is a bit melodramatic in this one.

Russian Parliamentary Elections

2007-12-02T14:56:00.000-08:00

Yevdokia Ivanova prepares to vote while her son Pyotr cuts wood in the village of Markovo,

Kasparov, who was jailed for five days after a protest last weekend, spoiled his ballot by writing on it "Other Russia," the name of his opposition umbrella group.

Let us consider the names of Russia's different political parties:

Liberal Democrats (basically fascists)
Communists (the same ones we know and love)
United Russia (the scary party that has made Russian network television unwatchable)
Other Russia (headed by Russian chess champion Gary Karparov)
Apple (no affiliation with Steve Jobs)
Just Russia (what else is there to say)

There are many others, but I think this bunch will do.
Looking at just the names of these parties one wonders how anyone voted in the first place. The parties are either the opposite of their name (e.g. the Liberal Democrats), or seem to have a complete lack of creativity. I would think a party, positing itself as anti-establishment could come up with a name better than "Other Russia". Of course three of the names above do just this. Of these I think Apple is the closest to achieving the real potential of a great party name, but the Russians could do better. I was thinking these parties could go back to the old Russian tradition of employing poets as propagandizers; I am sure there are poets out there who could put together some great agitprop.

Politics in contemporary Russia is a dreary business, so in the spirit of thinking happy thoughts in the midst of a terrible situation I suggest you think of a country that isn't completely politically fucked today.

Here is a question:
Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world?

Diatribe

2007-11-19T23:05:00.001-08:00

Looking at this photo I am reminded of a conversation about poetry. In the conversation I talked about poetry being ostensive (in the Wittgensteinian sense of an ostensive definition) --I said that poetry points to something. The "I" of the poem points to memories, concepts, "mind stuff" inside the reader.

Pictures do the same thing. The criteria used to distinguish good photographs are the same criteria used to distinguish good poems. Now, a good photograph isn't just one that is clean; it is good because it points to the right event in the viewer's personal and cultural memory. I am no photographer, and from the technical perspective this photo might be seen as a failure, but ostensively it points in the right direction. Obviously I am biased, but I think that even if I were to come upon this image randomly I would pause for a moment. The composition reminds me of Gustav Klimt, and the profile reminds me of Anna Akhmatova. These two sparks are enough to make me stop and think: "Who is she?" "Why is she smiling?" "Where is all this taking place?" My attempt to answer these questions is the poem created by the image. It is like that moment when Walter Pater encounters the Mona Lisa in Studies in the History of the Renaissance.

I find it odd that people still talk about Adorno's saying about poetry after the Holocaust, but rarely raise the possibility of poetry after Dickinson or Eliot. For me it seems just as much a challenge, and every poem for me has to be audacious enough to say: "me": "I am just as, or even more, worthy".

The poem must point to the right place inside the reader. In this sense a poem is a sort of field marshal. It does not try and coax its readers, but orders them to attention, and proceeds to give precise instructions to get the job done. Which is? Which is that near impossible task of showing an individual a "better" way of thinking. How does the poet convince someone to think "better"? Here you were reader, thinking your thoughts and now I, the poem, propose you listen to me, because I think better for you. This is absurd, and this is precisely why poems are almost never read anymore, and also why the few readers still left are incredibly passionate. If a poem does actually manage to make us think "better" it is a profound experience in our time. Readers (American readers especially) are recalcitrant --they have their own "opinions". A poem is a field marshal; it is not a piece of fiction which coaxes the reader into a kind of docile pleasure. Good fiction beguiles the reader like an experienced odalisque. It is no surprise that fiction should do so much better in a world where the "consumer is always right".

A poem doesn't have time, it only has one chance to point in the "right" direction. The problem with most poems today is that they don't point anywhere, but unlike fiction they don't beguile either. Poems have seceded the job of marshaling, but are still too proud to take a job in the brothel. No wonder no one reads poetry anymore. It's not that there are more forms of media. It's that all the good poets don't think they are good anymore. People still read books, and in fact the poem is more fitting for a century built upon sound bites and youtube clips. It's just that the poets have stopped being poets. There is no authority in poems! What is the point of writing more poetry if it isn't better than what's already been written! Why should a reader follow the words of an inferior commander? One can definitely settle for a less than perfect whore, but one cannot be so compromising when it comes to choosing the right generals. If there are no more generals among our poets then poetry really is hurting in a bad way.

Now I am not saying that any poet is really better than say Denise Levertov. I am saying that a poet shouldn't bother writing if she doesn't believe she is better than every poet before her; she must feel best suited to lead the minds of her contemporaries. The good poet must feel as if she were a superb leader of minds --she must move the mind of the reader to ask the important questions.

Translation Projects

2007-11-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

It has been over a month. I've returned from the ALTA conference with the impression that there is a lot of work to been done.

At ALTA I spoke with Olga Slavnikova, Jim Kates, Marian Schwartz, Aliki and Willis Barnstone, Susan Harris, Dwayne Hayes, Garrick Davis, Bill Johnston, Susan Bernofsky, ok there are too many people to name. Adam Sorkin is possibly my favorite person of all. Idra Novey's work was the only thing I read during the conference, and if made me write. Doug Unger and Guiseppe Natale had a great panel in terms of putting forth a very practical MFA purpose for translation. So...

Let me say that if all goes well there will be much more about all this business in the future. For now I am thinking about putting together a translation project connected to the Russian Debut prize. Each year the Debut Foundation awards a $5000 prize in prose and a poetry. The prize also funds the publication of the Debut anthology which includes the shortlisted writers for that year. The prize has become a magnet for some of the most talented young authors writing in Russian today. My plan is to take the best of the Debut prize in poetry and fiction, and to help put forward two anthologies in the U.S. I believe such a project would be a great window into contemporary Russian literature. I've read the anthologies sponsored by Debut and it would be easy to select good authors for a translated anthology, the hard part would be deciding who to leave out.

As I finish up the semester I will also be looking at grants, and figuring out how to best put this project into motion. So many questions... How should I apply for a grant? Should I try and apply myself, or with a set of collaborators? Who would be most interested in such a project? etc. etc.

Also, I understand I haven't been posting as much as I should be, and that I really haven't followed through with my plan to write on a weekly basis about the contemporary literary scene in Russia. Hopefully I will find more time in the future. Something I might do is start writing for other blogs interested in what I have to offer. One place I might start blogging is Absinthe.

Here are my references for now.

Check out:
Zephyr Press
Subtropics
Zoland
Words Without Borders

ps. i made a complete fool of myself during ALTA's closing ceremony. the song i think best expresses my mood is this.

ALTA

2007-10-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

This year's ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) conference celebrates the organization's 30th birthday. I will be at least on one panel, and will read some of my Russian poetry translations. Translators of the world unite!

Work, Sleep, Work, Carry Wood

2007-09-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

A program called Open World invites Russian poets to the states. This year they invited four really good ones. Of these four Andrei Sen Senkov is by far my favorite. From his weird visual poetry to his long sequences of fragments the work exhibits signs of a childish curiosity and presumptuousness. As soon as I have a bit more time I plan to translate some of his work. For now I leave you with this: John Ashbery, poet laureate of MTV.

Faulkner, Stalin, Russia, South

2007-09-20T12:59:00.001-07:00

I was reading Faulkner this weekend when I had an epiphany. As I read I again started thinking of the age old theme of incest…Then my mind wandered to Woody Allen's film about Russia: Love and Death. You know the one where Allen and Keaton are cousins, but still get married. Here I stopped, and made a parallel that seemed so obvious I was surprised I hadn't thought of it before: "Russia is Europe's South."

The parallels began to pile up: 1) Both Russians and Southerners are a mixed race (Russians have a lot of Asian blood as the result of Tatar-Mongol occupation), and are extremely racist 2) both fought a long war (civil war and Cold War) and subsequently lost while suffering great casualties (in Russia’s case the great causality was the Soviet Union), 3) both are still struggling to cope with their defeat, 4) both are still extremely proud, even defiant. Today's south is still primarily a republican stronghold (i.e. a place of "honor", "values", etc.) Russia is extremely conservative (the majority of Russians think Putin is a great guy). Both, have an emphasis on traditional values. Also, I seems to me that contemporary Russia is heading toward a large neo-Christian movement, which might have a great role to play in future politics.

There are of course countless differences and exceptions, but I think there is something to this parallel. Consider for instance a novel like Absalom, Absalom! Sutpen (a member of the lower class by birth) climbs his way to the top one corpse after another. The oligarch movement in Russia, and especially the recent government acquisition of gas and oil, is made up of men such as Sutpen ( unscrupulous and shrewd)

Also, Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, which is of course when the American Civil War began.

Finally, I am going to make not an ideological, but a physical, comparison between Faulkner and Stalin. Faulkner is on of the most famous figures of the Southern history, and Stalin is one of the most famous figures of Russian history. Let us see how the two men match up:

1) Both men changed their names: William Faulkner’s original name did not have a “u”. Nobody knows why he added the “u”, some speculate that he wanted his name to sound more aristocratic. Stalin’s original name was: Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. The name “Stalin” is a derivative of the Russian word for “steal” –not only does is sound cooler (no pun intended) but it’s also easier to pronounce.
2) Both men were short: Faulkner was 5' 5½. Stalin was 5’4. (Also, Stalin's left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm was noticeably shorter than his right –a true Caliban.)
3) Both men lied almost compulsively about their background. For instance, Faulkner (who saw no action in WWI) said he was shot down over Germany. Stalin… well let us agree that he was not the paragon of honesty.
4) Finally, both men never left home without their mustaches.

Volga

2007-09-08T00:56:00.000-07:00

So this is the first video.
It has almost nothing to do with Eugene
Ostashevsky. (These are two different links.)
Ostashevsky is a pretty good poet, translator, and probably teacher.
He is one of my favorite writers working today.

St. Petersburg Review

2007-08-30T14:32:00.001-07:00

The inaugural issue of St. Petersburg Review bridges the gap between contemporary English and Russian literature. The word “gap” here might make some raise their eyebrows. “What gap?” you might say. Contemporary English literature certainly makes its way over to Russia. The works of Bret Easton Ellis, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, etc can be found in most large bookstores in Russia. Abroad Victor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, and Ludmila Ulitskaya are discussed on university campuses, and I don’t just mean in the classroom. No really, last spring I was sitting in a student union and overheard a boy and a girl discussing the plot of Hermit and Six Toes (a short story from Pelevin’s first book The Blue Lantern). Also, publishers like Northwestern University, Ugly Duckling, and Zephyr are translating new and important work. So, gap? No, there is a bridge. Maybe it is a very small bridge, but it’s still a bridge. But small does not mean insignificant. If we for instance consider the Panamanian Land Bridge, we see that this small bit of land (namely Panama) greatly altered the ecosystems of the Americas. The huge "terror birds" that were the top predators in South America were suddenly out competed by North American lions, tigers, and bears. From the south, North America inherited such critters as the opossum, armadillo, and porcupine.

But this is supposed to be a review of the inaugural issue of St. Petersburg Review –a review of a review. The reason I mention the Panamanian Land Bridge and the tigers, bears, and armadillos is because I see an analogy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, or just prior to the official fall, the Berlin Wall fell. When the Berlin Wall fell a bridge was made –two cultural islands were suddenly no longer islands. And so now, 16 years after the official crumbling of the Soviet Union the two former islands have begun swapping porcupines and lions. Now, if we consider New York City (where the St. Petersburg Review is published) and St. Petersburg (the city after which the review is named) we can make the unabashed analogy: North America: New York City :: South America: St. Petersburg. By this I mean most of the top predators (Steven King, Tom Clancy, etc.) are coming from the west side of the Atlantic. But this should not either surprise or perturb us.

The world of literary magazines, and especially the world of poetry, is not composed of lions and bears, but of armadillos and the opossums, and the St. Petersburg Review has found some of the best working in Russia today. From the more traditional poetry Sergei Gandlevsky to the conceptualist poetry of Dmitry Prigov (to whose memory the issue is dedicated) the material represents a vast array of approaches to the page. The inaugural issue also has a bilingual section entitled: “Poetry and Fiction by Women of the Gulag”. The translations in this section are a bit choppy, but they manage to resonate the most important aspect of the prisoner experience: suffering and hope. When this combination carries through, when it isn’t imbued with Spielberg violins, sheer beauty is the result. This section is not just literature it is an important historical testament –a part of our global cultural memory.

The issue also includes work by prominent American opossums such as Eugene Ostashevsky, Padgett Powell (who has a great story entitled “Yeltsin”), Liz Rosenberg, George Saunders, and Matvei Yankelevich.

It’s been 16 years since the fall. American culture has swept through the former Soviet Union like rats off a ship. Now it is time for Russia to return the favor. There are some great rats coming off this ship! As Dan Wickett writes: “If this is the type of product they'll continue to publish, you should subscribe now!”

LitKarta

2007-08-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

One of the most important literary projects in Russia today is the creation of LitKarta or The Literary Map of Russia. LitKarta is the brainchild of Dmitry Kuzmin (one of the most productive curators of contemporary Russian literature). Kuzmin’s idea was to create a site that would help Russian authors from different regions be aware of each others’ work. The idea is now a reality, and the project is huge!

Russia is made up of eighty-five regions (some of which are larger than Texas), and each region has its own capital. Because of Russia’s enormous size it is often easier to focus on Moscow and St. Petersburg than to search the provinces for the next Velimir Khlebnikov.

Russia may have officially abandoned the centralized system, but in reality both economically and artistically Moscow and St. Petersburg are pretty much the only game in town. People like Dmitry Kuzmin are attempting to change this –LitKarta is such an attempt. It will level the playing field by putting cities like Samara on par with Moscow. Each region and capital will be allotted its own space, and the authors in each region will be given the same opportunities.

The project is ambitious. The site will contain: authors’ bios, samples of written work and spoken word, a calendar of literary events, a social network of blogs, a list of literary projects, and so forth. If successful LitKarta will be the first of its kind, and may even serve as a model for future projects in other countries. Just imagine such a project in Europe, or the United States.

We will have to see. For now LitKarta is just beginning to blossom. As the project develops it will be interesting to observe how the Russian literary community responds. If successful there is talk of an English version! That way not only Russians, but English speakers will be able to participate in Russia’s vibrant literary scene.

For Prigov

2007-07-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Forward

2007-07-11T02:24:00.000-07:00

There is a Russian joke about Chapaev in which you walk into a Soviet museum. A row of dusty glass cases of various sizes stand in a row, dimly lit. A drunken ballad can be heard playing somewhere. The drunken ballad is always played on an accordion; the words:
Мне немного взгрустнулось

Без тоски, без печали.

В этот час прозвучали

Слова твои
are always there in some form or another. The song is both tender and annoying, like an old lover who calls in the middle of the night. Or a dead relative you can't get out of your head, like an advertising jingle. Or a child incessantly asking the same question: "Why do I have to?" And so, in the dusty museum, near the glass cases, sits an old woman in a faded blue blouse. Her breasts are placid on her stomach. Something slowly moves in her hands; you look closer and discover a small kitten: grey, tired, possibly dying. Only the dust keeps this scene from being dangerously maudlin; the skeletons are standing in the glass cases. Yes, that is what this story is all about. It is because of the skeletons in the glass cases that the old woman is sitting in her faded blouse on the creaky wooden chair. As you approach the dusty glass she says:
"Those are Chapaev's."
"All of them?" you ask.
"Yes," she says, "That small one is Chapaev when he was a 6 year old boy; that one over there is from when he first joined the Red Army; and this one was discovered in 1937 in an old hut, still covered in his Red Army uniform, actually moving, drinking tea. They had a hell of a time excavating it."

When you live on Mayakovsky Street the Chapaev scenario is familiar. When you walk like an American you walk up another set of crumbling stairs at three o'clock in the morning. You walk past a door with fake red leather upholstery, and your friend says: "See this door Petka... behind this door lived Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik." You ask, searching for a name, "What was her husband's name again?" The next day you go out again, with another citizen, and they point to a derelict building saying, "You see that building over there Petka...that is were Lilya Brik lived with her husband, and Mayakovsky." You again inquire, "What was her husband' s name again? Was he an aristocrat? What exactly did he do?" The next day you go out by yourself, and walk up your own flight of stairs. It is day, this is the first time you have walked up these stairs sober enough to care about what’s written on the walls. Near a crooked swastika drawn with burnt matches you read: Здесь бухал Владимир Владимирович Маяковский.
The same thing happens with Blok, whose favorite two activities were: walks and whores. Pimping is illegal in contemporary Russia, but prostitution isn't. Which leads us to an interesting question: what is prostitution? I would imagine that legally it is a pretty hard thing to pin down. When does one cross the line from simply slut into genuine whore? Does one need to advertise? Place an ad? Have a pimp? What if one is a free agent? What if one sleeps for money only when the proposition is made? What if I pay my wife to sleep with me? No, the last one is a clear case... So there is Blok and there is Mayakovsky, and they have lived, drank, whored in every piss stained alley in St. Petersburg. Like Chapaev's skeletons they are peroratory, they perambulate.
My own walks include walking the dog. The dog is a St. Petersburg dingo named Baxter. I live next to a Мегафон business center; I walk Baxter along the small patch of grass in front of Мегафон were various people in business apparel park their Mercedes. Now, no one in Russia adheres to the "put the dog shit in the dog shit bag" rule which is understandable. I myself rarely adhere to this rule in the states, but here I wanted to show the Мегафон business people how a civilized person walks a dog. So the dog shits. I take out my small clear bag, which I received with my purchase of razors. There was more shit than usual I had to make several scoops, attempts, etc. Finally, I raised the bag to eye level, inspecting it if you will. The security guard was eyeing me suspiciously. I tied a knot, and for good measure gave the bag a good 180 degree swing so that the knot firmly tied. With this action I underestimated the strength of the vessel --that is, the bag ripped-- sending the shit flying in the way of the business people. I noticed a glob of shit on a shiny black shoe. The guard’s suspicions had been corroborated. I ran. I didn't look. I didn't take the time to wait for the cars to clear the street. I ran across the street, with the dog, through the traffic, and away, away from the Мегафон business center.

White 4th of July. Happy 231st.

2007-07-04T05:45:00.001-07:00

White Night

I. It is 4:46 pm in St. Petersburg. The 4th of July is almost over, but it hasn't really started in America. For someone it has started; for someone in Brooklyn; it has started for some old Jewish junky listening to Harry Nilsson, beating a rhythmless ballad with a wooden spoon against a dusty monitor. The paper cup half full of sunflower seed shells and cigarette butts. Happy Merry, America --the great soap opera of the world. Even when you forget that everyone is watching, and you are lonely; even when everyone calls you the dumbest thing since square watermelons, (which only you can still stack them); you America are the simulacrum toward which the apparitions of Soviet submarines are still headed. Jody Foster really did pay attention after that great shot; someone should have shot him on the set of that terrible film whose name I have successfully forgotten. America; they keep watching. Kiefer Sutherland for president and his little dog too.
II. In St. Petersburg nobody remembers you much. Sure, Aerosmith is going to play in a swampy stadium after another failed soccer game, and McDonald's has ads hanging over the Livejournal poems about hanging teenage girls from a giant ball made of tampon strings, but really who remembers your birthday? Who will bring you a white box full of soft bed sheets and bath products? It is up to you, you must once again answer the call of duty, put down your addiction, raise up thy pallet, and crawl out a Chinese prison to save the world from the U.S. president.

III. You must jump into the salty Baltic water, and not be afraid of what lurks beneath.

The Well-Tempered Papier Mâché Shuttle

2007-06-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the only Russian space shuttle. It stands next to one of the only Russian rollercoasters. The two make a nice balance for the shuttle seems to be made of paper, and roller coaster seems to be made of cardboard. I will be posting to this thing all summer. For the ten people who read this, may I suggest buying an issue of one of these journals: Circumference, Absinthe: New European Poetry, Caketrain, Cimarron Review, or the St. Petersburg Review. Also, keep reading Zone. As I crawl up the hierarchy of print I will less and less make references to various publications until I will simply call myself "the writer" --my bio will be something like: "Peter Golub, he writes!" or "See Golub run". The latter might be my Nobel speech.

It has Been A Great While

2007-04-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

I've neglected this thing because of all the stuff I've been failing to accomplish, but now that the semester is coming to a close I feel that I might as well tie myself to a palm tree and just wait for the wave to hit.

Some more translations have been accepted. Hampshire Archive. Personalia by Polina Barskova is going to be published in Russian and English in the 6th issue of Circumference. House From Beneath The Table is coming out in the first issue of St. Petersburg Review. Absinthe: New European Writing is publishing some Danila Davydov poems, and Cimarron Review is publishing a few Anastasia Afanaseva. I can't remember if I already mentioned this, but I am sure this redundancy will not raise anyone's chances of cancer.

I am returning to Russia at the end of May to work a bit more on the translations, and maybe to conduct some interviews --So stay tuned.

I leave you with a poem I wrote after Mr. Cho's temper tantrum:

Dreams of Children Who Scrap Mold Off Their Tongues For a New Kind of Penicillin that Cures Failure

If you dream of your fingers falling off

If you are writing a tractatus on the consumption of animals

If you are taxing the nations video games

If you believe that yellow stone On August 27, the volcano entered the final cataclysmic stage of its eruption. Four enormous explosions took place at 5:30 a.m., 6:42 a.m., 8:20 a.m., and 10:02 a.m. The worst and loudest of these was the last explosion. Each was accompanied by very large tsunamis believed to have been over 100 ft high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 2,200 statute miles (3,500 km) away in Australia and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km away; the sound of Krakatoa's destruction is believed to be the loudest sound in recorded history, reaching levels of 180 dBSPL 100 miles (160 km) away. Ash was propelled to a height of 50 miles (80 km). The eruptions diminished rapidly after that point, and by the morning of August 28 Krakatoa was quiet.

If you believe krakos is a kind of savior

If you believe the earth is an apple which is a snow ball which falls and falls and falls into a vat of milk the size of a pyramid

If you believe the american constitution is the senate’s pastoral

If you believe it’s just getting started

If you stare in the black mirror on the wall like a volcano

If you wake up naked

If you don’t wanna live in America no more

If emergence the bottleneck nonsense which is our apparition population

If we are entrenched in the hallucination of wet carnivores

If the Dutch man loves his family but keeps them from leaving

If kids make bombs

If kids sweep the Nobel Prize

If kids are movie stars

If kids are presidents

If kids are the proletariat

If kids are girl who just wanna have fuck

If kids drive the animals from their cages

If you are too old to understand

If you feel superior to the inferior on the bank of the rio de la plata

And then a women comes in

She is that thing which causes the epic in our monkey species

She is young and has a bandaid between her toes

A tent in the wind…

It blows and blows and blows until someone yells: SHE’S CAMPING IN SPACE!!!

If every day is a modern art museum and a pride parade

If the mayor is in the dream of a dog

If the bookstore is inside the superstore next to the kwiki mart

If our money is broken and doesn’t feed us

If the bumpin shaky turquoise pontiac grand am is a negro paradise

If the problem south of the border is the problem north of border

If our jews are hipper than your negroes

If our intelligentsia is a sensitive child with calm panties

If our studs are found your beds

If reading james hansen at the bus stop we notice a pretty girl

Holding herself up near the hip with her left hand

A cigarette in her right hand

A guy in a raiders cap lights it for her

Just then we notice her enormous stomach

The size of a watermelon

The watermelon girl smokes her cigarette

But we look up at the sky because we have missed our appointment

The sky heats the air

A man sits down with a car magazine

He asks: where are you going? Is that where the family is? Are you just visiting?

He circles a black convertible

Taking a donut out of his pocket

The parking lot is open

Weeds marking its edges

A box of smashed donuts

No pigeons or ants

Making it empty

Translations Are Like Weddings

2007-02-08T18:03:00.001-08:00

So as of now I am putting together translations of Polina Barskova, Mariana Geide, Victor Ivaniv, Natalya Kluchareva, and Tanya Moseeva. Here is a poem by Barskova. This is a working draft. I plan to work on this poem, and post the evolution. Who knows maybe I will change it completely. Maybe I will leave it as is.

Still Life

Saturday morning. Schubert. Fanny torments the slipper.
Blue hydrangea. (Remember, like at Sapunov’s)
I lie on the floor amidst, dolls, hats, rags,
And glance over at you before falling asleep.

Music to be performed over the water? Over the waters? Over the III declension?
Again the German gets stuck a member of the National Socialists in the confused mouth.
You sit behind your computer; tap it, like white frost, with your porcelain prettiness,
And Schubert sounds will whisk about in your mouth like mice.

I’ve been looking at you for three years, like a maniac at the corpse’s cameo,
Waiting: the police arrive – they’ll begin to yell,
Beat me with a shoe, and I will lay quietly on the floor.
Hear no evil, see no evil.

The blue hydrangea, small scattered hills, fireworks
In the sky, the work of some celestial mole.
—Mouse, is it too bright? – It isn’t too bright is it.
Bubbles of Schubert. Tears rolling into my mouth.

Натюрморт

Субботнее утро. Шуберт. Фрося терзает тапок.
Голубые гортензии. (Помнишь, у Сапунова.)
Я лежу на полу между куколок, шляпок, тряпок
И смотрю на тебя, и потом засыпаю снова.

Музыка для исполнения: над водой? Над водами? Над водою?
Немецкий опять застывает членом национал-социалистической партии в перепуганном рту.
Ты сидишь за компьютером, подёрнут, как инеем, своей фарфоровой красотою,

И звуки Шуберта, как мышата, снуют у тебя во рту.

Уже три года я смотрю на тебя, как маньяк — на снятую с трупа камею,
В ожиданьи: придут полицейские — станут кричать,
Будут бить меня башмаком, а я буду лежать на полу, буду молчать.
Мол, ничего не знаю. Ничего не умею.

Голубые гортензии кучками фейерверка
По небу рассыпаны, словно здесь поработал космический крот.
— Мишенька, это не слишком ярко? — Это не слишком ярко.
Булькает Шуберт. Слёзы ко мне затекают в рот.

Some Foundations

2007-01-28T13:40:00.001-08:00

As I wrote in my previous post this blog will focus on my work in young Russian poetry. One of the things I've been working on is figuring out who to translate, which means developing some criteria. This, of course, raises the question of criteria in general. What counts as what, and why? The question of genre and quality. Blah Blah Blah...As I write this I chat with my cousin about a Last FM station: Artists similiar to Goldmund that she listened to last night. She writes me the following:

…in fact, I was thrilled by this electronic composition, but couldn’t understand why. What did it remind me of? Why was this sound so piercing? It was indescribable, as if I was a step away from understanding what the sound meant, but was always just a step away; what did it mean, and how was it connected to the rest of the events in my life? After letting the station play for a few hours, and listening to different genres, it hit me like a diamond bullet: it wasn’t the music that was making me feel this way, but my old crapped out computer speakers. After fixing the speakers, I realized why the sound was so mellifluous, and even allaying, --it reminded me of the clogged up sink in our old Stalin era apartment! It was as if from the adjacent room I had received a Soviet transmission from twenty years ago, worn, broken, but still warm. It was like receiving a radio signal on the other side of the galaxy after most of the life on earth had long since expired…

I translated the above from Russian, and took a bit of poetic license, but I think the description of that sublime feeling, which art can bring, gets across well enough. When we first have a positive encounter with an aethetic object we don't really know why the encounter is so moving, and only after much searching do we realize why the thing is so powerful and beautiful.

New Russian Poetry and Argentina

2007-01-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted for a while. Two reasons: 1) I've been out of the country, 2) I've been doing some work with Zone (zonefornone.blogspot.com). I recommend to anyone interested in my work to visit Zone.

Now that I am back in the U.S. I hope to get some more translations published, and work on some collaborative projects dealing with Russian poetry. Last year some translations were accepted by Caketrain, Absinthe: New European Writing, Cimarron Review, and, of course, Zone. This year I want to actually make this blog into more than just a chronicle of my adventures. In 2007 I want to focus my efforts on New Russian Poetry. By posting translations, reviews, and interviews I hope to make this blog a window into the world of young contemporary Russian Poetry.

But before I switch gears I want to write a final, disheveled, post about my last trip.

My trip to Argentina/Uruguay was fruitful enough. A small flier with my picture may still be laminated to various surface areas across downtown Buenos Aires. The flier is for a reading I did at the bookstore Crack-Up (http://www.crackup.com.ar/). (A copy of this flier and the picture can be seen on my previous post.)

In Uruguay I visited the small town of Cape Polonio http://www.mascared.com/sea/nereida.htm) . The place is basically a year round Burning Man --beautiful nude girls walk along the white sand beaches through piles of dead sea lions. I didn't take any digital photos while in Cape Polonio, but I did meet Andrea Hoffman whose photos can be found on (http://www.planetamodelos.com/portafolios/detalle/?codigo=AH16052006). Andrea's attraction to me was bewildering for two reasons: 1) Most people in Cape Polonio thought that my friend Andrew and I were gay, 2) I speak no Spanish(the Spanish word I use most is "capybara", the phrase I use most is "dis culpa"). But the attention was nice, and now I apparently have a place to stay in Chile.

The gay thing was something new. It arose, I think, as the result of Andrew repeatedly using the word "condom" instead of "lighthouse", my very pale skin, and my shy demeanor ( I rarely spoke). What being shy and pale has to do with being gay is beyond me. But several people asked us if we had met the internet. Although, we were two smiling happy boys traveling alone...Anyway our trip to Uruguay could easily be titled: Broke Back Uruguay. (One could remove the last two u's for more dramatic effect.)

After our stay in the capital I decided that Monte Video (a name open to endless puns) is my favorite city on the planet. It is a real port city with large three mast ships in the docks, sand beaches, and an ocean horizon that lights up at night like a string of Christmas lights. The city is old, peaceful, and in the summer almost abandoned. The old Spanish buildings and cobble stone streets are derelict, giving one the feeling of Europe after global economic collapse. Andrew and I would walk about at night with a bottle of Pinot or Malbec in hand, looking for the dingiest sailor bars open at three in the morning. At many of the bars, as in Cape Polonio, people assumed we were gay. At times, gaudy old men would eye us when we walked through the door, some of whom would offer to buy me drinks, which I kindly refused. (The part about the drinks is fictional, but I thought it conjured up a nice image).

I recommend Uruguay to anyone who wants to escape the winters of the northern hemisphere.

Finally, here is an email about my apartment in BA.

Email Home

So as of the moment I am: lascivious and scared. The fear slowly overcoming the lust. I've been having these nightmares. I told Andrew about the nightmares, and apparently Roger has had some crazy dreams of his own in this place –dreams similar to mine. I don't know if you've ever heard me talk about the alien dreams. There is a series of half-sleep states that are commonly associated with the sensations reported in alien abductions and visitations by incubi, succubi, angels, etc. The characteristic qualities are: inability to move and a sense of an "other" presence. So right now I am sitting in the apartment alone, afraid to go into the bedroom. Andrew just called and told me all the shit Roger experienced in this apartment: violent lucid dreams, footsteps, moving chairs, humanoid shapes standing for hours at a time on the roofs of adjacent apartment buildings. I also hear strange noises, like someone is walking around in the apartment. I wonder why such a nice place was given up by Brian (an American friend). I would be interested in speaking with him about this place. The other night we were all hanging out pretty late. It was pouring rain, but he refused to spend the night on the couch. He chose to wait for an hour in the rain instead of sleeping here. Every time I begin to sleep I feel like there is someone else next to me. Also, Andrew says that Buenos Aires is intersected by one of earth's ley lines – a phenomenon linked to dreams as mad as the city of clocks where the goats have sex with the pigs.
It is 10 pm.
Me, Andrew, Meghan, Killian, Phong, Alex, and Alice spent Christmas with Mariana's family. They are a cheery bunch of Argentines who live in Quilmes. Quilmes is an old German community outside of Buenos Aires famous for its giant brewery. The brewery is a magnificent edifice reaching into the sky with its tall smoke stacks, filling the air with the thick smell of hops. There is a church there. The man in the front plays a guitar. His mind is a carpet. In the church there is no carpet, but it smells of hops and the passing trains.Mariana's father (I don't remember his actual name) has a thing for Russians. I being a Russian, and a vegetarian, was a thing to be exhibited. There was a goat splayed on the wooden table. I enjoyed my role, but am afraid I did not perform as well as I could have had I been able to form a complete sentence in Spanish besides: ¿Qué hora es? During dinner her father would turn to me, tell me something in Spanish, and wait for my response. When he saw that I didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about he would say: kolbasa or petchen. Kolbasa is Russian for sausage, and petchen is Russian for liver. After saying petchen he would stare at me until I repeated the word. He would smile and say: kortoshka (potato). I would smile and reply: Da, da kotoshka-petchen. He would light up completely, and exclaim: vodka-Volga. I would fall in to the back of my chair laughing and throw in another: Kortoshka-petchen. He would say: rebro (rib). I would answer kolbasa. Everyone at the table would laugh. Someone might come in with: sputnik-dacha. Then the table would return to their regular conversation. The father would stand up to lop a few more pieces off the roasted kid he'd prepared out back. I'd push the beets around my plate until another: perestroika-vodka. After dinner we played chess. If I took a knight he'd say: vodka-Kursk If he took one of mine I'd say: plaskagubtsy (pliers).

Now I am back in this haunted apartment listening to Stevie Wonder. Superstition blasts out of the speakers. The dead palm tree on the porch makes an ominous arboreal sound. I imagine the penguin wine jug whispering to me in that augmented whisper Hollywood films so love to use when depicting the voice in the mind of a schizophrenic. It would say: "Cut down your curtains and walk to the stove, put your hands in the oven until the fingers fall away, use the burned stumps to write 1516S1-002 across the walls in the bedroom." Or maybe: "Remember Peter you are the Prince of Peace. We are all counting on you. We have many enemies. There are many obstacles to be surmounted. We must be strong. We must persevere." I wonder what I would do if the penguin became the Penguin –if it talked to me, and walked around the apartment chatting with the guitar and the book shelf? What if a beautiful naked woman on a flying pig landed on my balcony? Or, if the walls suddenly fell away to reveal a series of stone corridors? An old love suddenly walks out of the bedroom, and sits down next to me. I am paralyzed with fear. She playfully cocks her head. "What's wrong," she says. I do not reply. "Jesus Peter cut it out you're starting to scare me." I try to speak but cannot force the air through my throat. "What's the matter! Why are you looking at me like I'm a ghost?"
"Where did you come from?"
"Peter! Stop it! You're beginning to creep the shit out of me."
I look out the window. Everything is the same except that on the top of the tallest apartment building across the street I notice a silhouette. He stands –facing me. I quickly turn back to the apparition. She is gone! There is no sign of her! I realize that I must be dreaming, but everything is very lucid. A growing anxiety builds deep inside of me. I look out the window –he is still there. I wave. He waves back. I stand up. I do not know what to do. I sit back down. He stands and watches me. I hear a noise in the bedroom. Like someone is folding sheets, or possibly tossing in their sleep. I am too scared to move. I watch him on the roof. He stands. He does nothing. I feel myself stand up, but it feels as if I am being carried under water. I see a mosquito. It terrifies me. Its blood splatter is the shape of a star. If I smear it surely it will transform into a comet – those petulant stars dragged across the galaxy. O my anopheles. It is the most frightening thing I have seen in my life. If comes at me. My hands slap together. I open them –the mosquito is between the palms, barely moving. I go blind with fear. What have I done. I feel the sense of infinite largeness and smallness. Killing the mosquito was like flipping the switch to infinity; I am convinced it was an avatar. I hear strange sounds all around me. I think I am about to pass out –NO. My legs carry me to the bedroom. I see myself lying down –eyes closed, chest falling and rising. I stand over him. I study his face. I wonder how high his legs will kick when I stuff the pillow in his face. I try and get into his mind. The more I try and get into his mind the closer I bend over him, until I am hovering just above his face thinking about his thinking. His face begins to make a grimace –NO. The brows are pushed up and together –he is scared. He hasn't even heard the sound of the pelicans. I cannot move; I am floating over the bed, watching him. He also seems to be floating, then we fall. I am in bed. There is no one else in the room. I cannot bring myself to get up, but I do get up. I rise, and walk to the balcony. I look to where he was standing –he is still there. The silhouette is still there. I get goose bumps. I grip the railing with white hands. The longer I squeeze the redder they get until my knuckles are like roses. One hand rises, and makes a wave. He waves back. A dog barks. It barks like the beating of wings –NO. There is a flock. Hundreds of parrots fly over the building with the figure on top.. They seem to fly through him. They are coming toward me. My hands grip the rails. Another dog barks, and another, and another. The parrots fly towards me. I lose consciousness. But I do not fall. I come to, still standing. The parrots are gone. There are a few green feathers on the porch. A large indigo beetle crawls out of the dead palm. It crawls over a feather toward me. There is no more barking, no wings, the palm is silent, the sound of cars is almost entirely gone. I want the desert. I want to sit in my hammock with a glass of lemonade in the middle of the moon. I can hear the clock in the kitchen. The beetle crawls toward me. I am usually intrigued by such mechanoids. They have no fear of gibbets or hemeroids. I am usually fascinated by beetles. God's favorite creature according to Darwin, or was it Haldane. God knows. It has almost reached my shoe. I want to stomp it, but do not. It crawls on top of the shoe, and up my pant leg. I can feel its weight pulling down the cloth of the pant leg. An ambulance drives by with its distinct wi-wi. Doppler; because Einstein was right. The beetle crawls higher and higher until it reaches my stomach. I stand. I am gripping the railing. My knuckles are roses. It crawls up to my shoulder and down my left hand. It crawls off the hand onto the railing. It spreads its wings. It flies. I watch it. A black dot moving across the street. Moving up. Moving toward him. He stands on the roof. I watch the black dot fly to him. Go! Coleoptera! Go! I lose site of it. Did it reach him? One of the green feathers is blown off the balcony. I watch it spiral down to the street. Turning and turning, falling but never hitting. "So you like to write stories?" says a female voice from behind. I try to move but cannot. I am standing like a character from a tableau vivant. How still do I have to be before they let me into the Folies Bergères? I hear the door to the apartment open, but I do not hear it close. I am before the door now. The door hangs open. It is Midnight. I hear the elevator begin to move in its shaft. The elevator moves up –illuminating the floors –1,2,3,4,5,6,7. The elevator stops. A short man with a large head walks out of the elevator, through the open apartment door, into the kitchen, and onto the balcony. He climbs the railing, opens his arms, and falls. I look over the railing. He fell only about two meters. He is lying on the air –floating face up, looking at me with his hands behind his head, one heel placed on top of the other. "It's weirder than déjà vu. It's not as if I feel like I've done this all before, but that I was here as another life." He says this and then lights a malodorous Parisienne. He slowly floats back onto the balcony. He stands smoking. His cigarette stinks of smoldering sagebrush and naugehyde. I notice a small light where the humanoid shape used to stand on the adjacent roof. I notice the same kind of small light on top of another building. There are more and more lights. They are on roofs, on balconies, in windows, in the streets. The entire city is luminescent with these little red embers. I take a cigarette from my shirt pocket.

Sincerely,

Peter D. Golub

Tea For Two

2006-12-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

The Return

2006-12-05T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Return

a woman came to me
but I did not want to dance
and walked across the street to a small bar in the basement of an old brick building
where the arches reminded me of cavalry
whatever happened to the cavalry
what units did they turn into
an old man plays the piano
someday he’ll come along
the man I love

we write back and forth
and your last proposition says something about standing and waiting
but its dark and you’ve spilled beer on the table

the boys in the park
make faces
as we pass

A Human Embodies the World Wide Web

2006-11-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.iterature.com/

An Interview With Danila Davydov

2006-11-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

During the summer of 2006 I spent some time in Moscow and conducted a set of interviews, which I recorded and later transcribed. This an interview with the poet, critic, and editor: Danila Davydov.

There are at Least 2000 Good Poets: An Interview with Danila Davydov
Interviewed by Peter Golub

PG: When did you first start writing?

DD: I began writing early, and I think I understood what it meant to be a writer. I’ve always loved literature, but this did not get in the way of other interests. I read books on chemistry, biology, physics, etc, but no matter what I did I was always reading and writing poetry.
My first work was written around the age of thirteen. These early poems were naive, yes, but I understood that there were many different positions one could take toward the canon; it was then that I became interested in not just articulating the tortures of my soul, but working with the text as an object –working with form, and how form shaped content. In this sense I was a pretty precocious child. So, I was lucky. I had some talent, but also, I was very fortunate in terms of my company, both in school and at home. The adults I associated with recognized my talents, but didn’t parade me around, as is often the case with gifted children. We know of many cases when gifted children are put on display, and later exhibit signs of psychological damage. For instance, during perestroika a young girl by the name of Nika Turbina became a popular poet when she was very young, but later ended up hanging herself, or jumping out a window… I don’t remember the details, but it was a great loss. Or take for instance Vika Vetrova who wrote acclaimed Tsvetaeva style poetry at a young age, and now has reverted to a kind of hapless graphorrhea. So, it should be said that although I proved myself talented at a young age I had a perfectly normal childhood.
My literary socialization occurred at the age of 17-18. After graduating from high school I applied to the philosophy program at Moscow State University, but to my great disappointment was not accepted. Reluctantly, I applied to the literature program, from which I graduated. One of the most productive things to come out of my admittance into the literature program was that it acquainted me with the scene. Prior to this I really knew almost no one in the literary world. So, despite my reluctance to enter the program, it quickly absorbed me into the literary world. There was one rather closed literary circle with nationalist orientations, though a nationalism completely apart with any official orientation. The group met at Lesha Koretsky’s apartment. Natasha Chernikh and Ira Shastakovkaya, two excellent poets, were part of this circle. This was one circle. It should be mentioned that it consciously put itself in opposition to the Vavilon circle, and specifically Dmitry Kuzmin. On what principles this circle was contra to Kuzmin is not important, what is important is that I learned about Kuzmin through this circle, and this led me to meet him soon after. Shortly after meeting him I joined Vavilon, Kuzmin and I have been great collaborators ever since.
At this moment I considered myself a literatus and writer, but not a philologist or a critic. I became a critic after realizing that if I didn’t say certain things no one else would. Also, as is often the case with writers, I was looking for a way to make some extra money, and non-fiction gave me that opportunity. So, I began carving out a critical position. My first critical article was published in 1996.

PG: Did you have any creative writing classes at the University?

DD: Yes. At the university I attended a seminar led by Ruslan Kirilov, from whom I learned virtually nothing. Although, I am grateful that this was a prose, not a poetry workshop, because after all prose is more grounded than poetry –it helped me get a more abstract understanding of writing. Also, at the center of literary scene was the legendary seminar of Fila Kovaldjhe, which, by that time I attended it, was conducted in part by Evgeny Burimovich. Then there were of course the various Vavilon projects; Kuzmin was constantly getting people together.

PG:What effect did these seminars have on you?

DD: I can’t say that anything had a particular affect on me. What resulted was a widening of context. Things were beginning to come into focus. I was beginning to place myself in the field –authors, movements, histories were all something I could now position. Also, I have always been a proponent of self-educations; the best teacher you will ever have in life is yourself. This isn’t just regarding art, but all forms of education as well. My formal university education was in many ways obstructive, and I learned most of what I know on my own. I remember being 14 and going to 19th October (the only non official Moscow bookstore at the time) and inanely picking books off the shelves in the poetry section. The names at that time meant almost nothing to me. I was going purely off what I did or didn’t like. With this approach I discovered Elena Shvarts, Sergei Gandlevsky, etc. Plus, it was a strange epoch; there was this mad wave of publishing after the end of Soviet censorship. Suddenly, so much being published by journals, tiny presses, magazines like Ogoniok, etc. There was a huge amount of pre second world war material being published; many obscure Silver Age poets were being exhumed. During my young formative years I was submerged in a deluge of poetry. There were new niches constantly being discovered… But, to answer your question the seminars didn’t affected me nearly as much as individual people.

PG: Like who for instance?

DD: Well, Dmitry Kuzmin, Yuri Orlitsky, Viacheslav Kuritsin…

PG: How did they influence you?

DD: Well, first there was a kind of positivist pathos toward knowledge; a pathos toward diversity, in the ecological sense –a pull toward heterogeneity in culture. They saw many different events taking place at the same time, and understood that the ability to speak different languages, aesthetic languages, was a must for any artist or critic, or any cultured person for that matter. For me, this wasn’t a discovery. But these individual’s formulated for me these ideas better than I could have myself.

PG: Do you think this approach is different from what we had before?

DD: In a sense this multilateral approach has never been very popular, and isn’t all that popular to this day. Periodically a multilateral positivist approach is voiced, and then stamped out… long live individual tastes, or long live a specific school or hierarchy; it’s really all the same. Hierarchies are necessary –there is a cultural literary field that is not a collection of stochastic phenomena. The field can be made sense of, but it is not composed of one linear trajectory. It is composed of different parallel hierarchies. These hierarchies exist. It is a very complicated landscape. Our task (i.e. the task of people who seek to understand) is not simply to drift along, but to understand these various hierarchies, and comprehend the mechanisms that hook them all together, and not climb one particular hierarchy, and from it spit on the rest, proclaiming: “here we have culture and there we have profanity.” This of course isn’t anything new. I didn’t think this up, nor did Kuzmin for that matter. Lately I’ve been studying the critical writings of Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov. Bryusov formulated this position a hundred years ago, and was criticized just as Kuzmin is criticized now. It’s all exactly the same –a closed circle.

PG: What role has post-modernism played in this debate, or is it even relevant to this debate?

DD: Post-modernism exists as a theoretical construct. At the beginning of the 1990’s it had a great affect on young Russian literature. It demonstrated a kind of widening of horizons. Of course, it must be said that Russian post-modernism is quite different from Western post-modernism. Examples of Russian post-modernism are represented by several authors, varying in their insight: Irina Skoropanova, Mikhail Epstein, Viacheslav Kuritsyn and Mark Lipovetsky. One thing they all have in common is the idea that anything written in the “post-modern” epoch is post-modern i.e. we are all post-moderns. Now although this thesis may be charming it has no value from the point of criticism. This is the equivalent of saying that everything written in the modernist era is the product of modernist culture. I don’t know… post-modernism was a useful concept, but now this word has been used so much that it signifies everything, and too often nothing. I think that if you want to speak clearly you have to distance yourself from this word, and show what you mean through concrete examples. This is not because post-modernism doesn’t exist, not because this idea is a lie, but because in practice this word encompasses too much; in a way it was too successful. When I was 17, 18, 19, years old I freely referred to myself as a post-modernist, now I am not ready to say such a thing. This is not simply because certain personal views of mine have changed over the years (I now believe in a metaphysical truth that post-modernism cancels) but because I feel that the post-modern position is a distraction, an attempt to say nothing in the place of something.

PG: Ok. Do you think there are any clearly defined schools in Russian poetry? Schools formed around certain individuals, prizes, awards, etc.

DD: It seems to me that when talking about schools…this is a complicated question… I can’t answer it without certain qualifications. In Anatoly Naiman’s recollections of Akhmatova an episode is described in which Akhmatova criticized the Symbolists, and at one point Naiman interrupts saying something like “but you have to agree Symbolism was a distinguished important movement…” Akhmatova paused and glared at him, and then said, “Do you think that I don’t recognize that the Symbolists were the last great movement in Russian literature?” This was a very apt statement. Symbolism wasn’t just a poetic movement, but a worldview that affected people in many different disciplines. After Symbolism ended other schools formed (e.g. Futurism and Acmeism), but these groups and those that followed them (e.g. Oberiu) weren’t formed around an all encompassing cultural worldview, but around particular artistic scenes. Then there was that horrible gap between the thirties and fifties, in which things of course went on, but we know little about them. And this leads us to the Conceptualists who were their own particular movement. It is a myth that everyone was welcome in the Conceptualist circles. There was more than just one group of Conceptualists, and each circle had its own rules. We have to understand that Conceptualism according to Dmitry Prigov is very different from Conceptualism according to Andrei Monastirsky or Pavel Pepperstein. It seems to me that today certain groups work together, publish together, read together, and even argue in one voice against some other group, but still are not aesthetically coherent. We can’t say that the artistic process is anamorphous –it is varied– and this variance doesn’t map onto these different groups and scenes. There are aesthetic constants that work above the group level, that connect people in disparate groups. And I believe, that one of the main problems in contemporary criticism is related to this mess, when people mistake a certain social group for an aesthetic group and vice-versa. For instance, consider the category of a “Vavilon poet”. The Vavilon project now has so many different poets under its banner with such different, contrary, aesthetic values that to call someone a Vavilon writer could mean anything. And this is what is so wrong, or not wrong, but unfortunate about contemporary criticism –an individual becomes a synecdoche. When Dmitry Kuzmin is criticized it suddenly means that everyone associated with Vavilon is under attack. Again, history is repeating itself. This is all reminiscent of a careless article written by Alexander Blok (entitled Godless and Uninspired) directed against Tsekh poets, who were not a literary group. The Tsekh poets included not only Acmeists but Christian poets, Futurists like Khlebnikov, nonpartisans like Vladislav Khodasevich, Post-Symbolists such as Mikhail Kuzmin etc, etc. This tendency to lump different poets together is an old problem still seen in contemporary criticism. Meanwhile there are real boundaries that exist as the result of age, geography… these may be harder to distinguish, but I think these divisions are also the most interesting.
Consider the Debut generation, in some sense it has some aesthetic coherence. This was a generation that evolved on the web. My generation, although it overlaps somewhat with the Debut generation, was already mature when the web really took off, but Julia Idlis and Marianne Giede were raised on the internet. The writers who spent there formative years online, had an atmosphere which both helped and deterred serious literary work. The online community helped them in the sense that it created a generous community of authors and readers, where the cock praised the cuckoo and the cuckoo praised the cock. However this community complicates things; it’s too cozy. As the result of this I see a sort of leveling of language where the same words get repeated again and again. I am not trying to assign value to anything. There are epochs defined by opposition and breaks, and there are epochs defined by an evening of standards. This is the simple state of affairs.
Now, if we look at the Vavilon generation, and count all the differences among its writers, (which I attribute to the sudden deluge of a great poetry in the late eighties and early nineties) then it is obviously a generation of diversity. There were so many potential orientations a poet could take in the early nineties. This led to a hybridization of Symbolism and academic European poetry, the Oberiu and Conceptualism. The work of the 1990’s was to orient yourself among the different canons, and to create your own style…In the 21st century I’ve noticed a kind of unification of language, an attempt to speak in a language that everyone understands. Is this good or bad? I don’t know. Personally, it makes me uncomfortable, but this is no doubt my own prejudice coming to through. In the beginning there was this plethora of voices. Now, the roads have been built, some voices were chosen over others, some were coupled with a particular style of experimentation. This created a distinct lyric that is predominant today: a kind of neo-acmeism. And I’m not just talking about Brodsky, but the language represented by Gandlevsky, Tsvetkov, Kenzheev, and the St. Petersburg authors such as Elena Schwartz, Viktor Krivulin, and young authors such as Elena Fanaelova; and also there are the poets who have oriented themselves toward the west such as Stanislav Lvovsky, Alexander Anashevich, Lenor Garalik, etc. Now, from these authors we get a common language. The Debut authors follow all this, and consequently use this speech. I am not saying that the Debut poets don’t have their own individual voices; these poets are simply working in a narrower linguistic diapason.
The paradox is that the retreat from formalistic experimentation is still interpreted as a linguistic experiment. Tatyana Moseeva, Julia Idlis, Marianna Geide, Mikhail Kotov, and Piotr Popov are still heavily criticized by the assholes in the main journals. Overall the Debut generation is seen as the new avant-garde, and it is often criticized for not doing enough, for being formally lazy. In the mid 1990’s Znamya ran an article called: Shadow Know Your Place. This was a controversial piece in which the author argued that the status of emerging poets was too high; the idea being that they were mere shadows of their predecessors. Of course, “who is whose shadow?” is an open question. Today we once again see senior critics accusing the younger generation of not knowing their place; and even though these critics are aging and will eventually pass on, it is they –not Ilya Kukulin or Danila Davydov– who are defining and building contemporary criticism.

PG: Do you think the younger generation is conscious of this or are they simply writing there poems, and these poems just happen not to fall in line with critical expectations?

DD: I don’t think that anyone is consciously creating a particular kind of lyric, aside from two or three authors (whose names I won’t mention) who are consciously working through a particular method. But all in all I think there is a historical cultural movement afoot that is greater than individuality.

PG: They’re just writing their poems?

DD: Yes, yes, yes, in the 1990’s there was a distinct feeling of opposition to the official cannon. Poets were defending their own, pointing and saying, “These, these are our poets, fuck Voznesensky and Okudzhava, but Nekrasov, Prigov, Krivulin, Shvartz, Dragomoshenko, etc. These are our poets; this is who we are.” There were many different combinations that people chose to call their own, but the point is that they defined their position in opposition to another.

PG: And now?

DD: Today, everything is mixed into one common cultural tradition. One can easily inherit the traditions of Dragamoshenko or Pushkin, but it will all have the same value. In the 1990’s it would have been a shock to see an established hip poet prefacing a poem with a quote from…I don’t know… say Tyutchev. Today this wouldn’t surprise anyone. This is an aspect of the contemporary scene that I like: all traditions are up for grabs.

PG: So, what are the values of the young poet?

DD: Well, like I’ve already said, the neo-acmeistic language represented by Brodsky, in part the Moscow and St. Petersburg schools, several new authors that I’ve already mentioned… I don’t know. I don’t know how to assign a set of values to the contemporary situation. The present state of things feels like a period of transition, although who knows when this transition will end. In ten years? In twenty? Who knows? Also, periodically we have groups, who quite sporadically, decide to orient themselves toward a western school unknown in Russia (e.g. the circle of Sergei Ogurtsov which orients itself toward American Academic poetry, like the Language school).

PG: Like Dragomoshenko?

DD: Dragomoshenko in the senior generation and Skidan in the middle generation, but in the new generation we suddenly have these other poets… This leads us to assume that there won’t ever be an absolute, unified, language of poetry.

PG: I noticed that the majority of Russian poets don’t have an academic background in poetry. What role does the academy play in contemporary poetry?

DD: Unfortunately a negative one, though it has the potential to play a positive one. This again, is the old story of Russian culture. The idea of an academic literary education, not coincidentally, belongs to Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov. He organized the first literature program at the Russia Theater Arts Institute, or… I can’t remember what it was called, we can look it up later. Bryusov believed that a musician should get an education at a conservatory, or that a painter should get his education at an art school. It’s obvious that you can’t teach someone to be talented, but technique can be taught, and this is what Bryusov set out to do. Of course, earlier I mentioned my belief in the autodidact, but this is my own personal belief. But as a whole, Bryusov’s idea was a good one, and other important writers supported him (e.g. Nikolay Gumilev). They were both teachers and proponents of the techniques behind good poetry. It is arguable whether they produced any good poets through their teaching, but they certainly produced some great translators. Later in the thirties the Soviets opened the Gorky Literary Institute. The goal of this program was formally the same, but in essence completely different. The Gorky Institute had two objectives: first, educate the proletariat, and second, create a place where bourgeois writers could interact with the proletariat. The main point of this school was to teach people who was Shakespeare and who was Pushkin, because at that time, people were horribly ignorant. Thus, the main job of the Gorky Institute was to provide a basic standard education –a kind of production line approach. And this is basically still the model of the literature program to this day. This is the model upon which the Russian academic literary education was founded. This also goes for the discipline of philology. From my point of view a poet must be a philologist. But the contemporary state of academic philology in Russia is atrocious. This isn’t to say that the academy as a whole is atrocious; I’m just talking about philology. Russian philology still functions according to the old Soviet bureaucracy, both in the capitals and in the provinces, and this prevents it from playing a major role in the actual creation of poetry. The old Soviet models deter the academy from becoming the center of literary life. This is why Russian artists must find alternative resources, through non-academic publishers and salons. But as a whole it’s a pretty sad state of affairs. Also, I must add that I think that many young poets are quite capable of holding their own, and many of them are even more capable of producing quality criticism than those with an academic education in philology.

PG: In America, people still think of Yevtushenko and Voznesevsky reading poetry in soccer stadiums; Americans believe that in Russia, poets and poetry are far more popular than in the U.S. How much truth is there to this? Who cares about poetry in Russia? What is the poets status?

DD: First, we have to keep in mind that the success of poets like Yevtushenko and Voznesensky was the result of a political culture that doesn’t exist anymore. People piled into stadiums to listen to Yevtushenko and Voznesenky not because of any aesthetic beliefs about good poetry, but to simply hear: “Stalin’s an asshole!” or “Get Lenin off the ruble!” Also, we have to remember that Russia was a very repressed country –the films of Fellini, Anotnioni, Bergmann, etc. where accessible to a small minority of people. The aesthetic niche, which poetry fills, was much emptier back then. The same can be said for the Silver Age –Blok could pack a hall full of people. But the role poetry occupied back then has been spent; to what extent it has been spent is an interesting question, which could be the subject of a dissertation. The answer to this question will depend on what counts as poetry. Maybe poetry hasn’t spent all of its capital but simply transferred it? For instance, consider rock poetry, which began to fulfill the function of mass poetry back in the 1970’s. Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenshchikov work according to the same models as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky.
The legendary status of the poet in Russian isn’t completely a lie. No matter how much the poet is replaced by other forms of media, there will always be this sense that the poet works at the height of art. This can be seen when critics and journalists refer to a painter or a singer as a poet. This means that the title of poet still has important value in the eyes of culture… The role of poetry diminished greatly in the 1990’s, but I believe there is a rebirth occurring today. In part this rebirth is connected to the internet, and the small presses willing to publish young work. There are also the various projects like OGI, and the Debut Prize. All this puts the show back into poetry.

PG: What are your ideas concerning the trajectory of Russian poetry? How is Russian poetry going to develop? What is it going to look like?

DD: What awaits poetry? Lots of things, probably. Certainly a split between an academic practice, and the more amateur practice. Signs of this can already be seen online. From the point of view of world culture this happened first during the post-Alexandrian epoch in Greece, when suddenly both traditional academic poets existed side-by-side with a rich folk and theatre culture, which functioned independently of the academy. This split is in its first stage but I think that after a couple of generations these two poles may form into their own distinct phenomenon. Is this good or bad? Who know? It is an objective process, and one cannot assign qualitative value to such a process. Is it good or bad that this summer was so hot, and then suddenly so cold? It was uncomfortable, but we can’t say that it was good or bad –it simply was.

PG: Do you think there is a new narrative trend in contemporary young poetry?

DD: I don’t know. Poetry has always had prosaic attributes, and prose has always had lyric attributes. They diffuse into one another. This is nothing new.

PG: I noticed that most Russian poems don’t have titles. Why do you think that is?

DD: It is the result of a minimization in poetry. It is the process of trying to distance oneself from formalities. For instance, considered texts written in the 16th century with titles that stretched on for eighteen lines. By doing away with the title the poet is letting the text speak for itself without formalities. It’s like taking the frame off the painting to maximize the ratio between painting and everything else. The reader is given less and less markers, which allow him to guess the nature of the work. Think about how people define a poem? If it rhythms, it’s a poem. If it’s in stanzas, it’s a poem. If it’s in meter, it’s a poem. If it’s called sonnet or ode, it’s a poem. Now the poet is saying, “No reader, you’re going to have to work, and figure out for yourself what is, and isn’t, a poem.” This approach puts more responsibility on the reader. This is a trend which can be seen in all art. The history of art has been defined in part by a stripping away of the clichés that signify art.

PG: You were an editor for the poetry anthology Nine Measurements. In his introductory essay to the anthology Ilya Kukunin comments that your choices were the most radical and avant-garde. How did you go about choosing poets for this anthology?

DD: Nine Measurements was a pretty strange project, although it is very dear to me. It was a project that aimed to both, put forward the poetic beliefs of the selectors, and to present an objective representation of young Russian poetry. Of course, the selectors didn’t simply choose who they liked. We bartered. There was a lot of: “I’ll give you these two if you let me have her.” We all know how these things go. I’d have to answer Kukunin’s comment about my selections with a question: “What exactly is meant by avant-garde?” I tend to think the term avant-garde is dated. It’s a term tied to the first third of the 20th century. Anything called avant-garde after this time should really be called something else –post avant-garde, neo avant-garde, etc. Today, you have people using the term avant-garde when talking about themselves, while at the same time adhering to a tradition. A writer adhering to a tradition can’t be avant-garde by definition, even if this tradition is composed of avant-garde writers.
The term radical also needs qualification. An author is radical only within a specific context. One author might be radical in their form, and another might be discursively radical. In this sense the term radical isn’t very thoughtful either, but I suppose within the context of the anthology my choices do stand out. In this sense my choices might be called radical, but only in this sense –within the context of the anthology. For me the authors I chose are actually central to contemporary Russian poetry.

PG: Your own work includes both prose and poetry. How is your approach to prose different from your approach to poetry?

DD: Well, aside from the formal separation, there really isn’t any principled difference. This is why I write such short prose. I like the western tradition of including short prose in poetry anthologies. I think the two complement one another quite well. The concept of putting short prose and poetry together is also beginning to gain acceptance in Russia.

PG: What about the use of the aphorism in your work? Does your work have anything invested in truth telling?

DD: For me, truth and morality are important. Again, if we turn to Bryusov (who thought truth was very important in poetry) we see the idea that each subject has its own kind of truth. Maybe there are eight or nine kinds. Who knows? The post-modern project wasn’t meant to dilute truth, but to show its many aspects. The great physicist Niels Bohr once said, “A triviality is a statement whose opposite is false. However, a great truth is a statement whose opposite may well be another great truth.” In this sense a question about truth and morality has to be about some specific thing.
I want these truths to have some value over time. The aphorism of Daniel Kharms is really important for me: Poems should be written so that when thrown at a window, the window breaks. Although, unlike Kharms I am not an abstruse poet; everything I write has a specific meaning behind it: I am not an absurdist. The most important thing for me is the organic coherence of a text. It is an organism. What’s the meaning of a rabbit’s, an oak’s, or a person’s existence? We cannot talk about the meaning of a human as a type, we can only talk about the meaning of an individual life. The meaning of a human as a type is biological. The meaning of a text as a type is to be whole and alive. In this sense we can see how complete, meaningful, truthful texts can be in opposition to one another. The wolf may live in opposition to the rabbit (one eats, while the other runs away) but both are complete and true. This for me is what is important about a text, that it be whole and complete. Yes… As for an investment in the truth…Yes, I feel responsible to tell the truth, but I respect the person I was in the past, and that person is quite different from the person sitting in front of you. My beliefs change quite often. I am not talking about my philosophical, aesthetic principles (although these change as well, but more smoothly). What I am talking about here is my detailed approaches to the world. These change rapidly, and quite schizophrenically. I recognize this, and to some extent welcome schizophrenia, while respecting the truth held by the many selves before me.

PG: Who are some of your favorite contemporary Russian poets? Who are you reading write now?

DD: I hate this question! Lesha Denisov has an old poem in which the followinh line appears: “according to some there are only 500.” He got that line from me during a conversation about how many good poets are in Russia. I said that there were no less than 500 good poets in Russia today. Although, this is a very conservative number, the number is probably closer to something like 2000. I really couldn’t answer the question you asked without naming at least 200 poets. I also change my mind. The list I give you now might be inadequate in a week. As to the later part of your question: Who am I reading? I am a professional critic; my job is to read everything. What do I like best? I don’t know. It is impossible to answer this question.

Golub is....

2006-11-16T18:50:00.000-08:00

I think this is one of my favorites from the flarf festival... but there is more oh so much more...and it sounds like there are about 8 people in the audience which makes me happy... in the same way it makes me happy to know that driving every day in LA is more hazerdous to a person's health than smoking from the age of 14 to the age of 46.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDgy0PBr8lg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G871rRmiCqg

and what is golub?

golub is particularly fond of twentieth century music and has given the russian premieres of compositions by ives
golub is no different
golub is very much the dominant voice
golub is the director of the cancer genomics program at whitehead genome center
golub is a pioneer in using data from the human genome project and dna arrays to obtain genetic fingerprints of different cancers as a way of classifying and
golub is available for phone calls during the day
golub is a guest lecturer and scholar
golub is the executive director of mercaz usa the zionist organization of the conservative movement
golub is a town in west prussia
golub is a leading exponent of history painting – painting as a narrative
golub is so caught up in making art and writing about it
golub is deceptively laid back in lecture
golub is the father of the generalized conjugate gradient method
golub is turning out a celebrity series of promotional events
golub is an expert on international trade and finance
golub is foremost a scientist and a research biologist
golub is the composer of numerous works for film
golub is one of
golub is a very fine musician and a decent human being
golub is not only a versatile and talented musician
golub is entitled to a break
golub is the managing member of golub ps
golub is getting colorado brewers to keg their specialty beers
golub is a licensed professional insurance agent
golub is one of america's leading painters whose work has been influential to a number of arists
golub is one of several prominent contemporary artists who in the mid
golub is from schenectady
golub is other
golub is first and last a painter
golub is an astrophysicist at the harvard
golub is the afterglow of dozens of his performances that i heard and reviewed
golub is managing director of centre partners management
golub is a big name
golub is planning a visit to senegal for continued research in the summer of 2000
golub is ignoring the opportunity cost of the decision
golub is categorized in the smooth jazz genre because he's an instrumentalist; at heart
golub is a founding partner and managing director of blackrock
golub is the recipient of a charles ives scholarship
golub is a professor of microbiology & molecular genetics at the university of california
golub is chairman and chief executive officer of american express company
golub is a director of dow jones & co
golub is noted for his work in the use of numerical methods in linear algebra for solving scientific and engineering problems
golub is presenting a survey of source material relating to the creation of the modern state of israel
golub is at his best here in the realm of myth
golub is president and ceo
golub is a golfer and a philanthropist
golub is a graduate of yale college and yale law school
golub is also a certified public accountant
golub is
golub is from banja luka
golub is taking "dodo" on the road
golub is the quintessential realized american dream
golub is responsible for product strategy
golub is a portfolio manager in jp morgan fleming's us equity group
golub is also active in the community associations institute
golub is so busy with charity and business commitments he rarely has time to enjoy his golf homes
golub is a professor of computer science and director of the scientific computing and computational mathematics program at stanford university
golub is collecting pictures of several different wavelengths of x
golub is a polemicist
golub is a staff toxicologist in the office of environmental health hazard assessment where she is responsible for guideline
golub is admitted to practice in california
golub is back with a second bluemoon recording
golub is an
golub is at the white head institute at massachusetts institute of technology and he is going to come and help us with our topic of "new
golub is financially incapable of paying a
golub is associate professor of english education at the university of south florida in tampa
golub is in his sixth season as an artist member of the chamber music society of lincoln center and he continues to
golub is professor of computer science at stanford university
golub is a member of the new york state bar and the american payroll association
golub is onto something unfortunately
golub is concerned that non
golub is a masterful guitar player and this disc perfectly showcases his versatility as both a player and a songwriter
golub is a stoic and a nihilist
golub is one of the world’s leading postwar painters
golub is senior vice president and general manager of the trust and payment
golub is associate professor of english education at the university of south florida
golub is always welcome at braun's place
golub is currently chair of the section on mathematics
golub is the antithesis of the angry activist artist
golub is often willfully oblivious towards the complexities of the situations he depicts
golub is an assistant
golub is responsible for guiding clientlogic on its mission to be the leading global provider of services that manage and enhance the customer experience
golub is a partner in the intellectual property practice resident in the philadelphia office
golub is recognized for his numerous contributions to cancer research
golub is the fletcher jones professor of computer science at stanford university where he has been a faculty member since 1962
golub is the answer
golub is a fletcher jones professor of computer science at stanford university
golub is a managing director of centre partners management llc

***

2006-11-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

What is the Debut generation? The poem begins with a series of clichés the things you take with you define the place definitions are in the eye of the beholder the beholder’s eye is allergic to spring we move onto the self effacing humiliations curled up under the office desk with a bottle of gin staring at the plastic phone wondering what she is doing now then trying to sound brave in front of the husband jumping over the chain link fence ripping your pants right off landing onto a trampoline bouncing over the white fence and into a kiddy pool full of brown water and autumn leaves you get up out of the poem to turn down the music in your library say a few words in self defense there is so much death everywhere you look at your palms and say “good monkey” you return the brown leaves in the kiddy pool are now dry dust “where is she?” my death’s dead the phone rings then another and another it grows dark you see the tiny blue screens bobbing up and down with the empty street

So the Democrats Win: A Poem for the Democrats

2006-11-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy in 5 Acts

I would like to ban the words: machine, fountain, and snow
metallic drinking fountain
truth has an accent
like gook-jews
midget-luchador
redneck-niggers
and some machines drop radios made of microwave parts
lovingly
metallic water
tumbling from a communal bathhouse

bassquiet stands up
Gregor Gregorovich (a favorite character of: 0 users)
pours the last of the gin over the computer

-that fucking does it, he says and suddenly cries, I’m jewish! I can’t feel my eyes!

-come on you two, says Yassen Gregorovich.

-what are you, the gestapo?

-come on fellas.

-jeez just let us finish our drinks.

-you’re finished; lets go.

-look, says bassquiet, it’s peter.

-what’s it doing up there? asks Gregor Gregorovich.

-maybe he has something to say about a memoir, says bassquiet, and leaves through the back door.

(peter, dribbling briskly into position, in front of his goal, squaring up to encompass his own destruction.)

When I missed your flight
sitting in a new way

-don’t shoot, cries Gregor Gregorovich.

-don’t jump, says Yassen Gregorovich.

-give him air, says the violinist in bar light.

(peter continues, a transcription without notes.)

not anything about love or poetry or st. leningrad
or hymenoptera models
of roots and branches
standing in opposition to themselves

-It’s Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor, says the violinist.

(peter sways and takes a drink of water.)

the airport smells like an old couch
the old woman asks you to watch her bag
I think about the impact this act will have on the U.S. economy
the female asks the male
sit on the floor
she puts her head in his lap
he watches the escalator
meat being moved into its places

-I can’t stand it, cries Gregor Gregorovich.

-Oh, the horror, the horror, says Yassen Gregorovich.

-The horror, the horror, repeats the violinist.

(peter continues)

I am hiding
in the imagined thoughts of others
in the fat woman’s conversation with her bags about security
the old woman in the bathroom
sitting on the toilet
the ghost of my death
the light of my hour

(peter puts a hand to his brow and falls to the floor.)

a gathering crowd:

-there are of course limits
we wait peacefully
like something from a haiku

just like the plane was never invented, mumbles peter coming tWo…

-somebody give him a bank card, says the violinist.

when I left
when I was scheduled to leave

-take the mean and multiply it by the square root of (t)1, suggests Gregor Gregorovich.

-are the people on the conveyer belt transplanted into sausages? asks Yassen Gregorovich.

packed into planes
packed into planes
taken back to Africa
fed to my grandmother’s dictator
clutching his nappies
hemorrhaging –bleeding from the ass
asleep
dreaming of a yellow meadow from a movie

(peter gets up, wobbly on his feet. Mandy Potemkin walks through the small doors in the back, takes him under the arm, smiles weakly toward Gregor Gregorovich and the violinist. Yassen Gregorovich takes him under the other arm.)

Exit

music for the lovers of music

2006-11-06T20:57:00.000-08:00

I am usually the last to know about yet another Friendster spin off.
I just came across this one and found it wonderful.

http://www.last.fm/user/peterdevries/

Publishing Blues

2006-10-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

It is a curious fact that my own poetry will see print in Russia, and possibly Argentina, before it will in America. Of course, the reasons for this are obvious --I haven't submitted anything in the states. When asked why I don't submit I kind of mumble around the question. I think the question "Does anyone need pay for my writing?" has something to do with it.

Also, when I worked as a stacks jockey at a university library I had my favorite, and least, favorite sections. One of my least favorite was the PR section. Sure it started innocent enough with some Chaucer and Shakespeare criticism, moving smoothly onto Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, but it ended in the Canadian literature section --a stacker’s worst nightmare. There was no free space on the shelves. This created a disarray of small paperbacks, which were placed horizontally on top of other books, strewn on the ground, or simply put on adjacent shelves. There was a lack of space, and every time I shelved the end of the PR's there were always new books that were magically supposed to fit on the crowded shelves. And what were these books? Many of them were poetry collection put out by small presses. Conceptual poetry with clever covers, books dedicated to Egon Schiele paintings, a Sahara village's struggle against the encroaching desert, a hip coming of age story that bridged the gap between...

The experience of the PR's made me think twice about publishing. Now this isn't to say that I'm a potential Kafka keeping his talents from the world because of post-library stress syndrome, but I wonder if there are great writers out there not publishing for this reason. Maybe a 23 year old Joyce is pushing americanos thinking "better this than the stacks."

Here is a novel about the workshop:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6354096

And Richard Foreman's blog:
http://www.wakeupmrsleepy.blogspot.com/

Mayakovsky

2006-10-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

I feel this image represents me quite well when it comes to writing something substantive about contemporary young Russian poetry. More on this later. But for the moment I would like to direct you to the exchange about Mayakovsky on Ron Sillman's blog: http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/02/at-some-point-spread-of-literacy-in.html

2006-10-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

WE

2006-10-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

God it’s hot outside. Just twenty minutes ago I was twenty minutes away from home. Now I am here. But I am not me am I? Because I was there, and how could I be there and here simultaneously? I often think about this; that the person typing this can’t possibly be the person who typed the previous sentence, because how could I be typing both at the same time. W.V. Quine talks about squares of time. Parts of time with parts of rabbits, stages of rabbits… Was it Quine? Well, everyone has heard the term time-space or is it space-time? Whatever it is “I” cannot inhabit all this space-time, if I could then I would be immortal, omnipresent –God. And I am not God.
When I walked to get my film I noticed a girl crossing the street in front of me. I crossed with her, behind her. She had headphones on, which reminded me that I too had headphones and wouldn’t mind listening to the news. I have an FM transmitter in my mp3 player.
So when I crossed the street I took out my player, and put in the headphones. At this time the girl had stopped for some reason. Then just as I began walking, she began as well, still in front of me. We walked for several blocks. I was walking to get my film. She turned the corner and I followed her, i.e. this was the direction of the photo shop. She then walked into the parking lot the store was in. It was as if we were going to the same place. “Strange,” I thought, “Gunman takes several hostages in Amish school killing three and wounding several others,” said the news woman. “Several others,” I thought, “That’s pretty vague. Are they still trying to figure out who exactly was injured by the gunmen and who just ran into the wall in a flight of panic? And wouldn’t that flight of panic still be the result of the gunman and count as an injury caused by him? That’s the problem with the liberal media these days. They can’t take a direct stand on anything, not even the number of causalties caused by the paranoid delusions of an Amish man. What could be easier to take a stand on? Who could possibly object if the final count was a little off?”
She walked into the coffee shop right before the photo shop. I picked up my photos. They were bad. Most of them were of a kitchen sink and dirty dishes. One was of a ceramic coffee cup with marks of lipstick, another was of a dirty pot, another of the same ceramic cup in the dirty pot, the next distinguished itself from the previous by showing a blurred fly sitting on the rim of the pot, etc. I didn’t remember taking the photos, but I could imagine myself in a sudden wave of romantic appreciation for the simple things in life, taking twenty black and white photos of my brother’s dirty dishes. Mr. Cheng, the photo clerk, didn’t say anything when I handed him the new twenty dollar bill for his service. He silence embarrassed me. I imagined him looking over the photos to see if they turned out, rolling his eyes, and sighing. I wondered how many attempts at art this man has witnessed. But the subject of the photo shack operator has been scrapped by many authors before me. I’ll leave that one alone.
I have to admit that even though the photos themselves were terrible, despite the fact that I felt embarrassed for spending $10.78 to get them developed; the photos made me smile. They were simple, or just bad, but the person who took them really thought that at that moment the most beautiful thing in the world was a sink full of dirty dishes. I have noticed, as I grow older, that these moments become fewer and fewer. The romantic lens through which I saw the world at the age of 19 has been dirtied, and scratched, taken off, and forgotten. The lens I used now was better, it could do more things, represent the world in a more accurate way, but something was lost. As I thought about this metaphor I realized that I knew almost nothing about photography, and started to question whether someone who was a photographer would find my lens metaphor naive, or simply wrong.
I thought back to when I was 19. I didn’t have a girlfriend, and was constantly crashing on someone’s couch (I have to thank Paul and Sara for being particularly generous with their blankets and beer). My love life culminated in an unrequited infatuation with a girl who worked the check-out counter at the university library. But I truly did love her. Every piece of my space-time corpuscles knew it. I loved her so much that it didn’t even matter that she didn’t love me back. I could never love anyone that way again, not even her.
Of course, this sort of denial can be dangerous. For instance, my infatuation taught me how to maintain the course even when the course was obviously a really bad one. In future relationships this cost me dearly. I would show up on the door step of a girls house in the middle of January without calling, to have her new boyfriend answer the door and give me one of those “So you’re that guy” looks. I maintained the course time and time again when the course time and time again, and although this may be an admirable quality in a general or president it’s just plain pathetic when applied in courtship.
At at 22 I finally learned what most people learn at 16 –just because you love someone doesn’t necessarily mean that they will love you back. Or the revised version: Just because someone loved you in October doesn’t mean they are going to love you five months later on Valentine’s Day.
It is also at this age that I began to “change the lens” so to speak. I realized that I could sleep with someone and not have a strong emotional attachment. I learned that people really do want to be lied to, and that a little basic courtesy will get you a lot farther than a random act of kindness. As I learned these rules (which seemed to just be programmed into most people) I also felt my romantic ambitions begin to wear and fade. Suddenly I didn’t feel comfortable crashing on someone’s couch, eating strangers’ food, doing their dishes, and leaving a poem on their kitchen table with a basket of fruit I picked on my walk around the neighborhood. I slowly stopped giving people burned cds and books, and began picking up the tab.
Now looking back I realized that at the age of 19 I had sustained (maybe for too long) an approach to life that is completely impractical, pathetic, and well, magical. I was completely enamored with things like the changing of leaves. I could come to tears sitting under a tree thinking about photosynthesis while listening to Bill Evans or a solo by John Coltrane. What happened? Is it true that knowledge leads to disillusionment, and that not only does ignorance mean bliss, but also reverence and love?
I stood there on the corner looking intently at a blurry black and white close-up of an ant crawling along a spoon. “With elections just a month away how do you think voters are going to react to this new set of allegations? Well, Ron…” I turned off the radio and found a guilty pleasure –Kid A by Radiohead. I remembered the girl at the check-out desk that told me to listen to the album more carefully. I decided that instead of going grocery shopping, like a responsible adult, I would just get a burrito and read Eugene Ostashevsky’s Iterature instead of the articles for the translation seminar.
I got in line at the restaurant and noticed the girl from the street. She was standing in front of me. I studied her intently until she looked at me and seemed a little surprised. She turned around a little nervous and I remembered how I was accused of being a stalker when following around the girl at the check out desk, or another girl after a party. I smiled to myself, almost giggled. I’d done it again. I realized that looking at someone, paying attention to someone, loving them, is not something a person can just do –you need permission to love a person. A person isn’t a tree or a sink full of dirty dishes –a person doesn’t necessarily want to be loved or appreciated; most of the time a person just wants to be left alone. I guess this is why libertarians do so well, even though they are actually bad for the people who vote for them. On the surface everyone just wants to be left in their own world –to be allowed to exist like an autonomous city state. And it is only when we want something from someone, be it a few bucks or a hug, that we turn our attention outward.
I watched the girl make her order. When the cashier asked the girl to stay or go she hesitated, and then almost glancing over her shoulder she decided to stay. She took her number and sat down at a small table in the corner of the dim restaurant. I ordered a vegetarian burrito, but saw the cashier mark chicken. “Ve-gi-ta-ri-an,” I said slowly. “Que?” I blushed as I always do when I am confronted with my complete ignorance of Spanish. The girl looked at me from her corner. “That one,” I pointed to the little check box next to the word “vegetarian”. “Stay or go?” I glanced over at the girl, who was now reading. For some reason I was convinced she knew Spanish. She looked up and then quickly looked down at her book. “Stay or go, Sir?” “Go,” I said.

The Master and Margarita

2006-10-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

I recommended The Master and Margarita to S. (individual in picture)... You should all read it. I just finished the new russian film adaptation of the novel. It is rather silly -the black vodka drinking tom cat Bigimot is a puppet that reminded me of the one used in ALF. Also, OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (1926-1942)is finally out from Northwestern University Press;including writings from Kharms, Vvedensky, Zabolotsky, Oleinikov, Lipavsky, Druskin; edited by Eugene Ostashevsky; co-translated from Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich, with Ilya Bernstein, Tom Epstein, and GenyaTurovskaya. It's not cheap, but it is a long awaitedrevelation (revolution?).You can check it out asfollows....<http://nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-2293-6>

400 Words

2006-10-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

also read a story about someone else on this site http://www.400words.com/
we do not have enough personal accounts from the strange live's of ordinary people.

Poem #3

2006-10-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

I know he said that it has past
but we have been walking for 25 years now
and I still haven’t seen M. or Jack

we have left the proper amount of stones at each pass
the animal skin burned at the end of each month
the fifth season a time of fasting

my night, sleeping
I lean over to your breaths
my name written on your forehead

the dissolved ocean takes my children
who cautiously walk along the sandy cliffs
in the mornings

the garrets ark
the nameless drunk who calls us God
fucking our daughters while we walk

singing his bard
counting saturn’s rings
pressing that horn to his chapped lips

when we began
my shadow
fell like a wingless bird on the needles

now I possess only these words
these ballads
that I carry naked with this pile of tribal taboos

By S. Izenberg

Robot Poetry

2006-10-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/irobotpoetry/ir-catalog.html

Billy Collins Poem #2

2006-09-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

“The The” was over but it wasn’t. In Florida there’s a fantastic fuck. In a fantasy there can be a gun goes off and anyone dies. In a fancy hotel fifty years ago. Lighting a cigarette. Licking an ice-cream cone. Getting a blowjob then giving. Admiring the flowers beautifying the island running down the boulevard and we’d have been grateful with just a green relatively free of shit.

The armistice fifty years ago at a fancy hotel in Florida where he got his first blowjob. A rock comes clean. A Poinciana in full bloom flames the shade to a state like sunny. Five hundred miles away a gun went off and no-one died in any official records. After work he bought a pint of coconut ice-cream and once home ate half a cup it on his apartment building’s roof.

When I was in Florida I didn’t see any coconuts not even in a grocery store. I did see cans. I played one with a stick and pretended I was the happiest motherfucker being in a dump. A real one. An egret hustled across a shitty road. I’m not in love with my body but it’s my soul and so I have spent all day pleasuring it and not being productive. I wish he’d stop saying slut.

In Germany the fine for knocking down a yellow jacket nest is up to 50,000 euro.

This one was submitted by A. Strauss

I promised to put this up for Steven.

2006-09-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

The First Collins poem

2006-09-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

This is the first poem submitted for project
in which you the reader turns in a Billy Collins poem.
The How to Write a Billy Collins poem instructions are in the post
entitled Happy Poems. So read the instructions and submit, submit, submit...
Remember this is not a contest, but the winner will receive a wonderful prize.

here is a poem Steven Colbert (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=69366862) submitted yesterday.

I wonder what a Billy Collins poem is, as I have never read one,
But I gather it has a rhythm that meanders
To the all-familiar la-da-de of the suburban
Hedge-row contained oinopoponton of the lawn-mower owning tribes
Who in times of crisis (or when the skies are the simple fact of grey)
Must recall, in a succession of very clear blurs
The menagerie of benders trailing back
To that first illicit thrill under the bleachers after dark
A satisfied slurp of cold Milwaukee's
Best, a cigarette,
The terror of finding all that lacking
And the wonder of what now would constitute as terrifying.
Here, in the leaden-laden 75th percent
We need the always present upturn of a question.
What, after all
All those six packs later (as if I'd ever buy but six!)
Was it worth, sinning, if those sins came origin less?
If Sin was but a name the namers fixed to blankness in a desperate bid for order.
And now, at the end, before things get askew
It's time to end the poem on an uplift, with a skeptical,
Even dour nod to show the Carnegies and Rockerfellers
How to balance the wealth and power of a neo-farious prince
With the age-old haunted alcoholic wisdom of the bard.

Also, for the three people who read this
I did not take any of the poems down
and plan to keep on posting

Navajo Joe

2006-09-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Incestuous Island Biogeography of Michael Palmer
by Peter Golub

All my brother architects are dead
or else asleep with their sisters in bed

The first time I read Palmer I had the feeling of language changing –I saw a kind of evolution taking place before me. This is not the first time I have had this feeling (e.g. I get this feeling when reading Stein’s Tender Buttons), but this was the first time I thought I saw some of the mechanisms behind this evolution exposed. It is similar to the feeling a child might get at Disney Land, while watching The Pirates of the Caribbean and catching a glimpse of a spring or cog pop out of one of the pirates. It’s like seeing the deus ex machina’s panties.

The mechanism I saw was mutation. Mutation, Drift, Natural Selection (the hitman of evolutionary world), and migration are the four major drives behind genetic variation. Of these four, mutation is by far the most sporadic, and in specific circumstances the most successful.

What causes mutation? Many things can cause mutation. For instance, in the virus HIV the high rate of mutation is the result of the reverse transcription it uses to make RNA into DNA. Its method of transcription is highly error prone, but since it can make copies at such a high rate the number of mutants that die is just lower than the number needed for the survival of the overall population. This makes HIV an optimal creature because it is always evolving to its environment. This is why it is such a slippery fucker to kill. It changes as soon as we develop something to kill it. As soon as we define what HIV is and how we should go about destroying it, it puts on a new set of cloths, sneaks back into the population, and wreaks more havoc on the immune system through its terrorist activities.

Question: What is causing the high rate of mutation in the poetry of Michael Palmer?
Answer: Incest.
Palmer’s poetry is highly incestuous. When a group of words gets together to make more words they don’t disappear after their children appear on the scene. Oh, no. They stick around to copulate with their progeny. Palmer’s words are highly incestuous, and the most incestuous word of all? Word. “Word” is the word that is by far the most promiscuous –it is the alpha male of this desperate population of words.

Now, what might be causing this population to be so incestuous? Why is “word” always having sex with its daughters and sons? Well, the most common reason falls under the umbrella of island biogeography. The idea in a nutshell is that evolution isn’t a blanket of democracy that affects all individuals equally. No, it affects pockets of populations. For instance, it hits Swaziland with a virulent epidemic, New Orleans with a hurricane, and the Iraq with a beacon of freedom (yes, freedom is a force of nature). After a certain population has been hit by a catastrophic event it must evolve or die. Most die. And those that are left over will have to evolve again and again in order to survive in the new changing environment. Grow fur, gills, wings, fancy coreceptor molecules that thwart the entry of the virulent virus whatever as long as it helps that individual survive. Since everyone around is dying who ever wants to survive must change fast. When there is little genetic variation in a population (e.g. if the sexual partners are all first cousins) this creates a situation in which mutation is kicked into overdrive. Most of the progeny that result from these unions will be deformed and most will die shortly after birth, but maybe one will grow some extraordinary pair of wings or T-cells that allow them to escape this terrible island.

A man undergoes pain sitting at a piano
knowing thousands will die while he is playing

he has two thoughts about this
if he should stop they would be free of pain

if he could get the notes right he would be free of pain
in the second case the first thought would be erased
(154)

This here is the process of mutation. It is a man pushing at the keys, trying to find the right notes in order to save the population. This is Palmer sticking these words together, in abnormal ways, to see what these combinations will produce.

Here is how I see it. A single word is an individual organism. A word is paired with another word. Then that same word is paired with something else. And then something else. The same word paired over and over with words, which are not to different from it. This goes on until the poem ends. The poem is a collection of meanings that all resemble one another. A row of redheaded step children with their own peculiar mutations. Palmer stands behind them saying, “see, look, this is it, these are the words.” Palmer does this to make us pay attention to the ideas laid on top of these words, and the other words writing on top of these words. Words on top of words on top of words. This is exactly what an organisms DNA is like. It is genes written on top of older genes, on top of genes that have been turned of for millions of years, etc. Palmers work puts us in the memeticists shoes i.e. he puts us in his laboratory and has us count the different memes in each word. By creating these strange combinations he brings out recessive alleles, unforeseen phenotypic variation, ancient repressed memes that haven’t been expressed since the Carter administration, etc.

What’s all this for? Why put this gang of incestuous mutants before us? Well, I think Palmer is scared that language has become too standardized, too Billy Collins, too commodified, etc. He sees the work of Carl Rove’s eumemicists (meme eugenicist) at work and is horrified. So what does he do? He sets up his Island of Doctor Palmer and makes a gang of incestuous mutants, which are meant to stand in opposition to the nice blond blue-eyed children of the linguistic bourgeoisie.

Words say, Misspell and misspell your name
Words say, Leave this life
(150)
Misspelling is a kind of mutation. The reason to misspell your name is to cause it to evolve, to take on new meaning. This is also why the word “word” comes up so much, because it is in need of evolution, because it represents so many ideas that are in need of evolution.

Happy Poems

2006-09-26T19:13:00.003-07:00

Recently I read a presentation on the poetry of Billy Collins, using a Francis Fukuyama article to set up the definition of what it means to be bourgeois, and then showing how Collins fulfills this definition. While writing the presentation I was reading some of Bill's work, which caught the eye of many of my young friends. I witnessed something that I had heard about for a long time -the natural appeal of Collins' work to the general reader. I had heard the "older" generation of professors outside the poetry world praise Collins, but here was the example first hand. My friends, many of them just barely in their twenties, gravitated to Collins like flies to a dung... it was amazing. My hat's off to you Mr. Collins.

Now I would like to present a little workshop exercise. This will kind of be like a Bob Ross presentation of poetry -we're going to make a happy little poem...

"Writing a Billy Collins poem": A Poetry Exercise

Buy and read and re-read Nine Horses (2003) or any other collection by Billy Collins. These poems are your role models.
Overview.
You are going to write a poem with many of the features of a Billy Collins poem.
Begin by reading all the poems in at least one of his books. As you read jot down three or four characteristics that you admire and that appear in several of the poems.
Below we give you a list of some features that we picked out.
Then we'll show you how to start and how to continue.
Details.
Here are some of the features of a Billy Collins poem. For your first exercise, plan to use every one of these in your first draft. You can cut the less successful features when you revise.
Billy Collins' line breaks are not avant-garde, but simply reflect the normal punctuation and pauses for breath. Many of the poems are written in couplets, triplets, or quatrains. They do not have end rhymes. So, when you start writing your poem, you can use similar "natural" breaks between your lines, and you can group the lines into stanzas of between 2 and 4 lines.
You will need a small animal. It could be a mouse or a snail. It could be a small, caged bird or a goldfish. Pick one. The animal will usually stand for you. Or you might stand for it.
Collins' poems are primarily about his own daily, non-confessional experiences. He appears in his own poems as a friendly and unpretentious "I".
Collins likes to address "you". Remarkably, even to readers who usually detest such poems, Collins does not offend. That is because he is flatters and teases the addressed "you". Be prepared to walk the dangerous "you" path!
Think of a slightly squeamish element that you can include, such as a dead mouse or a still-living bird brought in by a cat.
Include an extended metaphor that flourishes for stanzas, rejoicing into the surreal.
Include a conscious (in fact, self-conscious) descent into bathos (in the sense of anticlimax).
Refer to one or more famous people (such as Ken Kesey or David Hume) or a town (such as Omaha or Kathamandu) or a state or country (such as Florida or China).
Use commonplace language, such as:
"how fatuous, how off base of Whistler" (p.101)
Recipe.
Here we go. Time to start using the features in your work.
Line 1: Begin with a line that mentions a time. Most commonly, Collins picks a time earlier in the morning (page numbers are from Nine Horses ):
"Every since I woke up today" (p.14)
"This morning as I walked along the lakeshore" (p.17)
"Long into the night my pencil" (p.86)
"In a rush this weekday morning" (p.101)
Line 2: Continue with a line containing a verb - an action of what you (or something) did:
"a song has been playing uncontrollably" (p.14)
"I fell in love with a wren" (p.17)
"hurried across the page" (p.86)
"I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery" (p.101)
Line 3: So far, it's not too weird, too surreal, too Collins-esque. Don't get cute too soon. Take a little time first to lull the reader. So here, simply add another line of description, introducing (or extending) a metaphor or simile that represents what occurred. You are continuing the story.
Lines 4-6. This is when you begin your career as Billy Collins. Bring in your small animal (bird, fish, whatever). Introduce your slightly squeamish element.
Lines 7-9. Reference "you" in a charming yet clear-eyed way.
Extend your metaphor relentlessly for several more stanzas.
Conclude with a flourish that shifts the mood to one that complements the prevalent mood so far.
Revise. Revise. Revise.

One Year Since the Flood

2006-09-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

There is a Novelty to Science

There is a Novelty to Science
There is a passport in my pack
There is a rat inside your warehouse
There is a cat on my front porch

I’ve listed to your comments nightly
I’ve taken notes composed a song
I’ve named my heir the future brightly
I’ve never promised this would go on

The future changes on the beaches
She hangs her garments on my fence
When you engage inside her novel
Remember that she won’t stay long

Andy Warhola

2006-09-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

Where is your 15 minutes of fame? Did you leave it in the dishwasher or in the sockdrawer? Is it shrinking in your dryer while you talk to your friend, about his liver problems? Isn't there another friend who hates you now somewhere in North Carolina that wrote that really good postcard after high school when you'd just had lunch with your mother and she told you she had something to say but forgot. Do you live in a country? What's it like? The classroom your imaginary children sit in, watching the encyclopedia from the back of the really tall quiet kid that you tell yourself you could take on in his lonely lurkiness. Then you see his locker wallpapered in images of some actor you remember from a movie you saw at your friends house, about a girl and a boy who ended up at the ocean walking away at he end of the film.

This is Suicide Awareness Week

2006-09-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today, I found out that it is international suicide awareness week.
http://www.suicidology.org/

Did you know that suicide is the number two killer of our fine college youth?
So, I just thought I would take this time to tell you all I love you very much; no matter what, we will always be proud of you; there is nothing more important to us all than your health and sanity. If you liver hurts? go to the doctor; if you girlfriend left you? go watch the sequel to The Player. If she won't even pay enough attention to you to dump you? read some D.H. Lawrence... If you are dying? read some D.H. Lawrence. If you are sick of reading D.H. Lawrence, and have already seen The Science of Sleep, can't drinking because you're worried about your liver, and still have a beautiful loving sexual partner... well, maybe you should kill yourself.
but really, be wall
be very very wall

The Science of Roger McDonough's Sleep

2006-09-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

me:

My young cousin said that academia
Was turning me from a nice hairy hobbit
Into a slippery skinny golem

-My precious, she could hear me say in the other room
As I typed away and looked over my articles,
My precious truth and knowledge

Later I heard a fog horn
Coming from my neighbor’s house
And looked up from my fish dinner

Sent at 12:52 PM on Sunday

Roger:

alas, you are lost

your meat paws

im still in love

crossed paths

pocketed water

more coffee

my liver has migrated

north

in my body

i spit blood for some reason

andrew and i drank

1 bottle of polish vodka, flavored with rowan berries

(picked after the 1st frost)

4 whiskeys each

2 beers

3 pink gins (each)

that's all

the night before last

and i am now without clarity

me:

i will carry the ash left from your city/ from your lost liver/ in my cuped hands/ to the tomatoe plant/ growing near that swampy area/ behind the house/

i have been completely alone for four days now.

i don't drink

i don't go outside

i translate

eat

do yoga

been writing in russian

Roger:

you are a ascetic

you are septic

me:

i never want to see another living soul again

i am the septic tank

Roger:

most souls are dead

me:

then you are welcome

Roger:

my dream

was this

me:

in my septic tank

Roger:

i was at a nightclub

and i was oggling a beautiful girl

and then i went to pee

and peeing the girls boyfriend

came out with the pee

I peed out her boyfriend

and he said

were you looking at my girl

me: yeah!

Roger:

and i said

I'm dying

of cancer

and he said - what are you doing in a club if you're dying of cancer

and i said

"que? que voy a parar de vivir antes de morirme?"

"what? Like im going to stop living

before i die?

and then he made me come out and repeat it to all the pool tables

and then i WOKE up

Sent at 1:01 PM on Sunday

me:

if i remember correctly water in the freudian interpretation

refers to sexuality

pee is water

from which potential rivalries

may appear

Roger: such as the man walking in.

me:

i think i am going to post your dream online

Roger:

where?

me:

either livejournal or on foundationpit

or both

it reminds me of a dream i had

which i can't recollect just now

although in my dream

when i finished peeing the guy out

i had transformed into the girl i was goggling over

and her boyfriend proceeded of fuck me right there in the bathroom

i was a woman roger

a woman being fucked by my own lust

i think your dream is a lot my palatable

heroic

quixotic

mine is just a feminist guilt trip

Sent at 1:12 PM on Sunday

Roger:

i love it! fucked by your own lust

yes

a feminist quilt trip

one might ask

2006-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

the list of links on this blog is growing. some of them are links to russian poetry websites, which can for the most part only be read in russian. one might ask: why have these links, if the russians who might take a gander at this mess already know of these sites, and the americans won't be able to read them? the answer is simple. and this could be a kind of masthead for this bloggeraroo... all the links i put up are links that i myself use. so the links list serves as my personal bookmark function. when i am at another computer i use this links list to see what this or that site happens to be up to. so as you could have guessed it is all onanism, onanism with an attempt at exhibitionism...

i've been looking for places to publish

2006-09-16T00:47:00.000-07:00

it is late
it has taken me two mahler symphonies to get through the a's on: http://newpages.com/NPGuides/litmags.htm

I have come across some pretty interesting journals
among these are:

http://www.theawakeningsproject.org/
they only publishes the insane
http://www.alimentumjournal.com/index.html
they only publishes writing about food
http://www.ballyhoostories.com/blog.html
these seem to be an interesting group of folks
they are collecting stories about certain states

there is really too much stuff out there
maybe we should all stop writing
and think about what we've done :)

translating- Marianna Heide

2006-09-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

friday is always the day of translation. today i am translating geide and running into the usual problems that one finds in a poet that uses a multi layered language. when met with this predicament the translator (i.e. me) must make up his own multi layered meanings. sometimes this works sometimes it doesn't. we will see... but my brain is racked... also, i have noticed that there is a strong narrative quality to much of geide's work (as well as the work of many other young russian poets). this poses a problem because almost all of contemporary american poetry worth reading is very lyrical and oftentimes philosophically opposed to the narrative style. one of the main reasons this opposition exists is due to the idea that poetry is supposed to be first and foremost about truth; and it is thought that the lyric is more truthful than the narrative. i, of course, disagree with this veiw on many grounds, and what i have seen coming from the russia is example of what i mean... anyway still trying to figure out the schema to place on top of this mess... this wonderful pilous mess...

o i remember

2006-09-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

monk is an angel

This is My 9/11 poem. Thought I'd give it a shot

2006-09-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

A Life

I am a life

You must accept me

My irreparable sins are a part of it

You must forgive me

Anything I do must be accepted

It hangs from a tree

A body

Swaying

You can almost hear the noises

Coming together to make music

When I think back

It is my has been wishes

Put into the future

Hanging in the past like radio signals

Do you see what I am getting at

When I say

You don’t understand a thing

That when you created me

I immediately became your keeper

Like a child watching over a room

Full of bloodied soldiers and wash basins

Mormons live a long time

2006-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

I forget the answer to the last question but the state of Utah has the third longest longevity in the US.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/longevity/

smoke angels

2006-09-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

What do smoke angels and Thelonious Monk have in common? Stay tuned to hear the answer to today's geo quiz.

Conceptualist Cowboy Song

2006-09-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Conceptualist Cowboy Song

Oh, it’s been a long time going

Since you sang me any songs

So I’d like to take this time right now

To say I’m movin on

7,8,910,11

Counted petals to your name

I’d really love to impress you dear

But in the end it’s all the same

When I said I needed money

On that summer afternoon

You laughed at me and took pity

And said you’d be there soon

Then you drove down to my city

And crawled inside my bed

When I wrote you 80 sonnets

You poured wine over my head

I’ve been collecting cowboy songs

And Andy Warhol prints

Finding babies in the magazines

Std’s in my bacon bits

Oh it’s been a long time going

And I can’t say that I’d mind

If they started on my coffin

And told me when it was lined

I’m a young conceptualist artist

I was born in 1812

I died around the Yeltsin years

When I was stabbed by Christmas elves

So I think I’ll soon be leaving

Leave my shadow on the wall

When you take it down and wash it

I won’t be missed at all

The Return

2006-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Return

my friends embraced me when I came back
I looked up to see a smoke detector flash green
she took it down
-you want it
-sure
-why not take two
she walked into the other room and brought me another
-oh, no I couldn’t
-don’t be silly –there is more where this came from
-wow, these are such good quality
they would cost a fortune over there

later we walked through the cemetery and talked about my trip
my experiments with old German short wave radios
and how I ate seventeen radio valves with two other writers
who had become rich in the mayhem of the 1990’s
their mafia stories about riding in a green Volga
once with a bag full of transistors
being pulled over by a cop
what do you do
show him what’s in the bag
the quantity overwhelms him
he stands there as you drive off

I would sit listening to their stories
thousands of miles away from here
philosophical discussions about how much is enough
to simply stupefy a person
how much happiness (H+) is too much
a deluge of that which you have always wanted

I tell my friends stories about the group
who ate nothing but blue paintings
how the master
lived in an apartment full of young men
who painted for him the most brilliant work
he would come up behind one and say
that is good Ivan
take it to the kitchen we will have a feast tonight
everyone gathered around
while Dimitry ceremoniously put on the bread frame
and lay the painting in the middle of the table
I was always the guest
he would cut a piece of the buttocks
painted in indigo and put it on my plate
I would break off a piece of frame
and make a small bow to show my gratitude

as I dished out my stories
everyone listened
once in a while someone would intervene with a
that is so weird or god I have to get over there
or at least out of here

the story of how two men tried to shoot me
for having crawled over the gate of an abandoned industrial complex
and how I had nothing to give them but a set of radio instructions
I was hoping to bring my wife when I returned

it is exciting to return
I tell my friend who wants to leave forever
I say, leave for six months and come back
she says, I cannot work here
the sounds coming from the sky
are covering my mind with lichen
I feels my fingernails are trying to say something
when I digs them into the backs
of my students
I want to know what I have to say
the air here just doesn’t transmit or something

Eventually the novelty wears off
And you even learn that not everyone was happy to see you
That one girl
Who you thought loved you
Because of her generous act with the smoke detectors
Said that you took them against her will

You see a friend in the street and she takes you aside
And tells you how shocked and disappointed she is
While you stand in bewilderment

How could anyone believe
That I could take two smoke detectors just like that
Just imagine the situation, I said:

-no I don’t think you should have those
-nope these are now mine
I cannot help myself
And I think I will take these books as well
And this coffee

It is nonsense, I say
Anyone who could possibly believe this about me
Doesn’t know what “me” is at all

But if this is the case
What was the point of all those words and packs of cigarettes
When they might not have been words at all
And the cigarettes may have been tampons

Sadly you walk to the airport
To fill yourself with the noisy air
And sneak into the lavatory with a camera catalogue
Get into a cab
Arrive wherever it is your next trip will be

And you leave the camera in the cab
Remember only three days later
You call frantically
All the cab barons in the valley
You call the major and ask him to make a public announcement
But nothing
And then the next week your neighbor comes by with the camera
-Sorry, he says
I was out of town when you had the major make the announcement
I had the camera all along
I tried to come by but you didn’t answer the door

You invite him in but he smiles
Kindly refuses
Upon closing the door
The camera takes a picture
You walk to your bathroom to see
What it might be

At first the photo seems to only whisper
You connect it to an amplifier
You hear a slow violin, drums, a wa-wa guitar, an elephant
A moon, a giant chewing off a fingernail, and yes there
Somewhere behind the harmonica she is standing
Saying, I have missed you so much

turtle fucker ii

2006-08-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

when i come back i tell myself that i must work
that there is quite a lot to be done
but then i see that no one is looking
and so like a sulky 12 year old
i take my toy soldiers and walk back home
on the way i see a blind dog lead a blind girl around a post
i see two men gesticulating to one another about sex
i see and i see and i see
an article about dolphin homosexuality
about two dolphins that were observed
to have taken turns mounting a giant sea turtle

Turtle Fucker

2006-08-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Я сижу и чихаю. Работать надо, а я все сижу и все чихаю, новый ноутбук, куча стихов и переводов, надо подготовиться к занятиям (мальчиков и девочек учить опять придется). А я не сплю, пью много, ни черта не делаю - как будто влюбился. Вчера был в лесу, лося увидел. Подхожу к нему, а он не двигается. Думаю, может, погладить? А если сбежит? Вот так всегда влюбляешься, а потом сидишь и губу сосешь, мол, гладить, не гладить. Потом он, конечно, сам ушел, а я сижу, смотрю в лес, водку хлебаю из бутылки, косяк весит изо рота. Друзья уже дошли до озера, а я только на полпути. Так стало грустно, стал вспоминать девушку из кофе и мальчиков с зайцем, поэтов - черно глазах, разговоры со старым богом... Надо встать, надо по кочкам, по кочкам, по кочкам, к озеру. Туда, где ледяная вода, в которой все онемеет.
Когда я дошел до озера, Бренна и Стефании переодевались в купальники, Евин сидел с семилетним сыном Бренны – Саймоном. Саймон бросал камушки в воду, а Евин пил кефир из бутылки. Бренна нырнула первая, а за ней Стефании. Саймон разделся до трусов и стал бегать вдоль берега. Я сел рядом с Евином и закурил косяк.
-Хочешь?
-Давай. Странно здесь.
-В каком смысле.
- Не знаю… Вот сидим, и никого нет, а ощущение, как будто кто-то смотрит –наблюдает.
-Я лося видел. Он на меня внимательно смотрел, но ничего не сделал. Просто посмотрел и ушел.
-А чего, по-твоему, он должен был сделать?
-Да ничего. Я это просто к тому, что действительно есть такое ощущение…
-Что кто-то наблюдает и ничего не делает. А в городе никто ни черта не видит, но делают много.
- Лось тоже, наверно, много чего делает, но стесняется показывать. А человек любит показывать. Это даже, можно сказать, смысл его жизни. Зачем, например, художник или ученый живут? Чтобы нечто придумать, а потом показать.
-А сантехник?
-Причем здесь сантехник?
-А он тоже живет, чтобы показывать?
-Да, конечно. Он приходит домой и показывает жене новою микроволновку, или встречается с другом и рассказывает ему, как трубу порвало.

Подплывают Стефании и Бренна.

-Вы решили последний косяк без нас скурить? Гады железные.

Русалки потащили их в воду. Остается мальчик в белых трусах. Он бегает вокруг озера, ничего не говорит – его совсем не слышно.

today in the land of zion

2006-08-12T16:30:00.001-07:00

today in the land of zion
i waltzed in the rain like a mechanical pigeon
today in the land of zion i talk about yesterday
when i told the story
about how england was almost bombed with toothpaste
and thus two liters of rusky standard were confiscated
a man who looked like carl rove
gravely took three bottles of wine from his bag
set them onto a table
piles of deodarant
a row of fine perfume
women licked their lips
some pleaded for mercy
others took pity
bottles were taken from babies
and i with my bottles
trying to explain
that i would not bomb america with rusky standard
or perfume, or deodarant, or milk, etc.

where will it all go
how many more losses will i bear
how many naked bodied will i see
before the final lost
that final cunted hour
or read this poem to myself

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

-theodore roethke

no one is really all that abandoned

2006-08-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

дождь, ночь

кто открывает зонт

кто надевает шляпу

поэт идет на встречу

он идет с портфелем в руке

и приходит в кафе

из америке приехал в москву

молодой парень по имени петя

он встретился с молодым поэтом

которого тоже звали петя

и петя звонил петя

он не отвечал

ну в конце концов они созвонились

встреча была означена

и петя ждал петю в кафе

с портфелем

он не очень хорошо помнил

как выглядит петя

и часто подходил к посторонним

людям и смотрел им в лицо

он сидел за столом

ну к нему не подходили официанты

это было нормально – официанты не любили петю

даже когда он сам был официантам

они относились к нему с возмущением

петя сам заказал у бармена 50 г. стандарта

и пошел в маленький книжный магазин

который находился в кафе

день был суббота, время 23:30

в магазине некого не было

кроме две девушки которые там работали

они играли новый альбом thom york

и играли с маленьким запачканным котенком

- может ему сосиску дать?

- давай я позвоню подруге...

петя сидит и курит

- не случилось ли что-нибудь с петей

он звонит ему и звонит

как брошенная девушка, любимому мальчику

как мама дочке, которая навернулась

девочки играют с котенком

подходит мальчик в очках

- я хочу купить это, ну у меня только евро

-нечего, я разминаю

девушка берет денге, мальчик листает книжку довлатова

-это старая книжка? спрашивает мальчик

-да нет, довлатов же все жив

-довлатов умер, говорит петя сидя за столиком в угле

и встает –выходит на улицу

we live in the tunnels

2006-08-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

you write me txt messages in my sleep
with spinning signs that say
“no, you love yourself”
and when I wake up
the bathroom light doesn’t work
and the hot water’s been turned off

she searches for those
who might be looking for her
I would like to make commercials
sell matches with cigarettes
matches are pretty cool
aren’t they
create an advertisement campaign
called: non-organic
“we cannot guarantee that our chickens are the happiest
but our eggs make enough omelets”

there is a region out there
by the name of mari-el
where they drink sour goat milk
and horse milk
and ride goats and horses
that bite at your shins
eat your socks
the hat you wore
your shoes and eyes
and hair and nose
and chin and lips
your mother’s cloths

you are from their
a beautiful drinker
and teller of folktales
drinker of horse milk

-if I may take your photo
and talk to you
about this interview
I’m reading

-

-it’s just that… well
you see, there is
this region out there and
I would like to show it
to a friend and your brown shoes
your eyes and hair
are from, or were,
or like it
over there… I would like
to take your photo and show it
to a friend so that she may
finally know what I mean when
I say “mari-el”

-ok.

-thank you, thank you, damn!
the battery has lost its juice.
and I cannot draw
nor write fine words
like english poets
who grew up on greek
I wish I had a camera crew
disposable at hand
in my back pocket
I’d have them
filming cheek to cheek

-well, I’m getting off here
sorry I couldn’t be of much help

and off she steps
onto the platform granite
and I took her seat
still warm and fresh
I returned to my interview
and watched the wires
run along the black walls
and thought
I am not a well known person
almost nobody reads my stuff
I do not have a popular website
you cannot find me
the google search engine
brings up peter golub as
a composer of film music
I sometimes wonder if peter golub’s
music is any good

a man with a large head paces
back and forth
before me
I’d like to take his head
and put it in my bag
and take it out after
I’ve been criticized for being reckless
inconsiderate inappropriate lazy
alone the head and I would sit
under a linden tree
I would buy it the finest cigars
take it to the best barbers & dentists
we would listen to music
and although it would not talk (for lack of lungs)
it would converse via a series of blinking
my reflection in the window crawls
someone talks about a large turtle
the little boy who rides it
the turtle’s name
my lack thereof
and sleeping humans love the tracks
the rhythmic thumping of the rails below
my shoes are worn and every shirt has holes
the man beside me has no socks
adorned instead
in fingernails curled up
he mumbles to himself
another man holds up his arms
there is a letter in the left appendage
I was to jump out of a plane today
but needed 20
we had us –just two
just you and I
I slept on the 13th floor
with rabbits gently rapping on the balcony
he beat his foot quite rhythmically
I slept and dreamed
of my old boss
who fired me for time card fraud
with a pink piece of paper
and she who worked there
sending me txt messages
in my dreams five years later
and I was tired tired tired
I dreamed of him
and he showed me a form
vaughn got himself had printed
on blue paper:
“why working at the library
is most rewarding job in the world”

I wake up to the smell of coffee
and dima (dima is a diminutive of dmitry)
offered me a pastry
with some jam and sour cream
on top
and then you called
and we arranged a meeting
in the middle of
Alexander’s Gardens

socks and angels

2006-07-28T02:07:00.000-07:00

two shoes and bad champagne
an angel
with disparate socks

2006-07-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

there is another daughter out there
who dances in and out of rooms
i'd like to ride her like a woman
she'd like to ride me like a fan

the match is over
but we still linger on
remembering bad quotes from songs and movies
for heavens sake when will your mind
take the piece
left in the refrigerator

there is a pigeon in my belly
and a song about a bee
i would like to bring you
presents baby
but you see i have no knees
i would like to sing you sonnets
i would love to hold you tight
but you can see
i have no arms
no mind

Zidane for Governor

2006-07-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

This is the poet Vasiliy Roskov. I spent many happy nights with him will in St. Petersburg watching soccer. He is a fine poet, and I plan to translate his work. He is planning to translate my work. Although he has yet to reply to my last three emails. At the moment he may be in Italy.

This is myself with the poet Alexander Skidan. It may not appear so in this photo but the poet Alexander Skidan often times has the ability to resemble the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; also someone told me once again that I look like Mark Bowling (the T-Rex singer). Skidan's poetry has been translated into English and is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. He is quite wonderful and was probably cheering for Italy.

This is the poet Eugene Ostashevsky and Sergei Gandlevsky. I show you this picture because of the position of their brows, because Ostashevsky is a ridiculously good poet, and Gandlevsky visited my communal apartment when I was a child and my father fixed his stereo. Gandlevsky is also one of the established patriarchs of Russian poetry.

This is Zidane in all his vengeful glory.

I would not be surprised if this young man were not elected senator in one of our fine red states.

brodsky walrus

2006-07-11T04:28:00.000-07:00

Brodsky Walrus Waltz

(1) Non-circularity
brodsky is not a kind, because the feature that distinguishes members of the set is just that something be a member of the given set. Yet the items in the things might also be described as things
(2) Mind-independence
trotsky is not a kind, because the fact that the members figure in an example is just the result of his deciding that they should.

yesterday we drank pepper vodka and talked about the different varieties of incest
the day before that we locked our selves into a small bathroom and blew smoke into each others faces
the day before that i woke up to find naked boys in the kitchen
before that a friend of a friend gave birth -the day was warm, there was a light drizzle
and then there was a kiss somewhere near the trainstation and then a light farewell kiss at the station
there was the room with the green forest wallpaper
photos and cognac
walking walking and walking
paying -cops armless men women girls women girls people in the metro
there are many more
they all take something out of my bag or my jacket or my wallet (when i still had the wallet)
the camera the phone something about poetry and byron and translation and rhyme and brodsky and trotsky and jumping off bridges and climbing climbing climbing
reading reading reading
putting it together
picking and pickling
it art it aren't they
brodsky a walrus
you kiss too much
she waits somewhere near the edge of the bath
like a small child
naked and wrinkly lost in the water
there are things to be picked up
don't i have to give something away
are there not people who would rather be with me
but here i am

Sophia Petrovna

2006-07-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have returned from Petersburg with a few thoughts. First, humanity is founded upon the number 4, not three or five or seven, but 4, 4 is the number that best fits this system. The rest of the thoughts aren't as interesting as they are cynical. I been writing a lot in Russian so the English part of my brain isn't function as well as it could be... And there is also all the drinking. Here is a story I wrote last week. It's in Russian. Maybe some day I will translate it. You should all read one of the philosophy blogs that I have links to. Find a problem, and think about how to solve it. What are the problems you are working on? Who are the people on your team? Who will win the world cup? Poor Brazil...Poor Argentina.

София Петровна

Дождь
Кто открывает зонт
Кто открывает банку gin tonic
Мне страшно
Черт возьми
Вечную жизнь
Я вашу вечную жизнь видел в гробу
О боже мой
Как тебе наверное скучно
Бедный пидор

Да ему не молится
Его жалеть надо

Ужас какой
Вечная жизнь
Представьте себе
Ах ах
Я тебя понимаю
Я тебе каждый день прощаю

Как только я написал этот стишок, зазвонил телефон. Квартира не моя.

Я, вообще, был в этом городе впервые. Приехал на международные

семинары по литературе. Не прошло и трёх дней, а я уже успел набраться

кое-каких впечатлений от коллег. Например, один итальянец, принимавший

участие в этих семинарах, познакомился в библиотеке с двумя парнями и привел

их к себе домой. Они прикрепили его наручниками к батарее и стали пытать –

требовали деньги, кредитки, ноутбук и.т.д. Шесть дней он пролежал в больнице,

врачи сказали, что ему ещё повезло, могло быть намного хуже.

Конечно, когда прозвонил телефон, я об этом не думал и легкомысленно поднял

трубку. Может быть, это Света?

- Алло.

- Где Виктор? - прозвучал строгий женский голос.

- Его нет.

- Что значит, нет? Куда он делся? Вы, вообще, кто?

- Я…то есть он, в Египет улетел.

- Что?!

- Он в Египте, - сказал я, понизив голос.

- Какого черта этот дурак делает в Египте!?

Я не хотел отвечать на этот вопрос.

- А ты кто такой?– спросила женщина после недолгого молчания.

- Я? Петя. Петя Голуб. Я с ним через двоюродного брата знаком.

Он сказал, что я…

- Когда он уехал? – перебила меня женщина.

- 16 июня.

- И давно ты тут живёшь, Петя Голуб?

- С пятницы, - сказал я. Хотя это была неправда - я приехал в воскресение,

но от волнения ошибся.

- И зачем ты приехал?

- Я приехал из Москвы на летние семинары по литературе.

- Что ты делаешь в этой квартире, Петя Голуб? – раздраженным голосом

спросила женщина?

Я разволновался ещё сильнее. Она говорила мне «ты» и все время

называла по имени. «Вот так: написал кощунственной стишок,

а теперь тебя будут наказывать», - подумал я.

- Слушай, Петя Голуб, - опять заговорила женщина, - это моя квартира,

и 25-ого числа Виктор должен заплатить мне восемь тысяч.

«Витя вернется только в июле», - чуть не сказал я.

- Мне нужны деньги сейчас.

Было 23-е.

- Сейчас я приеду.

«Начинается», - подумал я. Я уже представил, как меня прицепляют

к батарее, греют утюгом – вот он стоит на подоконнике. Если они придут

вдвоём, один включит футбол, пока другой будет разбираться со мной.

Поначалу с ними, наверное, будет и женщина, она даст пару указаний и

уйдет, оставив меня в обществе своих коллег.

- Сколько вы хотите? – спросил я.

- Сколько есть?

У меня было три тысячи.

– Две тысячи, - ответил я.

После паузы она сказала: - Хорошо, я приеду через полтора часа.

Никуда не уходите. Какой код на двери?

- 407, - ответил я почти шепотом.

- Хорошо, я приеду через полтора часа, ждите, - сказала она и повесила

трубку.

«Fuck, может, я успею собрать все вещи уехать в гостиницу. Хватит ли у

меня денег на десять дней в гостинице? Может, проще поехать на вокзал

и купить билет в Москву?»

Я выпил банку джин-тоника, пятьдесят граммов водки и выкурил три сигареты.

Было 10:30 вечера. Женщина звонила в 10:15. Стишок я написал в 9:45, когда

пришел домой. Я уже второй день практически ничего не ел. Я не нарочно,

просто так получилось – денег хватало только на выпивку. Я стоял, курил

сигарету и вдруг ощутил себя очень уставшим. Я едва успел положить

сигарету в пепельницу и рухнул лицом вниз на диван, но тут же вскочил от

резкого неприятного звука. Подхожу к окну: мальчишки бьют бутылки о

мусорный бак. На часах 11:00. Значит, ещё сорок пять минут… Бандиты очень пунктуальные люди. Почему-то я был в этом уверен. Еще пятьдесят граммов,

и в такую жару. Я засунул ноутбук под диван, а кредитную карточку под обертку шоколадки «Алёнка». А потом задумался: «А если им захочется шоколада?

Любят ли бандиты шоколад? Они чем-то похожи на детей, а дети любят шоколад,

значит, и бандиты тоже. Наверное». Я вытащил карточку из Алёнки и бросил ее

за шкаф. Оба фотоаппарата и две тысячи рублей я положил на тумбочке

в прихожей. Может, они будут довольны и этим, и оставят меня в покое.

11:15

- Нет, - подумал я, - так нельзя.

Я взял книжку, сигареты, ключ и вышел. Сел на скамейку рядом с

подъездом и решил встретить своих гостей во дворе, при людях. По

двору ходили бабушки с маленькими собачками, на балконах стояли

мужчины и курили.

- Интересно, - подумал я, - как отреагируют все эти люди, если я закричу

«режут» или «грабят». Лучше всего кричать «пожар».

Из подъезда вышла красивая девушка в коротком коричневом платье.

На пять секунд я забыл, зачем я сижу на скамейке. Пять секунд я радовался

жизни. Подъехала новенькая Toyota Celica. Девушку увезли. Пошёл дождь.

Женщина с зонтом прошла мимо меня, осмотрев подозрительным взглядом,

и вошла в подъезд. Я подождал с полминуты и пошел за ней. Ее нигде не было.

Я поднялся к себе. Никого.

- Может, я всё это придумал, - подумал я, - я же фактически ничего

не ел два дня.

Фотоаппараты лежали на тумбочке, значит, звонок всё-таки был. Я снова

спустился вниз. Почти 00:00. В подъезд вошла женщина с двумя

накачанными мужиками.

- Опаздывают, - подумал я.

Они двинулись вверх по лестнице, а я сел обратно на свою скамейку.

- Ничего-ничего, - утешал я себя, - две тысячи, два фотоаппарата,

хоть дешевые, зато новые. Они, все равно, не разбираются. Они как сороки,

им, главное, чтоб блестело. А если у них нет ключа? Тогда точно будут бить.

00:05

К подъезду подошла женщина в фиолетовом деловом костюме и изношенных

желтых туфлях. Она долго не могла справиться с кодом и тихо ругалась.

Я вошёл следом. Она остановилась у почтовых ящиков на первом этаже и

открыла Витин почтовый ящик. На нее посыпалась почта. Я стоял и смотрел

на нее, но она не обращала на меня малейшего внимания.

- Черт, – произнесла женщина.

Я поднялся на свой этаж и ждал. Через пять минут я спустился обратно.

Она все еще перебирала почту.

- Вы случайно не к Вите? – спросил я.

Она подняла голову и долго смотрела на меня. Желтый свет над почтовыми

ящиками маскировал ее взгляд, я не мог понять, о чём она думает.

- Пойдем, - наконец, сказала она.

Мы поднялись наверх, дверь была открыта.

- Почему дверь не закрыли?

-Это я… я же вышел за вами.

- Дверь надо закрывать, молодой человек.

В квартире было довольно темно - свет шёл из окон и экрана Витиного

компьютера (Витин компьютер я не прятал). Она попыталась включить свет.

- Не работает, - сказал я.

- Он не заплатил за электричество, - сказала она.

Я посмотрел на компьютер.

– Лампочка перегорела, - сказал я.

- И вы не могли ее поменять?

Она прошла на кухню, где было больше света. Я закрыл дверь.

Ощущение было очень странное. У меня возникло подозрение, что это

вовсе не та женщина, с которой я говорил по телефону. Эта говорила со

мной на «вы» и почему-то считала, что я должен менять лампочки. Когда

я в первый раз вошел в Витину квартиру мне тоже было немножко неприятно.

Туалетный бачок не работал – я заливал его из ведра. В комнате едва

хватало место для дивана, тумбочки и шкафа. Одна дверца шкафа еле

держалась, а вторая была сорвана и стояла у стены. Сам шкаф был набит

всяким хламом. Он напоминал археологические раскопки. Нижний слой

состоял из компакт-дисков и разнообразных журналов, потом шел слой

одежды: штаны, рубашки; на самом верху лежала коробка с инструментами.

В ванной нескончаемо текла вода, а когда я первый раз попробовал включить

свет, меня ударило током, и после этого я свет в ванной не включал. Холодильник

тоже не работал – в нем стояли только спиртные напитки. В квартире было

три помещения (ванная с туалетом, кухня и комната), и в каждом был свой

особенный запах: из ванной шел запах человеческих отходов, из-под раковины

воняло какой-то тухлятиной (кажется, в стенке сдохла мышь), в комнате

стоял аромат грязного белья. Все это собиралось у порога и создавало

точную границу.

Я пошел на кухню. Она стояла над разложенной почтой и курила, видимо,

мои сигареты. Не поднимая на меня взгляда, она сказала:

- Ну, Петя Голуб, для начала разрешите мне извиниться. Я думала, что у

такого человека друзья могут быть только подонки, а ты не подонок, я в

этом разбираюсь.

- В подонках?

- Да. Вот моя подруга, которая дружит с Виктором, ни черта не разбирается.

Она мне рекомендовала его как «хорошего парня». А разве хороший человек

так живет?

Она открыла духовку - там лежал вибратор.

- Этого я не видел, - сказал я, чуть не споткнувшись о стул.

- Да, - сказала женщина, - допустим. Вы знаете, когда он должен вернутся?

- Можно на «ты». Второго июля.

- Хорошо Петя. Когда он вернется, сообщите ему, чтобы к пятнадцатому

июля его здесь не было.

- Ага, - сказал я и тупо посмотрел ей в лицо.

- А сколько тебе лет, Петя Голуб?

- Двадцать четыре. А вам сколько?

- Мне? – она задумчиво посмотрела в потолок. – Мне тоже двадцать четыре,

и ты ко мне тоже можешь обращаться на «ты». Хочешь выпить?

Я кивнул и подумал: «Да, такой никаких помощников не надо. Такая,

сама все утащит, если захочет».

- Ты меня не бойся, зайка, я тебя не съем. Я и так сыта. Просто этот

кретин мне уже второй месяц не платит и трубку не берет.

«А я, дурак, беру», - подумал я.

Она вытащила бутылку водки из холодильника и налила в грязные

кружки на столе.

- Ну что, Петя Голуб, за приятную встречу. – Она выпила одним глотком.

Приблизительно семьдесят граммов.

«Да, - подумал я, - женщина образованная, ничего не скажешь».

- У меня к тебе предложение.

Я выпил.

- Я твоих денег не хочу. Время уже позднее, мосты развели, можно у

тебя переночевать?

- Если я вас правильно понял, это ваша квартира.

- Ну, не грузи. Просто скажи: да или нет.

- Я… вы…ты - Я чувствовал себя неловко и сел на стул. – Мне надо

что-нибудь съесть, - пробормотал я.

Она открыла сумочку и вытащила два яйца вкрутую и йогурт.

- Вот. Ешь. А я пойду помоюсь.

- Горячей воды нет.

- Газ надо включить, - откликнулась она уже из ванной.

Я слышал, как льется вода.

- Кстати, - прокричала она, - Меня зовут София, София Петровна,

Очакова.

С-Петербург

28.06.06

2006-06-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

this is one of the golden knobs placed by the soviets on the pawnbroker's staircase to impress foreigners.

one old woman forgives another...

this is raskolnikov's apartment, presented sideways for dramatic effect.

at the moment i am at a friend's apartment.
it is old with high ceilings and loud pipes.
i was chosen to be one of the three primary critics at the workshop tomorrow
but i have no idea what i am going to say.
i have met ugly duckling presse people
seem to be interested in my project
today i went to a lecture on the обэриу
matvei yankelevich has translated lots of oberiu's, work primarily kharms and vvedensky

walked around the raskolnikov tour today
took some pictures of seedy urine stained stairways
the stairways
where people pretend the murder happennd or where raskolnikov lived
i thought of you when i was walking around with a bunch of americans in the city of crime and punishment (insert comment)
just then we passed a black bmw that was playing some pop song about the zone...
love
peter

ну как их читать читать...

2006-06-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

Below is a poem I wrote in tribute of a conversation I had with several Russian poets yesterday in which I posed the following question: "Byron was English?"

and as i walked back from the metro
at 2 am in the morning
i thought of the gas stove
at home i complained
to my cousin
that byron did not serve me well
at the sushi restaurant

forgive me
she said
but byron serves italian

Whales

2006-06-16T03:40:00.000-07:00

In the coming weeks I will begin posting sample translations of contemporary young Russian poetry, as well as interviews with some of the poets. In the meantime here is a W.S. Merwin broadside about whales.

Tarusa

2006-06-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

Like mountains - on this brow
Laurels of praise.
"I can't sing!"
- "You will!" - "Sound
(Put me on a diet
of flour!)
Like milk -
Is gone from my breast.
Empty. Dry.
In full-blown spring?
I feel like a twig."
- "That's an old song!
Drop it, don't blabber!"
"From now on I'd better -
Pound gravel!"
- "All the more reason to sing!"
"Am I a bullfinch,
To sing
Day in and day out?"
- "Even if you can't,
My bird, sing!
Out of spite!"
"What if I can't
put two lines together?"
-"When could - anyone?!" -
"It's torture!" - "Bear it!"
"A mown meadow -
My throat!" "Then wheeze:
That's a sound, too!"
"It's lions' business
Not women's." - "Children's:
Though disembowelled -
Orpheus still sang!"
"So, even in the grave?"
- "Under a headstone, too."
"I can't sing!"
- "Sing about that!"
Medon, 4 June 1928

The above is a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva. She spent some time in the Tarusa, from which I just returned . Tarusa is a village, on the Oka river, about 2 hours south of Moscow. My grandfather's dacha is located in Tarusa, and this is also the place where his parents are buried.

This is my greatgrandfather's tombstone. He was a veterinarian, and I believe he died after catching something from a sheep. (Don't let your imaginations wander too far.) Here he is peacefully enough positioned.

Yellow meadow
summer air
by the river
ladies bare

ahhh....

Back at the cemetery investigating a pile of broken flowers.
Checkout these animal collective tracks.http://blownbythewind.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-just-called-to-say-i-lik_114868413263778032.html

Birth of a Nation

2006-06-06T01:25:00.000-07:00

Only four of the six pictures uploaded.

* * *

it rained hard like it does in the movies
and a boy yelled outside my window about a blue piece of paper
I fell back asleep
someone came into my room and said good-morning
I thought it might be my wife, but I do not have a wife
I turned and dreamt a bit more this time about an ancient city
that had saved itself from extinction
by adopting a set of turtles as its energy policy

I thought it was clever
the parade of giant floating sea turtles passed through the city

green photographs
tea
a closet with some ties

Stalker

2006-06-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

The Strugatsky brothers describe a highly gaurded zone, which was once visited by an alien spacecraft. There are places in the zone that grant wishes. So here I am looking for the right place. Thus far I have only managed to visit the parimeter, but I feel I getting closer.

My Cousin Mayakovsky's Drainpipe

2006-05-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of a Mayakovsky statue. When I took it my cousin advised that Mayakovsky be the highest thing in the skyline. So there it is, the silhouette of the man Stalin declared "the best and most talented poet of our epoch." Here is a bit without line breaks from "A Cloud in Trousers." Your thoughts, dreaming on a softened brain, like an over-fed lackey on a greasy settee, with my heart's bloody tatters I'll mock again; impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to superfluity. Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid, there's not a single grey hair in my soul! Thundering the world with the might of my voice, I go by -- handsome,twenty-two-year-old.Gentle ones! You lay your love on a violin. The crude lay their love on a drum. but you can't, like me, turn inside out entirely,and nothing but human lips become!Out of chintz-covered drawing-rooms, comeand learn-decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues.and you whose lips are calmly thumbed,as a cook turns over cookery-book leaves.If you like-I'll be furiously flesh elemental,or - changing to tones that the sunset arouses -if you like-I'll be extraordinary gentle,not a man, but - a cloud in trousers!

And here is the haunted drain pipe in which I found these words:

O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
Girl who used to read my stuff,
Cigarettes I could smoke w/ out guilt,
Waiter who brought me free coffee

You have froze or rusted
Impossible,
Completely practical
Cramped torso
Squeaky brain
After 15
It
Hits!
Once you've acquiesced to this
Condition
Stopped
The feeling before an iceberg
The size of Chinese libertarians-
Once the morning toothbrush
Hysteria has stopped
You begin quietly bitching
When eating with your colleagues
Once you have
More colleagues than friends and most of the day is
Spent thinking
About flea bits
Not
The flea pit orchestra
When you come home to rearrange
You refrigerator collection
And the bathrooms are no longer a place
Of refuge but something you build
And it feels like you're having sex with you mother
Waiting for a vacation
On the beach
Where you write batteries into existence
With anti-histamines
That taste like radiator fluid

Of course everything has changed
And here is the haunted drain pipe in which i found these words:
O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
you that used to read my stuff, cigarettes i could smoke w/ out guilt, watier who brought me free coffee with shots of whiskey
you have froze or rusted
impossible,
completely practical
cramped torso
squeeky brain
after 15 it hits!
once you've aquisced to this
consition -stopped
the feeling before
an iceberg the sice of Chinese libertarians-
once the morning toothbrush
hysteria has stopped
you begin quietly bitching
when eating with you colleagues
once you have more colleagues
than friends and most of the day is
spent thinking
about flea bites
not the flea pit orchestra
when you come home to rearrange
you refrigerator collection
and the bathrooms are no longer a place
of refuge but something you build
and it feels like your having sex with you mother
waiting for a vacation
on the beach
where you write batteries into existence
with anti-histamines
that tastes like radiator fluid

Of course
But when you wisely tell your children that no one changes
despite the obvious girth of your swollen ontology

Look around you
You big phony!

They are designing bodies and video games in your name
They have put your last name
on all the
toasters,
underwear and pliers in the store,
Where are your children?
No, the talking ones
Yes, them
There they are
Sailing a garbage ship
Across the Atlantic
Look there they are
In Paris
Mocking the pigeons
They have designed new underwear
They have reconstructed Atlantis
Where do you think
It all went?
The past?
H@!
Look at your laptop
Take a few good whiffs of your lover's underwear
The past is the future
Made up of the past's grocery bags
The present a collection of lost opportunities
Dressed in grey business suits and fat ties
You lover has long since gone
He has replaced himself with another animal
Where is she?
No, that's a gerbil
Run,
Run, run,
Run, run, run run
Run
Run run
Run run run run

Go
Go go
Go go go go
Go go go go go go go

Sew your underwear into a kite
Toss from your window your desktop computer
Donate your car to public radio
And buy a china-man with a rickshaw
Order a carafe and pour it into your purse
Take the homeless woman out on the town
Sleep with the waitress
Of course she won't sleep with you
Of course you should ask her to a play
And offer her the hamster's hand in marriage

Yes
Yes yes yes
Yes

You've got it
Now toss it
And grab that chair over there
We're gonna need it
Where we're going

Boys Just Want to Have Fun

2006-05-28T03:47:00.000-07:00

This image is pulled from the gay pride parade in San Francisco. Nothing really special, just a bunch of boys out having fun. Eddy Mercury would be proud.

Below are images from the gay pride parade that occured in Moscow May 27, 2006. These boys are also out having a good time, righting the wrongs, fighting the good fight...

Moscow Pride

2006-05-28T03:43:00.000-07:00

Gay Pride Moscow Style.

2006-05-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

Babies and Workers

2006-05-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

Partisans

2006-05-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

The Readers

Revolution Square

2006-05-25T02:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from one of my favorite metro stations –Revolution Square. From what I understand it is illegal to take photos down here, but the cops I talked to seemed to be more than helpful when answering my questions. Some of these figures are polished yellow in areas (e.g. the nose of the german shepherd). As people walk by they touch parts of the figures, apparently for good luck. The figures are supposed to represent all the parts of society that need to work in order for the revolution to be a success. One of the things that always strikes me is the attention to gender the municipalities had when creating these figures. If there is a man with a rifle there is a woman with a rifle; if there is a woman with a baby there is a man with a baby. There are always two sets of figures representing each theme and almost always one is female and the other male.