Joe Frazier's Gym

4 SALE, as snapped from a moving train. I have a signed photo of Smokin' Joe somewhere, but couldn't find it just now. In 1988, I talked to a guy at McGlinchey's who said he was Joe's cousin from North Carolina. Joe was pissed that he hadn't found a job yet, so if I agreed to pose as his boss, he would take me to North Philly to meet Joe at the gym. When I got there, he took me upstairs to look at Joe's huge bed and his wardrobe. After I shook Joe's hand, he asked me how much I was paying his cousin, so I made some shit up. He asked where we were working. I was drunk enough to bullshit Joe without flinching. Joe asked about the papers I had in my hand.

"It's nothing, Joe."

"What is it?"

"It's really nothing, Joe, just a short story I wrote."

"A what?!"

"A short story... You really don't want to see it, Joe."

"Let me see it!"

I handed it over. This story, one of my first efforts and never published, was about some Mafia shooting in South Philly. It was pretty stupid. Joe read a few lines and gave it back to me. "Get this man a picture," Joe said to the cousin, then, "What is your name again?"

"Linh."

"Say what?!"

"Linh. L, I, N, H."

Joe took out his marker and signed, "TO LEE, RIGHT ON!"







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Atlantic City

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[More]







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A REDRESSED POET THAT SEEMS LIVING, HOW TO MAKE HIM SING

Rachel Loden


First, thrust a Quill into his brain from above, or else
slit his throat, as is done in Jerusalem. Cut his skin

neatly from his Tongue unto his Rump and pull it off.
Then sever his Head with the skin and legs

and keep it. Roast the Poet on a spit. His body
may be stuffed with sweet Herbs, his breast stuck

with Cloves, and his neck wrapped in a white linen
cloth. Baste him vigorously until he crackles.

When the Poet is almost cooked, take him down
and redress him in his skin, whose inside

you have coated with spices, salt and cinnamon.
Then, when you have put his skin back on

get an apparatus of Iron and shove this through
his spine and legs so it cannot be seen; in this way

the Poet will stand so that he will seem to be living.
Take the neck of your Poet and bind it at one end

and load it with quicksilver and ground sulfur,
pressing until it is roughly half full; then bind

the other end, but do not seal. When it is quite hot,
and the mixture bubbles, Air that is trying to escape

will make the Poet sing. If he doesn't cry
loudly enough, tie the two ends more tightly.





[from her excellent new book, Dick of the Dead (Boise: Ahsahta Press)]

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F. William Engdahl

‘Not even Jesus could reverse the decline in the US,’ 5/4/09:

.

I'm scheduled to blog for the New York Times,

in a series called Happy Days. My first post will appear on June 3rd.

.

18 still photos,

animated. Five minutes after this sequence, this guy collapsed just inside a shopping mall entrance, and had to be taken away in an ambulance.

.

I signed off an email

to Joe Bageant with "I trust you're still happier than me!" Joe responded:

I truly doubt it. I just keep up a good front because I have no inner confidence in letting the truth out completely in front of other people.



What shall we do?



If anything?



I give away all my money to the poor, live on $5000 a year, in hope of finding peace and meaning.



Still no peace.



As for meaning, what the hell is it?



It cannot possibly be this feeble groping I call [in] my waking life "craft."



Which is really just the only thing I can think of to do with my life. Mostly it's just another Western story of luck and self-indulgence.



I have come to relish sleep. Escape.



Others would gladly have our lives, and probably conduct them with more propriety.



Yet I cannot be grateful for my lot.



Nor apparently you.



Ghandi said most of being happy is simply being grateful.



Either he lied, or I am so wrong headed as to be hopeless.



[...]



Your brother,


joe

[Joe at the Royal Tavern in Winchester, VA, his hometown, during a recent trip back to the "zombie food court."]

I've gathered more than a 100

of my better photos in a new blog, State of the Union, and Ron Silliman is the first "follower." Yeah!


........................................
Yesterday, as I was prowling around a forgotten corner of Schuylkill, I saw this heavily tattooed, rather odd looking kid, about 23. He was on the cellphone, talking about how he had to see his public defender. After too many vodkas one night, he and his companion were almost killed in a car crash. It was a miracle they survived, he said, although he did end up with a broken neck. I assumed there was another vehicle involved, and that's why he was in deep shit. Though I was well aware that tattooed subjects had become such a photographic cliché, I wanted to snap him anyway. I figured I could get him to stand in front of a nearby, beat up Chevy with its sticker of a soccer ball, or maybe he'd come up with his own pose or something, but he kept talking for a very long time, with me, an obvious stranger in that neighborhood, standing only a few feet away. He walked around as he talked. Sometimes he huddled in the shade of a scraggly tree. Sometimes he leaned against the wall across the narrow street. Becoming impatient, I decided to ask if I could just snap him as he chattered, "Yo, buddy. Yo!" but he ignored me, so I continued to wait. In the meantime, a pigeon had landed on top of a backboard, so I shot and was rather pleased, though later, in front of my computer, I would detect these annoying specks in the sky. Either the firmament itself had become soiled, or more likely, it was just dust on my lens or, horror of horrors!, on my goddamn sensor. That's what I get for changing lenses on the streets all the time. Frankly, I'd rather the sky has become permanently ruined, since that's no skin off my back, obviously, but if my precious sensor is, god forbid, compromised, that's 500 bucks flushed down the stinking Schuylkill. Finally, I heard no more voice yakking about no drunken accident. I turned around and saw the kid walk into his modest home, which was still way bigger than my sweet, O so sweet hovel.

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North Philadelphia

[A can of sliced carrots and a can of tomato soup left at a payphone.]

The Making Of K-Town: Inside New York’s Real Estate Hype Machine

Matt Harvey in The Exiled, 5/10/09:


I’ve always taken it for granted that brokers disseminate lies through the media to tweak property values. But a couple of weeks ago, I became a small cog in the national real estate propaganda machine myself while reporting for the New York edition of Time Out—on Kensington, Brooklyn, a supposedly “hot” new neighborhood stretch bordering wealthy the Park Slope district. Given the slick nature of the magazine, I filed a smoothed over narrative of what I saw—Bengalis, Hispanics and Hasids, chattering away amongst themselves in ancient dialects. I left out the trash filled yards, chop shops and nasty eyed stares from the locals. But a questioning email came back from my editor: where are the boutiques, cafes and charming restaurants? My answer, that there weren’t any, didn’t cut it with him.

[...]



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Hunting Park

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Center City

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Bad Collateral

James Howard Kunstler is finally attributing "dishonesty" to the financial shenanigans of our Obama-fronted government, 5/18/09:


The wishes of the "green shoots and mustard seed" crowd really hinge on whether the various organs of the suburban economy can be jump-started back to life -- the production home-builders, the granite countertop outfitters, the mall and strip-mall gang, the national chain discount retailers, all the people who make Happy Motoring possible from the factory to the showroom, and, of course, the banks who shovel money into these enterprises.

All these organs of our now-former economy are gravely impaired, and a realistic appraisal of them would have to conclude that they've entered the zone of congestive failure. The choice we face really comes down to this: do we put our dwindling resources and "hopes" into resuscitating those dying systems, or do we move forward to the next chapter of American life, cut our losses, and make new arrangements more consistent with the realities on offer from the universe? To take it a step further, can we remain one nation, a common culture, without such a conscious re-purposing of our collective spirit?

The bizarre spectacle being played out right now by President Obama and his team only adds layers of mystery and mystification to this big question. On the one hand, you have Mr. Obama giving a graceful, thoughtful speech on a very difficult issue (abortion) at a very tough venue (the country's leading Catholic university), and presenting an excellent case for common ground. It was a bold deed, unshirking, even brave considering what have come to be the standard modes of pander or evasion in presidential politics. I suspect that Mr. Obama did it as much to demonstrate his willingness to face tough questions in general as to address abortion per se.

All this is to say why it is so dispiriting to see Mr. Obama's White House mount a campaign to sustain the unsustainable in the economic realm. Everything they've done for four months involving money management and enterprise policy -- from backstopping hopeless banks, to gaming the bankruptcies of the big car companies, to the bungled efforts to prop up artificially-high house prices -- amounts to a gigantic exercise in futility. Worse, it gives off odors of dishonesty or stupidity, since the ominous tendings of our system are so starkly self-evident.

[...]




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Alia on the economy

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Alia Burton, a native Philadelphian from Germantown, has been a daytime bartender at McGlinchey's for three years. Business is down, she said, by about a third. People who used to come in each day, she sees maybe once a month now. There's nothing positive about this economic crisis. She is cutting back, eating out less, for example, but she still goes to Amsterdam each year. Been there four times. The government should legalize weed, she said, since it is less harmful than alcohol and they could tax it. She likes how walkable and bikable Amsterdam is. Alia has also lived in Denmark for two years, where she worked on a farm and learnt how to speak Danish.






.

Tonia on the economy

Tonia Jones, 38, works for an optician. Customers do complain about the economy, she said, but they still come in for glasses that cost 300 to 400 dollars, so she has seen no direct consequences of hard times. In any case, she thinks this recession or depression is something that has to happen, since it will force people to become less wasteful. Even working class folks buy too much junk. Dave, Tonia's boyfriend, added that the average Japanese has $50,000 in saving, whereas each American is $30,000 in debt, so yes, we can definitely cut back.





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An exchange with Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

Hey Linh.

Heard you on poemtalk. It was good. You hit home on several points--especially the political bits and the jangly bits, the song of the poem. I missed someone bringing up the "old" european avant-garde, and the political motives behind this ripped apart language--and a discussion on the political motives behind using charged political words (which is of course something I do alot, in the dictator-sound-poems etc.--and I recognized a similar thing at play in Rodrigo, although perhaps that's just my vainglory).

As with the blogging about poetry vs. blogging about politics, I've mostly fallen on the other side of that pit--Icelandic blogs are so much about politics, so much information and misinformation, rants and nonsense, that I ended up distancing myself from it more than is good for me. I'll probably get back on the horse though. When I feel something can be said that doesn't just fall through the cracks and get forgotten about.

Anyways--just thought I'd write and say cheers for the program.

all the best,


Eiríkur

Yo Eiríkur,

Your dictator poems are different than this Toscano. By riffing on an iconic mass murderer's name, you emphasize its sonic qualities while ignoring the evil connotations. It's a comically nihilistic gesture. Toscano, on the other hand, seems to be making a polemic by mentioning Pyongyang, Thatcher and the European Union, but his syllogistic sequence leads nowhere. In that sense, and in this poem at least, he is more nihilistic than you!


Linh

Casey on the economy

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Casey Munoz, 53 and unemployed, used to work as a bar waitress and cook. Casey thinks that this recession, depression or whatever is not nearly bad enough. What we really need is another ice age so all the assholes could be wiped off the face of the earth. Only then could we start anew.








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Markus on the economy

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Markus Collins, 27, is an audio visual/media specialist. He thinks we won't get out of this recession for another 2 or 3 years, with housing prices bottoming in 7 years or so. Even then, we will have to live differently. We've been too extravagant, he thinks, mostly with our discretionary income. Markus likes to go to bars and clubs. For a typical date, he's been willing to spend $200--club entries and alcohol for two, dinner, taxi and "condoms, if I'm lucky," Markus laughed. "If she runs into some of her friends, I'll buy them drinks too... In the future, maybe you'll have to stay home on a Friday night and play board games with your wife. Or you can go to the park and have a picnic with a bottle of wine. Women think that's romantic, anyway." Markus returned to his native Jamaica recently. "The people there were much poorer than us, but they seemed happier."





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PoemTalk podcast on Rodrigo Toscano's "Poetics"

With Al Filreis, Randall Couch, Emily Abendroth and me. Do give this a listen. I was candidly critical of Toscano's piece and felt a bit funny afterwards, primarily because I am friends with the poet. In our cozy poetry grotto, one rarely airs critical or negative opinions, especially in regard to those from one's own camp. On the other hand, praises are freely offered, since they can gain one new allies. The result is that we often gag in a miasma of dishonesty. Hell, I wish I had the balls to always say what I really think about every poem or poet I encounter and, likewise, to hear people's real verdicts about what I do.





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Kingdom of Vegetables

by Brandon Holmquest

for Linh Dinh

At the skin spa we aspire
to be unblemished,
all glass curves and
steel circles on another carousel.

We want
permanent lightning
permanent history
and perpetual motion.
We want everything
the same color as battleships.

We want someone to save us
from killer robots
again this summer
and we are not response
for any belonging.









...........................................
[Brandon Holmquest is co-editor of the excellent journal of translations, Calque. The last two lines are lifted from a Chinatown bus terminal. Along with the poem, Brandon sent me this note: "Yeah, those crazy dermatology photos in Chinatown. Saw those a few days ago, they went into a poem, saw your photos of those same photos, bang: here's your poem, my cheap payback for synchronicity and the conversations."]


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Bill on the economy

Bill Gwynne, 60, is an actor and comedian. A native Philadelphian, he spent 4 years in the Army and 17 in New York, driving a cab and bartending. I've known Bill for 13 years. Bill said that we will not end up like Rome at the end of its 800 or 900 years, or Nazi Germany after a dozen years, simply because we have too much talent that Obama has yet to tap into.

Harold on the economy

Harold Evans, 38, is a daytime bartender at Dirty Frank's. When I asked him about the economy, he pointed out that fewer people were coming into the bar, and that the juke box tended to be silent, as it was the two hours I spent there this evening, except for when Harold had shoved in a dollar himself. "It's not the 15th yet. People will come in when it's payday." Even for a Monday, happy hours had never been this quiet at Dirty Frank's, one of the most popular drinking joints in Center City.

Another factor for the thin crowd was that the city, strapped for cash, has extended the hours of its parking meters from 5 to 7PM. They have also bumped up the rates.

Hank on the economy

Hank thinks hyper inflation is coming, but not for six years, enough time for Obama to be reelected.

"What's the positive to this downswing?" I asked him.

"We're still in Iraq. We had to go in there to prevent the Chinese from taking over. They're thirsty for oil, that's why they're all over Africa already. Look at Sudan. If we weren't in Iraq, our way of life would be over."

"So our soldiers are suckers, no? Most of them don't think they're fighting for oil."

"Yeah, I guess they're suckers, but every society uses its young men to fight its wars. Between 18 and 25, they're aggressive and can be trained to kill. After that, they'll start to think!"

"At that age, you also don't think you're going to die."

The ruling class won't let this house collapse, Hank continued. "Can you imagine if we had 50% unemployment? There'd be chaos on the streets. People would be killed all over the place."

"I don't think you'll need 50% unemployment for that to happen. In any case, I'm not as optimistic as you are. I think we'll have hyper inflation much sooner."

"I have to stay positive. I have too much invested in this country to see it go under, and besides, I have to live here."

Tarzan with Dumpster

My wife suggested we called 911 about this compulsive exhibitionist, but as someone who started The Lower Half, I just couldn't do it. Yo, neighbor, if you're reading this, put on a better show next time! We're getting tired of your "pretending to tidy up the dumpster routine"!

.

I have two poems

in Sibila, the excellent Brazilian webzine.




.

From "Hand in Hand Through the Greenery"

by Nelson Algren, first published in 1973 and included in The Last Carousel (Seven Stories Press, 1997):


"The mere fact that the younger American literary generation has come to the schools instead of running away from them," Prof. Wallace Stegner of Stanford assures us, "is an indication of a soberer and less coltish spirit. "

Prof. Stegner says that exactly right. The younger literary generation has come on the run because it's cold out there. The sobriety, and lack of coltishness, constitute their qualifications for reporting fashions or sports; or teaching "Creative Writing" on another campus. They bespeak a readiness to be cowed in return for a stall in the Establishment barn; at whatever cost in originality. They will not buck. They will not roar. At times they may whimper a bit, softly and just to themselves; but even that they will do quietly. For what it lacks in creativity, the Iowa Creative Workshop makes up in quietivity.

"Are you one of the quiet ones who should be a writer?" The Famous Writers School asks the same question that the founder of the Iowa Workshop--himself a "Famous Writer"--is asking: "If you are reserved in a crowd you may be bottling up a talent that could change your life. If you've been keeping quiet about your talent, here's a wonderful chance to do something about it. The first step is to mail the coupon below for the free Writing Aptitude Test."

The second step is to unbottle your money and send us some.

The University of Iowa is a good place to go if you want to become a journalist, a linguist, a zoologist, a jurist or a purist. Its Creative Writers Workshop is a good place to go to become a tourist. For it provides sanctuary from those very pressures in which creativity is forged. If you want to create something of your own, stay away.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it follows that to report man one must himself first become one. How is one to create something who has not, himself, been created? How is one to make something without first having been made into something himself?

The style is the man: the personality that is unformed cannot create form; the young man or woman who is unintegrated himself cannot integrate wood, stone or language. Nobody can become anybody until life has pressured him into becoming somebody.

And as becoming somebody is a solitary process, not a group-venture, so art is a solitary process—not a field-trip in pleasant company.

[...]

Prof. Stegner is laboring under the illusion, common to academics, that a knowledge of the best that has been thought and said has a compassionating impact upon the human spirit: a premise of American criticism since the days of the Transcendentalists; who came up with their best ideas under a campus moon.

That a dedication to the printed word may conceal an indifference toward cruelty; and that understanding of justice and human dignity becomes enfeebled in proportion to one's sophistication should be obvious by now. Unless we've forgotten that it was scholars well-disciplined in Shakespeare, Hegel, Goethe, Freud, Marx, Dante and Darwin, who yet devised the cultural programs at Auschwitz.

For the most dangerous societies are not those whose tribesmen sacrifice a bear to appease their gods; nor whose gurus distinguish themselves by caking their skins with ocher-colored mud. More ominous are those foregatherings of begoggled PhD's, their skins caked by sun-dried erudition, most of them earless, who perform linguistics so magical that that which is unreal is made to seem real; that which is empty to appear full; that which is false to seem true. Sacrifices endured at such ancestral rituals prove bloodier, ultimately, than that of one stupid bear.






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Wasting A Good Crisis: The Result May be $200 Oil

James Quinn in Cutting Edge, 5/5/09:


Rahm Emanuel’s famous quote regarding the current financial crisis, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste... it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before" was ignored last summer when oil prices reached $147 a barrel. The Obama Administration has taken advantage of the financial crisis to ram through their agenda which will add trillions to the National Debt. It will stimulate unions, bureaucrats, government employees, and defense contractors. It will do nothing to address the looming energy crisis which will sweep over the country shortly. Again, politicians and pundits will be shocked and astonished when oil soars. They will vilify oil companies, OPEC, and the dreaded speculators.

When oil prices collapsed from $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008 to $35 a barrel in January 2009, American drivers, Congress, government bureaucrats, and the mainstream media refocused on other more pressing issues such as executive bonuses, Michele Obama’s wardrobe, and the tax law knowledge of Obama’s cabinet. The attention span of the average American is shorter than that of a gnat. As they text and twitter through life, the energy infrastructure continues to rust away, decades old wells are closer to depletion, and alternative energy projects have been scrapped by the thousands. Peak oil likely occurred between 2005 and 2009. The production of oil will now embark on a long slow decline. The world is not prepared.

Matt Simmons, the brilliant energy analyst and author of Twilight in the Desert, recently told Reuters, "We are three, six, maybe nine months away from a price shock. We are not talking about three to five years away -- it will be much sooner. These prices now are dangerously low. The lower prices fall, the less oil will be produced and the greater the chance of an oil spike."

In this scenario, low oil prices will continue to take oil fields out of production and reduce exploration. Once prices recover, companies will have trouble gearing back up due to the credit crunch, resulting in production increase delays. Simmons describes what will happen. "Unless oil demand falls by 10 or 15 percent per annum, which will not happen, then we don't need to wait for oil demand to come back before we have a supply crunch." Yet, this is on no one’s radar.

[...]




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Bill O'Reilly vs. Bruce Andrews,

who was one of the performers at Movie Nite at Dixon Place. Andrews was brilliant on both nights. In the clip below, FOX NEWS didn't give Andrews much of a chance to articulate himself, but poets should always welcome this kind of direct engagement or confrontation with the mainstream media. Otherwise, we're just talking to ourselves.

MOVIE NITE at DIXON PLACE

I missed many people since I was part of the show and had to socialize before and afterward. My camera became so distracting to me, in fact, I didn't use it on the second night. The performances were amazing. I learnt much, and much thanks to Brandon Downing for organizing this two-night event.

Pierre Joris


Nicole Peyrafitte and Pierre Joris





Melissa Downing and Sharon Mesmer





Julian T. Brolaski and Nada Gordon





David Larsen


David and Sharon





Brandon Downing

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The Bowery

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