john the mexican whale

this is for cripple doodle

so on tuesday there was my last reading before i move. my friend katie took some video and emailed said videos to me and i am going to put them up right now along with a few notes my friends took and this will tide everyone over until i move back in with my parent on tuesday while i look for a place in new york and then when i am back in with my parents i can upload the video they shot of that reading a month ago or something with ca conrad and ryan eckes.

a bunch of my friends came to the reading and everybody got drunk. at one point in a poem there was this part


*
Your stories are getting sadder and sadder every day she told me. I don’t believe you I told her. I got thirsty. I thought if I put my hand through the door that it would come out in or around or near the fridge. What are you doing she said. I kept moving my hand. She said Are you trying to get a beer? She went inside. There was a beer in my hand. There are lots of things not worth questioning.





and when that happened someone put a beer in my hand and that was great.
by someone i mean josh. who is a doctor. and awesome.

but so right a bunch of my friends came to the reading and a bunch of those friends that came got real drunk and two of them had been doing so for 8 hours prior to the reading, and but while they were there they made two lists which i am now going to show to you



here is this one of things that they were pretty sure i'd talk too much about






and here is this one of things that they felt they probably should have known i would talk about







i read a lot. at one point i kept getting text messages from john about how i needed to interact with the audience more. i was drunk. my leg kept vibrating. it wouldn't stop. so i read that note and then i interacted more. probably in the third video. i don't know. this is all i have got right now. i haven't really packed.
also, side note, was definitely kind of drunk by the second video
also, i just got a recording of the reading, and apparently i went on for like 43 minutes. what the fuck. lordy.

near win. feel good.

heading to baltimore for adam robinson's publishing genius party.

don't care how anyone feels about the links.

didn't win the lamination colony contest. but feel really good about being a finalist. i feel really good about the piece. sent it to ml press. we'll see what happens.

also: google 'onedreamrush' and '42x42'

have a slammin day.

for columbia i had to write 1000 words or less on a book of poetry

here is one i did not use. also i gave up halfway through.

i am not going to post this one. i changed my mind.

here is, instead, what i am going to say about ryan eckes tonight


ryan eckes has a great smile. this is true. more than one person agrees with me. ryan eckes has an m.a. from temple. he went to penn state. ryan eckes made me realize writing prose poems is an important thing. writing prose poems is an important thing. if someone tells you otherwise, they have obviously never read anything written by ryan eckes. this is easy to fix. google ‘ryan eckes.’ find his blog. most of his poems are there. there’s also a link to buy his chapbook ‘when i come here.’ reading ryan eckes’ poems makes me wish, very badly, that i knew how to do that. but i don’t. and most likely never will. ryan eckes poems are grounded in a concrete reality of everyday life, of real needs and empathy, and are executed with the sort of leaps and forward rolls and hurdling ability that most people spend their entire childhoods training to achieve. i am saying that ryan eckes is like the olympics. i am going to stop this now. ryan is going to read. i am sorry ryan if this is a lot of hype. suck it up.

for columbia i had to write 1000 words or less on a book of poetry

this is one i didn't finish. also the book had to be published in the last ten years. also it was mainly about how i was writing it and not why, so it failed, because that's what fucking happens when you do that. suck a dick. alright. antagonistic sentences are done. feel like that is out of my system. ac/dc stopped playing. that's all i got.


1000 WORDS OR LESS ON PARTS OF PLAINWATER BY ANNE CARSON


PART II: SHORT TALKS
“Early one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces were. [So] I began to copy out everything that was said. The marks construct an instant of nature gradually, without the boredom of a story. I emphasize this. I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.” [from the Introduction]
I wish the book were formatted differently. I wish each talk had its own page. That the world could feel as if it were being constructed slowly, one thing at a time. One brick. We can refer to each talk as a brick. It would allow each brick to add up together differently than they do when stacked one after another, like in the book. But it’s put out by Vintage, which is owned by Random House. Michael Ondaatje’s THE CINNAMON PEELER was also put out by Vintage, and it has terrible margins and the text never starts on the same line, so we can probably say it’s a thing with Vintage, and not Anne Carson. But it’s part of the book, it’s how it’s presented, and I wanted to talk about it.

PART IV: THE LIFE OF TOWNS
Anne Carson is a scholar of towns. This is what a scholar is:
. A scholar is someone who takes a position.
. The position a scholar takes is one from which certain likes become visible.
. A scholar simply knows where to stand to see the lines that are already there.
. A scholar does not make this up.
. A scholar is someone who knows how to limit themselves to the matter at hand.

This is what towns are:
. Towns are the illusion that things hang together somehow.
. Towns are also not empty.
. Towns are also different. Sometimes things that are the same are represented by
different things in different towns. Feel free to come up with your own
examples.

for columbia i had to write 1000 words or less on a book of poetry

this is the one i used


1000 WORDS OR LESS ON THE GHOST SOLDIERS BY JAMES TATE

I like James Tate.
I like James Tate because when I read James Tate I feel like anything could happen. That my shoelace could have come untied, or a bear could be roaming the streets, or my neighbor’s house could have suddenly exploded and after everyone walked away from the scene they got into a car i never knew they owned and changed the plates and rode off into the sunset with different haircuts, that my mother could be dying of cancer, that I could go off and “pee behind my car in the darkness of my own private darkness.” I think that the ability for anything to happen at any time is important. For us to feel that we exist in a place of possibility, because we do. That is the sort of place we exist in and it is very easy to forget that, or it sometimes seems that way to me.
I like James Tate because in this book he places equal importance on everything. A better way to put that might be that I think it is important that things are presented to us. That they are not presented with judgments attached to them; that things are not emphasized; that things are simply presented. That tying a shoelace that has come untied is as important as the doings at the new mall or soldiers falling from the sky or cooking dinner or a woman being really really weird about her rooster that is named Waylon. That police officer’s are hiding in wait for us as we pee behind our cars. That the fact that we each of us see the same thing and think something completely different is talked about the same way filing a tax return is talked about. It makes me feel that getting a blow job or watching your mother get run over by a semi truck or wearing wet socks in the cold or eating oatmeal whether you like it or not can all be described using similar phrasings and simple language in order for the judgments to be carried out by the reader.
I like this book because it feels like a more sure-footed version of RETURN TO THE CITY OF WHITE DONKEYS. And I really liked that one a lot.
This book probably has more references to war and things ending and going nowhere than the other books I have read of Tate’s (WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF FLETCHERS, MEMOIR OF THE HAWK, DONKEYS, also the poem GOODTIME JESUS which i thought was great). There are a lot of poems in it. There are 94 poems and 217 numbered pages of poetry. They add up to give the collective feel of a body of work. I like the fact that every poem is written in the same voice. That none of these poems feel like they were some sort of experiment and placed next to each other to show the breadth and depth of the authors imagination and experience and originality and a sense that as a poet and human being there is little that the author could not accomplish. It is very important to me that this is a book of poems working towards a common goal.
My friend told me the other day when he gave me the book back, that he’d read probably like the first 40 or 60 pages or so before he gave it back (because I asked for it back to probably use for this essay). As an explanation for only having read 40 or 60 pages, he said that once you’d read one Tate book you’d probably read most of them. I sort of agree, but mostly not at all. Once you’ve read one James Tate poem you understand how James Tate writes a poem, and will write most and basically every poem of his you read. Or once you read the first couple poems in the book you can more or less understand how the rest of the poems are going to be written. And that the possibilities ahead are not so much boundless as with a boundary that is far off. That I am not wearing my glasses and don’t know how far it is and I don’t care. I don’t read James Tate to figure out how he wrote that poem. I read David Foster Wallace to sort of scratch my head like that. I read James Tate to see what happens next. Because something is always happening, even when it isn’t. I like that. I like that it is full of possibility. I like being reminded of that. It is very important, and we could all do to be reminded that anything could happen and it will, so there.

ughlife

got home an hour ago. getting up in 6 hours to go to work. am buying myself a pie after i get there, and eating it all morning. it's going to be great.
yknow what else is great? marathons on usa. for real. i can't stop. which is not accurate. i will not stop.

i'm getting a story published in the next issue of gigantic. i am really excited about this. i think their first issue was really pretty. it was slammin.

going to make an eye appointment tomorrow. need new fucking glasses. hot damn.

been working massive amounts on a piece for the lamination colony thing.

i am going to share the first five parts right now

we are going to get paid and then we will dress for the weather


*
I was thinking of heaven or at least of the upstairs outside. I was thinking of taking a nap and just curling up on the ground and letting a good stiff breeze blow me on upstairs. I was thinking of being carried off by balloons.


*
I was carried off by a string of balloons.


*
I went on down the road. The sky was a picture of a lake. I put it in a glass and drank it. It was the best water I’d ever had. This is, I decided, the big deal about heaven. A choir of angels swooped in. They had trumpets.


*
When I came to, I was sitting in a chair in the yard.


*
Where is this going she asked me. I folded her into an airplane and sent her on her way. Then I missed her. Then I built a fire in my belly and when it came out it came out as something else, and it galloped and it brayed and it shook itself loose of me and of everything.





feel really good about this. feel really weird about this. have always felt really clear about whether or not i am writing a story or a poem. not so much. i think it started to rain. i am really glad i am getting a ride to work tomorrow. going to gril some mahi mahi and do a little pomegranate reduction. it better not rain while i'm grilling. please.

there's a reading at my house with ca conrad and ryan eckes. and me. friday night. i am really excited for this. i am going to try to film it and then post it on the internet, where most things are free.

on saturday i am going to see "up" and i am pretty stoked. people flying off with balloons? ed asner? fuck yes.

been reading vera & linus by jesse ball. it's great. been periodically reading poems from ron padgett's how to be perfect. which has been good. there is a longer poem in it called "method" that was really helpful for linking longer things. for leaps.

i've been working really hard at finding ways to surprise myself. which isn't exactly it. that was shane's way of saying it i think. i've been trying to find ways to work so that i don't get bored. i used to not be able to finish things. i just couldn't keep up giving a shit. and nowssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

whoops. dramatic point in burn notice. lost track of my finger that. and now i do. it's harder than it was. i don't know. i don't know how much anyone cares, but i am reassured by the fact that most people probably don't read this. so. it's been more about finding ways to stay invested. making it so that i have to figure out how to do it all over again each time. i don't know. i'm tired now.

good night!
good luck!

we will work on it together

i swept for the first time in a year. there is dust everywhere and my nose will not stop running. it's in my lungs i think. that is how it feels. i have considered swallowing a fire to burn the dust. everything is piled up around me. everything is piling up. once i stop sneezing i will feel great. i will lift cabinets. and place them gently down. i will buy several boxes of tissues. and some charcoal. right now.