I guess this is revealing what a wretched aesthete I am: I am cheered that Evie Shockley's poem in honor/in anger at the death of Trayvon Martin does not just repeat an end-word in each couplet to form its Ghazal-ness, but also employs that, for my mindearheart, utterly necessary front-rhyme preceding the repeated end-word.  Honestly, I find, aside from its prosody, the poem a bit dull: there's indisputable truth in it, but it's sociological more than linguistic, and so I am not taken to a "new" location for consciousness, and so the poem for me ultimately ends up lacking urgency and instead seems like a summary of some of the worst of racial politics in the USA.  That said, the newly added couplet which directly references TM works the best I think, as the idea of being punished for surviving is poignant.

Here's a link in which a sequence--Taking Off--is mentioned: http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.ca/2012/03/ongoing-notes-late-late-march-2012.html

My full-length collection, For Days, is now available at/from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Days-Adam-Strauss/dp/1609640772

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I just spent two hours updating my CV and--pshoosh, the computer got rid of it!  And I had been saving it frequently, but then the only version available is the one when I initially opened the document today.  Annoying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          So I think one of the questions Derrida may be arriving at in an essay of his questioning and celebrating work by Emanuel Levinas (is it just me or is that a particularly beautiful name?) is to query why words mean what they mean: why is the word duck a feathered water bird; why is creator God. I’m ten pages away from completing a perusal of this essay by JD. It’s been both dull and engaging, utterly difficult to discern and incisively sinuous.

          I’m nowhere near even a thoroughly rudimentary comprehension, but can this billow, this veil, this rending, this rendering, this shimmer in flakes as they fall and refresh, ever conjoin such a total moment as I declare comprehension, which might be one way of saying I can’t confidently provide even one illustrative quotation, and to cite several and argue their connection is more work than I’m willing to accomplish.
          When I look at the scene cast by my reflection, my sense drapes Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse in shimmering webs like spider weavings as well as clouds. Webs makes for, ironically, relatively easy philological departure to nets, meshes, “language grill” according to one translation of the Celan. And, ah lovely logic, the webs I drape here and there across Virginia’s pages are in fact nets she has conjured, enwrapped me in.
          Now that an hour and a half has elapsed, I’ve completed a perusal. It’s taken me several days but, finally, I have glanced at each word on all sixty or so pages of Jacque’s essay. I think it has been worthwhile.

Urgh, I Meant To Write Prose and May Have Gone Prosepoem:

Love without reason is often unattractive, which is different from love due to an unstated reason or complex of reasons. If I follow the contours of my thought as exactly as I can, I suspect every inch forward will project its own path; with hilarious rapidity one is scrambling through a forest; and please, friends, do not forget kelp! Hearing only the drawl of water and the respirators and its bubbles is like silence because a lovely property of silence is it amplifies small sounds into raison detres. Like many phenomena, silence does dissatisfy. Paint and marble, wood and glass, can bore one into the cusp of slumber. At times the said materials will wallop one in wave upon wave of sumptuous refreshment. Reason is, foremost, at-the-time. At no time have I worn a shirt, let-alone a dress, which feels like delicious water pours down one’s back. I have, while kneeling in the tub and washing my hair, frequently thought how wonderful such dress would be.





If I Could Give A Lie Detector Test Across This Nation Here’s What I’d Ask (Surely A Sandra Simonds Homage):

Are you grossed out by man to man sexually and/or erotically?
Are there times when any arms and hands, regardless of what sex, cradling you would feel positively good?
Do you think Lesbians or Queers are really sort of weird?
Do you think given equal stresses, given equal hurdles, a woman and a man are precisely equal one another?
Do your erotic/sexual fantasies star exclusively or predominantly one race?
If the prior answer is yes, and perhaps especially if you’re white, do you think this is racist?
Do you prefer brunettes or blonds?
Which one exudes maximum lick-lick: the Manhattan yuppie stud or the Country hunk?
If you are a man, which of the prior options would you rather look like?
Have you ever pretended to be a model, but of your opposite gender, while in the privacy of your own room?
Do you believe men and women are so innately different there’s no point in arguing that both are human matters far more compared to recognizing how alien woman and man are to each other?
Is there any resource a country’s government is obligated to provide to every single one of its citizens?
Do air and water count as resources?

Notes on White space cadences

One way I--very recently, as in loastnight/morning--like to think of my use of white space as measure is to liken it to  a glotal-stop: there's a pause, an arrest, a halt, a collapse or jerking, but in the service of motion (the glottal hlt does not end the articulation, it reloads it, keeps it going energetically), of projecting forward and downward through the poem; in other words, I don't intend the spaces to be pure pauses, but more like springloaded spots, places where the poem can further bounce.  Maybe the spaces are my dream of a poem actually moving, not being a composition but rather a movement, a moving organism.

Another note: I wish I could write at any spot on the plane of this blog, not stick to the designated plane: type into the far-right margin and ignore the actual spaces intended for blog entries etc.

I saw this link at Silliman's blog; I'm a fan of these two poems, which are listy, but more than lists, as some entries are enjambed over multiple lines, so rhythmic tedium doesn't set-in, and instead one gets a delicious waxing and waning rhythmic effect:

"I WANT A GARMENT"
"I SAW A SHIRT THAT SAID"


Here's where they can be found: http://peepshowpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post.html

On a different note: Drunken Boat rejected the poems I submitted.

On Tuesday a friend of mine and I met up for beers and he was much flirtier than usual, which was totally lovely--mmm, it's been too long since I kissed and groped and cooed cuteness.  I hope we do this again!

Next week Kate Durbin will be in Vegas---Yayyyyyyyyyyyy, I've really wanted to meet her for a while now so I'm happy to have the chance!  If only Gina Abelkop and Kate Zambreno would be here too!  Or maybe they magically will be!

I submitted some poems to Spork lastnight; here's the opening of one.  I, frankly, think this start is horrid, tho I think the piece gets better as it goes, and that the subject is important:

Literacy: A Privilege


I am
A poet
But I
Would never tell you in
Person. I do not
Avoid embarrassing practice
Nor do I court it,

I am not comfortable with the opening two lines' declaration; I do, though, think the linebreak redeems a bit: breaks up the certainty of the declaration; or does it make it more emphatic?

In a recent post, I used the word lame; I shouldn't do this: it screams implicitly privileging conventional bodiedness and if I get angry at subtly--well not subtle, but contemporary discourse would say so--bigoted words like straight, I surely ought to be mindful of other words with related problems.

I do feel terrible about being irked at BlazeVox as I hate how much crud has been slung its way as of the past 6 months; and yes, I agree I should have made sure that what GG sent me lastweek was the most recent version for correction; only after the fact did I see he sent me a september version.  I wish my first full-length book felt like a "victory" not a span of I-flubbed-up.  This process has lessened my self-esteem; especially now that the editor thinks I'm a crap.  I guess it's been a good learning experience; well not good, but good that I've learned I don't enjoy seeing work to the print-stage and that I'm not good at this stage of the game.  I have a bad feeling what gets printed is going to be neither what has already been printed as a sample or the most right wrong version, but rather some new monster.

Ugh, I've got good blurbs, and I do think the poems in the collection mostly work pretty well--so I'm so sad that I feel like the whole thing is a big pretentious joke!

I guess with knowing typos I can't send the work to R Silliman or, for that matter, anyone; or is this me being absurd?

 

I really hope the prior printed version of FD is what gets printed more, and not a wonky version!

Ok, For days is not going well; GG is pissed, which seems not wholly fair, as recent problems have stemmed from me being sent the wrong version of the manuscript to correct, so I corrected an off copy and hence now there's a weird hybrid with the latest fixes and old errors.  I vote for running the printers version, which has two tiny errors.  GG is annoyed and finds this lame; I don't want to continue this swamptrudge!  Ugh I'm grumpy.  I imagine BlazeVox will never "do" a book of nine again; which is fine, as honestly GG and I just don't seem to communicate all that well.  It's sad to start a work's entrance into the world on such a crap note, but oh well--I need to be done with For Days, and two uncapitalized first lines won't kill me nor a reader; and the printers copy is something GG  does not seem to have, so I vote for no-more messing around with corrections that I may avoid more of the prior mentioned hybrid versions.

Ugh finalizing For Days is a p in the a; there're so many versions/pdfs that it's all turned into a mess; in as "clean" a manner as possible I want this thing out!

Today 4 poems werre rejected by Fence; there's one which hasn't yet; it'd be lovely if it wld be taken; but I suspect next week it too will be rejected.

Eleven Eleven rejected me yesterday.

I lol ought to make a list of rejections.

Here's a link to some poems from For Days: http://www.scribd.com/doc/82374139/Free-Poetry-For-Number-Two. 

Here's some other links to poems of mine published decently recently:

http://www.countrymusicpoetry.org/index.php?pr=Strauss_1

http://www.cricketonlinereview.com/vol7no2/23-adam-strauss-work-it.php

Am maybe getting back the bug to write poetry: rounds about bedtime lastmorning I started to want to plop poems out!  Or little epigraph-like ditties.