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Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube-court rules YouTube must, for every video viewed since it started in 2005, turn over the login data & IP address to Viacom.

Happy 4th BEEZIES!!!!!

Myopenbar Presents: Stimulus Package

complimentary PBR and Southern Comfort, free treats from the Ice Cream Man, $8 w/RSVP / 1pm-9pm

The Yard
400 Carroll St.,
btw. Bond and Nevins
Carrol Gardens

   

If you’re anything like us, your little bonus check from the government is American history. So for the 4th of July, we’ve come up with another Stimulus Package, to reinvigorate your patriotism, Myopenbar style. The stimulants (in no specific order):

 

• Indian Jewelry
•  80’s Hardcore (the guy who started Vice, the guy from Bad Wizard, and that other guy from Built To Spill playing hardcore covers)
• Marnie Stern
• Ponytail
• The Apes
• Double Dagger
• Power Douglas
• DJ Dirty Fingers

Complimentary PBR and Southern Comfort
Free treats from the Ice Cream Man
All ages, $8 with RSVP, $12 without

Review of Eugene Ostashevsky’s Iterature

128 pages, perfect-bound
ISBN: 1-933254-07-6
distributed to the trade by SPD/Small Press Distribution
$10 / $12 in stores

I have to applaud Eugene Ostashevsky if not for his imagination but for his complete domination of rhythm through form and rhyme. It is a playful and childish figure throughout Iterature and unique in its success amongst contemporary poetry because it does not a) annoy b) become cliche for the sake of sound. But this is because EO’s thematics harken to the nothingness of being, so as the poems do actually become “meaningless” over the course of the book, (take the last page of the book, “CHOIR FOR PENGUINS: Floop floop/ floop floop/ Flickoooooo/ Flabadibadilloo/ Floop floop”), it only rubs the reader’s nose in EO’s everything-is-nothing point. Look at a poem called “The Martyr:”

Some people think that death is really gruesome
but they are not the ones that died and then grew some

I was killed for my faith by a mob
Blood ran down my face
                                 I spat white teeth

I was lonesome at that particular present
I had expected God but he wasn’t present

I wished my life were at some other minute
I hated this one     I was beaten in it

I was prone in the ooze of the Nile Delta
An ibis 8 my heart
                            I did not belt ‘er

A heron 8 my toe I did not kick ‘er
Flies blackened me nose to pecker

My iris
Became papyrus

Clouds moved in from North South West East
like a hand closing into a fist

A blowing went through it     the fist, a tuba
A part of me stayed on the ground like a tuber

another part flew aside like a goober
I became II like tanks for scuba
That I flew felt really uber
it moved its extremities, dancing the juba

and sang

     In “The Martyr,” the rhythm, or what I like to think of as EO’s distinct speaking voice, is first notable in these lines: “ I wished my life were at some other minute / I hated this one     I was beaten in it,” and then registers again when a shift occurs: “A heron 8 my toe I did not kick ‘er/ Flies blackened me nose to pecker.” EO is successful because he plays with spacial arrangement, albeit minutely, but such tiny nuances in space achieve so much more than most contemporary poetry I’ve read that transforms experience and perception into image fragments enclosed by the white space of the page.

“The Martyr” illustrates EO’s affinity for the rhyming couplet, as well as his play with sound within the realm of absurdity, and the great & awkward rhythms that come with his distinctly EO way of tinkering with form and space. Most of his poems appear, on the surface, light and humorous, while the philosophical ideas brood & are visible in the dark corners of EO’s humor. The rhythm of Iterature, which I thought at first was awkward, fit neatly into place after reading the first couple of poems and becoming familiar with EO’s methods–he teaches us how to read his poems, and from such abilities becomes visible a flux of understanding: the tentative beginning, the sure-footed plowing-through, and then the slightly-bored gloss-over as Iterature delves further and deeper into the meaningless of language through sound. 

Iterature is broken up into four sections based on the time at which EO wrote the poems, and the reader gets more susceptible to the natural rhythms of the poem, he or she grows to expect them. While reading Iterature, I kept thinking of the Rejected cartoons, and how after a series of bizarre but mesmerizing scenes with stick figures and dancing clouds bleeding from the anus, the world the characters have come to know collapses and become more intensely ridiculous than the previous absurd reality. Both Rejected and EO construct an absurd world and then destroy it. Take this excerpt from a section called “Errorism,” where the birds being and not being reflect the nature of the Rejected cartoons:  

His third utterance 
went like this: 

                   “rrym chekym chekym
                   chawpa lapa
                   tr tr tr tr tr” 

He had become
a random-sound generating machine.

 

Nature looked upon him 
in her own, natural way.

Birds arrived.
They did not
arrive, they did.

 

Or this excerpt from a poem called “Ballad” which I rather liked despite its nonsensical nature:

I could not C
I could not D
I could not E
I could not F

I saw a knight
of special K
he wore a scuba
he was OK

I took his scuba
his face turned blue
I cried, Where are you
Scooby Doo?

     Besides the obvious flaw in letting a book taper from sense to nonsense (a point I think Silliman might agree with), Iterature is definitely worth a read because it nearly caused auditory hallucinations of EO’s ridiculous voice. I also came away with a trunk full of bizarre but intriguing EO imagery. From a “broken ampersand” to a “stoned anaconda,” to proclamations of the self like “You just said that because it rhymes!” or “I am Poof the tragic dragon,” EO is at the very least a philosopher/poet jester, and a very entertaining one. 

Ah, back in New York. Chicago and Iowa City were absurdly fun, at least as much as I could make it. Iowa City was so much more fuckin’ awesome than I could have thought a town in the midwest could possibly be. I have an apartment now, and I plan to move in around August 9th.

pictures of iowa city, the flood, miscellaneous debauchery:

grilled cheese vendor!!!! :

me enjoying the grilled cheese thoroughly:

On the plane ride back into La Guardia Airport I finished a novella by Andrew Dubus called Adultery, which, because of its blatantly middle-age concerns, bored the piss out of me. The hardest part of getting through Adultery is that I couldn’t divorce Dubus from the book: I feel like all the stories he ever writes concern middle-aged affairs, adultery, a writer character (like John Irving), dissatisfied wives, malcontent husbands… bla bla bla. But by the end of the second section (Adultery is divided in four sections), I was able to see how touching Dubus’ prose really is, and by the end of the novella I was almost in tears. Luckily, and old lady sitting next to me reading The Power of Faith or some other book with a similar title, well, she wasn’t crying, and if her god-book wasn’t making her cry, then I could sure as hell suck it up for a book that only hours earlier bored me to the point of head-slamming. Definitely the kind of literary fiction I could recommend to my mother.

Also, at the  Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City I bought:

More to come.

Thanks Mere for this link to Ron Silliman’s blog, which is just about the most lukewarm review of Chelsey Minnis’ Bad Bad that I’ve yet to stumble over on the internet. It’s to be expected that Ron Silliman would say that thinking about writing purposely bad poetry is better than actually writing it. But even then, his argument comes off kind of unfeeling. 

Anyways, I’m in Chicago, just got back from Iowa City where I put a deposit on my new apartment. I was starting to have doubts about the U. of Iowa, but now that I’ve been there I’m really excited to be going to school there. Pictures/etc to follow, of the flood and of the city, once I get back to New York. 

This headline on the New York Times website made me chuckle: Christian Novel Is Surprise Best Seller

My brother played a hip-hop show in Brooklyn at a club called Sputnik last night. Taryn (left) and I (right) were the danciest girls there. Besides Mere, of course. But she’s not pictured. Now my legs hurt.

Anyway. I’m writing a sweet poem about taking a dead squirrel for a walk, or rather, a drag. Next show July 16th. illlllll

This might also be old news, but you can download Girl Talk’s new album here (stolen from Helen). 

Books I’ve Ordered:

I’m also reading Tarpaulin Sky Issue #13/ Print Issue #1 Fall/Winter 2007. The cover, I think, reflects the feminine, spiritual nature of the poems (to categorize them reductively). I don’t “agree” with a lot of the subject matter, but every so often I’ll read a poem that, even if I lack agreement, I will concede to its master of craft. 

I liked Annie Guthrie, specifically her poem “*Weather’d:”

The world unwound shut down.

Thunder, and a newly reckoned darkness.

The light out made birds sound otherwise.

 

I feared the place inside I never visited.

Was out now, a flushed out dark would up in sky

crossed by lightning–

I recognize myself out there in those pockets
of darkness between flashes:

I can hold the reigns of the visible.

The visible: a tyrant over taste & smells and bird calls
and other calls.

The thunder unseams a silent sky,
and my wonder.

How a mind makes shapes of gathering clouds.

(I feel,) I say,
I feel designed. 

I like Guthrie’s bookends to the poem: “The world unwound shut down.” and “(I feel,), I say,/ I feel designed.” It is that sort of word and sound play that turned me on to her poetry in the magazine. Typing the poem out was a good exercise because I became hyperaware of her use of line breaks, which are varied in a way that I didn’t pick up on when I read it. 

Some other notable poets in the magazine: Karla Kelsey, Bethany Wright, John Deming. But I’m not done reading yet.

Also, those of you who are in the NYC/Chicago/LA/etc areas, y’all poets are broke and need to check out MyOpenBar. It’s a website that lists all the open bars in whatever area you’re in. The catch? It’s usually open because the bar is promoting a new kind of alcohol, which is the only thing they’ll serve free. I checked it out with my friend WJD in Manhattan on Monday and we drank free bourbon from 6-8 pm. You can’t beat that. 

I finally got my copy of Fence Magazine V11 N1 via their In Rainbows-esque offer in April. I haven’t been excited by much of the poetry in it so far (although Stacey Richter’s… poem(?) “Yes or No,” a list of Yes, Nos and Maybes of writing was funny: “YES: Characteres with novel methods of getting themselves excused from gym class. Staring at the sun, chugging Windex, bug inserted in ear. NO: No use of the word “orb.”)

But, in an excerpt from Sarah Rosenthal’s anthology called A Community Writing Itself: Conversations With Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area there is a definition of Language Poetry that I thought really hit the nail on the head in terms of its conciseness, understandability, and literary jargonlessness: 

“The Language poets viewed the coherent ego as a mental construct rather than an absolute truth. Further, they felt that this construct could serve as a kind of narcotic. By focusing the poem on personal matters of the psyche, poet and reader could collude to avoid the urgent problems of the world and their own implications in those problems.”

Also, I finished GC Waldrep’s chapbook of poetry called One Way No Exit, published by Tarpaulin Sky. The book is unique because its bound together by metal screws instead of thread, but the poetry itself didn‘t interest me because of its ekphrastic nature: they’re based on photographs by Peter Rathmann and the narrative constantly reminds the reader of it. For me, this drew me out of the book.

There were, though, a couple of lines that really struck me and drove me to respect the poems even though it isn’t my preferred “genre” of poetry:

From “XXII: Snow Hill, Maryland 1989:”

Art about buildings & food is always really about music.
Say you’re driving along the Eastern Shore with the radio blaring
and suddenly you’re hungry and it’s summer and ahead of you
at the edge of the four-lane mirage
you spy a drive-in–THICK SHAKES! GOOD FOOD!–
and being American you try very hard not to thing of words like architecture
so as to concentrate more completely on your hunger, on the Buick you drive… 
but really it’s the music you hear
and it’s the music you keep hearing when at last you pull off the macadam
only to discover that the place is closed and looks as if it has been
for what passes in these parts for a long time. 

One Way No Exit does not generally use complex language, but reads like a directive through Rathmann’s photography without physical cues, only Waldrep’s verbal ones. I would have liked the book better if this awareness of an outside source had been removed.

From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance

Poems as punishment, can’t say I don’t like it.