Michael Brown did a great set to a packed house…as it should be, hint hint to those who didn’t make it.
Next week: Sam Teitel and Steve Subrizi. Be there.
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Since everyone else is mentioning theirs…got a Pushcart Prize nomination for "Where Do You Live?" from Sacred Fools Press; it appears in the new "Appleseeds" anthology. Two years running now…nice to be noticed.
Brutal headache — headed for bed. See you later, y’all.
OK. Election, Veterans’ Day, and the Thanksgiving holiday are over. You have no excuse about not being there tonight, none whatsoever.
GotPoetry Live welcomes back veteran poet, editor, and teacher Michael Brown from the wilds of Maine to our humble digs tonight, Tuesday, Dec. 2.
We’d love to see you there and hear your words…
GotPoetry Live
at Blue State Coffee
300 Thayer Street
Providence, RI
Sign up list goes up at 7:30; reading begins at 8 PM sharp. We end by 9:30 or so, so be there early and be heard…
— I rarely enjoy going to poetry readings any more, including my own. Someone astonish me, please. Make me recall why I cared so much about all this. I’m getting far more joy from reading poetry these days, and far more agita from hearing it. I am holding out some hope for enjoying the poetry at IWPS, but I’m not overly optimistic.
— The fact that a microblogging client is called "Twitter" is indicative of the essentially banal nature of the service. Why does everyone think they’re interesting enough to be telling everyone about themselves incessantly? A culture of narcissists gone wild…trust me, very few of us are that interesting. (By the way, I have a Twitter account. I haven’t used it since I first experimented with it…the best technology I’ve found to record my random thoughts is still a notebook and a pen, which I always have with me. Twitter makes it damn near impossible to delete an account…so yes, I still have one. But don’t bother following it.)
— Inaccessiblilty will be the next big trend. People turning off their cell phones, smartphones, etc., and becoming inaccessible will be trendy because everyone’s got them now. I am planning to lead the way. I’ve decided not to upgrade to any kind of smartphone as a result.
— The two things you need to do if you want to affect change in the world of your chosen art: Do good work and get it out there. If you want to get other good work out there for other people, that’s nice, but it defintiely is in third place behind the other two considerations.
— I’m considering pretty much abandoning plans for anything other than self-publication of manuscripts. We need to do for the publishing industry what digital downloading has done to the traditional music industry — destroy it and rebulid it from the ground up. Participating in it when this is coming seems counterproductive. If I see an opportunity to publish and feel good about it, I will take it (see "getting it out there" above), but I’m not going to lose my mind about looking for it.
— Poets: tour less, write more. Perform less, read more. Think less, do more. Do more good work first, learn how it’s done, and THEN get it out there.
— And please, please, please stop imitating Ani DiFranco. Most of you can’t sing worth a damn anyway.
I’m not interested in
the heartbreak
or despair of anyone
and I don’t care for happiness
or ecstasy either
because they are always the same:
the blues are the blues
and they pass, the joy of living
passes as well. We are made to bounce
from one extreme to the other
and we are certain to think
we are the first to discover
the territory,
wherever we land. Talk to me instead
of sitting
on your porch
waiting for the mail
because you’ve got the chores done
and the day is warmer
than it should be this time of year;
tell me how the neighbors are moving out
and you never knew their names;
tell me you’re not exactly happy
or unhappy, that you’re mostly just waiting
for the mail, for new neighbors,
for the day to day to finally feel comfortable
and for your own words to match at last
the truth of living: that there’s nothing much
going on in your life
that no one else has never heard of.
That everything
passes into the next thing
without much fanfare.
That the new neighbors
will be pretty much like the old ones,
and you’ll probably never learn
their names, either.
This is truth
I have known for years.
It’s something
I never think about
until someone else
mentions it. I need to think of it
more often.
Dark Matter 