I’ve made four pieces by Duende available for free download to anyone who signs up as a fan on the site.
Click on the “Show Schedule, Tracks, and More” tab above to go to the site, sign up, and get your tracks!
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Check out the Reverbnation site…
Just posted all eight of the rough mixes of the re-recorded “Jim’s Fall” suite on the Reverbnation site…still some post production to do, but thought I’d get them up there for a bit. In order as we usually perform it when we do the whole thing live. Enjoy.
Click on the “Tracks” link above to get to the site!
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Taking a break for a bit.
I’ll be focusing on some other aspects of my life for a bit. Still doing all my scheduled shows and readings, but probably not a lot of posting of poems.
Good chance to go back and read back pages, for those of you who might be interested.
See you soon.
City Story
— after Gunter Grass
There is a city,
and there is a man in the city
who is alone.
One hundred eighty thousand people
are said to live there
but he is alone,
so for his purposes we can say
there is no city.
There is a man
who is alone in the space
called a city by others, and he
is happy there, so we may say
he is alone and happy
and for his purposes we must say
that the space is solitude,
not loneliness, and he is in it.
There is a city, and a man,
and if he sees another he thinks
the man is a part of his solitude,
so the city becomes a memory,
and for his purposes
and ours we must remember a time
when a city existed, and that time is not now
as there is solitude in its former place.
If the city exists now somewhere else,
there is likely a man in that city
for whom there is no city, and for whom
only solitude exists, and happiness
at the sight of another whom he sees as
an extension of his solitude.
Who truly lives in a city?
Do cities truly exist,
or are we who imagine that we live in cities
alone in misery and cheer alike, moving among
memories while choosing tomatoes
and beer, paying rent to imaginary landlords,
speaking to ourselves as if we could
hear and understand the answers we give ourselves?
Here is a city, here is a man who lives here;
the man is alone, the city his comfortable nest of fiction.
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Workshop in NYC this weekend…
For you NYC folks…I’ll be in NYC this weekend running a workshop. If you’re interested, here’s the link:
Notice to site watchers…
Taking a short break from posting poems here. Couple of weeks tops…
Good chance to go back over the six years’ worth of work in the back pages, though.
T
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Meditation #21
Everyone on this show is
LOUD
from the insistently
neutral host
to the mother
screaming indignantly
at being accused of sleeping
with her eighteen year old stepson
calling the accuser
A DOG
to the stepson who is proclaiming that
it’s not true
that the four year old is not his
he would have been fourteen
and that’s
NASTY
to the aggrieved father
of said eighteen year old
who is making the accusation
and is himself accused
of not
MANNING UP
to the crowd cheering on their favorites
and the only moment of hush comes
with the ripping of the envelope
and the announcement that
NO ONE HERE
is the father
at which point there’s more yelling than ever
and everyone running around
to thunderous applause
All we ever see of the four year old
is a still picture
his eyes wary
his head thrust forward just a little
leading with his chin
New Zero Point Zero column is up…
I write a regular column for the Gotpoetry.com site on various aspects of poetry and the “poetic life,” whatever that means…
Latest missive is now posted, a short and opinionated (is there any other kind?) treatise on “beginner’s poetry.”
Comments there, if you so desire…
http://www.gotpoetry.com/News/article/sid=40613.html
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New chapbook is out
My chapbooks arrived today!
The new book, “Flood,” is now available.
I only have 20 to start, so if you want one and you’re not nearby, I’d suggest you get it from Pudding House Publications.
The Website is a little hard to navigate…so here is a link to the order form. The chap is ten dollars US, plus shipping and handling.
Thanks in advance, if you decide to order…I’m excited.
Over at the Audio Frontier…
I swapped out a few of the pieces on the Reverbnation site to make room for what I call the “Parental Issues Suite” from the last CD, “americanized.” That would be the two(actually three) tracks “Sing Before Seven” and “Notes From A Reptile Son/Peppermint Schnapps.” A little bit of Faro on guitar.
New Stuff –real, new stuff– coming very soon. Promise….
Give a listen if you haven’t yet. Never had them all up at one time before…
Check out the “Show Schedule, Tracks, and More” page up there to find the link.
Interview on Eclectica
There’s an interview with me by Write Bloody Press author Lea Deschenes in this month’s Eclectica Journal:
Thanks to both Lea and Eclectica for this opportunity to talk about myself…a poet’s greatest wish.
Just a quick word of welcome…
to those seeing this blog for the first time. I’ve been blogging for years at Livejournal and recently migrated to this site. I like it…needless to say.
You’ll find six years worth of my poetry on this site. I use this as my chief publishing arm…although I still publish in journals, online e-zines, and in books and anthologies, I’m committed to getting work out there chiefly through the new media opportunities on the Web.
While you’re here, take a mosey through my Blogroll of interesting sites I’ve found here on WordPress. I’m particularly taken today with my old friend Andrew Watt’s site on education, and with “The Truth and Rocket Science” blog of interesting meditations on all sorts of cool topics. I’m always adding new ones, so chime in if you see something I should read…
Welcome, everyone.
Tony
Some thoughts about the online world of T. Brown
I’m going to be making some changes soon, based on a lot of thinking I’ve been doing.
First:
— Probably getting rid of Facebook account. I don’t like FB, but felt it was necessary to keep in touch with a lot of people. It has become a major and trivial timesuck, and I don’t need it — the people I want to get in touch with, I will keep in touch with and vice versa. Not sure yet what will become of the Slam discussion group I run there.
— Myspace: ditto, except that I need a replacement for the feature that allows me to post MP3s of Duende stuff for promotional purposes.
This may lead to the creation of a dedicated website, except I have no interest in creating one, learning to create one, and also have no spare money to have one done, or to maintain one. Dilemma. Will explore.
If I do create a Website, this (LJ) will likely turn into an embedded blog on the site, hosted either through LJ or through WordPress.
— This blog may become friends only — not sure yet. I’ll be really thinking very hard about what goes in here; still not planning on posting poems here again for a while.
Why all this?
I’m thinking very hard about reducing my "ego footprint." My need to be read and heard. While I understand the need to maintain an online presence for promotional purposes, I’m getting pretty close to done with the "social networking" experience.
There is something to be said about reducing accessibility to one’s self. Un-American, perhaps, but I become more and more convinced of this the older I get.
I’m not a particularly social being. I prefer relative solitude. I find myself with less and less in common with people in the slam and performance poetry scene, with a few valued exceptions. To try and be as "socially networked" as I am currently is a major expenditure of energy I don’t have. I need, for me, to handle that better by taking greater control over the way the Poetry is heard and read, and to simultaneously reduce the connection between my work and me.
Anathema to some, I’m sure. Ah, well.
Details to follow as they become clearer to me.
At The Last
At the last moment,
all he could see was his own face–
a little shady, gray bearded,
nearly devoid of affect
but for a slight sloppy smile betraying
a sense of relief.
No need, then,
to explain himself again.
The face in the mirror
was all he had to answer to now,
and it already knew what would be said.
No reason he ever had to listen to anyone else
tell him things he didn’t believe.
No evidence worth considering would be presented.
At any rate, the swelling of that reflected face — once dear to him
but now repugnant, marked with his mistakes and
so unutterably lonely from all his repelling
of myriad approaches — was taking up so much
of what he could see that it was obvious
what needed to be done to quiet the nagging voice
that kept saying, “There’s more out there…”
when he knew it would just be more of the same.
More of the same. So he stopped looking.
“Enough,” he said. Enough. And made it so.
This Is A Social Justice Poem
This is a social justice poem
about Jill staring at the lawn
so long that it breaks into pixels
and shimmers through water
while her husband cries into his sleeve
and cleans out a tiny locker full of tools
An anticapitalist poem
about Tomas reimagining his genitals
and singing forth a new weapon
to draw a harpy’s bead on ecstasy
A racial harmony poem
looped over a forsaken beat
with a noose in its mitts
while a dead suburb of heaven steaming
in the middle distance
This is a poem for the gross domestic product
slipping one by us
as it turns its hip-hop vices
into remedial charges
This is an empowerment poem
which scrambles to eat its placenta
for the protein and the soul scraps adhering
to the bloody rags on the kitchen floor
The poems come pleading
to put war in the docket
peace on the barstool
and music in the porches
of the weary king’s ears
The poems come a-curdling
in corners of convenience stores staffed
by the blue soldiers of the new
waving the scent of their empty pockets
at the promoters
But here is Jill dancing with her blurry eyes
for the comfort of her representative child-man
and his stranded dream
And here is Tomas with his re-imagined arms
moving furniture and earthquaking routine drama
to make a home
This is a social justice poem
about how it is that a poem
doesn’t mean a damn thing
to those trying to figure out
how a cherry bough
can hold a noose and flowers
at the same time
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