Crumplers and Starters

November is a Bounding Rabbi and Rabbit

2011-11-26T23:39:00.000-08:00

What starts with a coming of age story ends with a small mammal on a glass plate. There are mashed potatoes. There are families.

On each side of the computer screen I have a wife: in one photo she is in the Uffizi, in the other at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

Europe has been good to us all.

Constellations. Mechanisms.

I covet easy living and so can't do it. It's impossible.

Boosters

2011-07-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

How many times have you given money to a sports team? How many times have you supported public radio? How many times has some body bought you a pizza? How many times do you wish that body had bought you something else--something healthier, or maybe just a better piece of pizza? I just want you to think about these things.

2011-04-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

MMX

2010-12-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

It has been a long while, Crumplers and Starters. I'd like to say that it's because I have been busy in the academic settings, but my previous skeptcism for the blog as a form, while briefly followed by a spurt of public revelations (curling, Little Feat), was taken over by an empty feeling when looking at this format.

The blog as update seems to have been trumped by other outposts, though those do go to circles non-poetic and can be waywardly heard and interpreted. Nonetheless, here's a roll:

After spending the summer selling our cottage in Cincinnati and living and writing at Byrdcliffe, I had a hard time taking those good vibrations into the fall. In any apparently productive way that is. But in spite of that I am feeling good.

In the fall I taught composition at both the Columbus College of Art and Design and at Capital University. It feels good to type out the name of any university. It does. As the fingers chat with those characters, you feel (Kristofferson-in-documentary-about-musician-he-feels-cooler-than pause) linked. Now I'm not sure that every adjunct feels quite this sensation, but they do let you use the stationary.

Yet in spite of the load--and it was a load--I tried to keep in contact with the poems started over the summer and with the manuscript. The Pound Era was a good respite from Seeing and Writing 4 and student essays--though I'm sure I will never finish.

Break now, and winter time, I'm of course thinking a lot about folk music. I think I might try to turn into an early 60's folky, but for good this time. I will only drink tea, and read only Russian novels. My dreadnought will be grid for the day.

I suppose that takes me up until now. At least a week of housesitting at 1262 Madison Ave. The dog is in Jackson.

2010-09-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

2010-09-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Poem of The Teenager

2010-08-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

is up at Wicked Alice.

It's a thrill.

Byrdcliffe

2010-07-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

When I get out of this place after a few days I'll offer a mid-summer update. But let me give you the short hand: George Bellows, Levon Helm, Donald Fagen, Jeff Butler, Nate, Mary Lou, Feedback Tea, Donald Fagen, Garth Hudson, Esteddofod, Bears (one dead).

End of May

2010-05-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

Two weeks on the other side of an artist/writing event, hasn't left me too crazy. I haven't gotten much much done, but I haven't lost it--thanks to getting out of town, not having to mix songs, getting some exercise, doing some gardening. The first three or four days I wrote a poem or two, one in attempted blank verse (perhaps inspired by my formally-concerned absent spouse). Then I spent three nights in Jackson. Night one: cooked a flat iron steak marinated in red wine on stove top. Morning one: slept in. Afternoon two: played golf and only shot ten over for nine (first 9 this year), with two pars and three or four shots that made me proud (one is allowed to be proud when alone, and what you achieve is both the end for recognition and the end of scrutiny). Night two: ate pizza at cousin's workplace, took "deer ride" with Dad, though we sadly didn't bring his gun along. We drove right past the range. Morning three: walked at the lake with my mom--doing two laps, seeing the pines and water from different approaches. Afternoon, watched a middle school talent show: my cousin, Brogen, played "Paint It Black" and it was phenomenal, chillingly good. Night three: cooked second flat-iron steak marinated in red wine. This time on gas grill. Morning four: left with car full of Walmart trip, dog, roto-tiller. Haven't really done much since returning. Scant notebook writing. I'm slowly not feeling it worth it if things don't go directly into the computer. The garden is summer set, though. And I've been enjoying cooking (trying to cook) odd things, like oyakodon, polenta, and deconstructed (ahem! not really) carbonara. In case you are worried: one night I didn't eat anything at all.

Pink Pop

2010-05-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

Due For An Update

2010-05-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

But the update will have to wait. In the meantime check out this educational film.

Late April

2010-04-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Going to New York to see L.J. read in Brooklyn.

Going to New York State to see Levon Helm.

Going to New York to see a dog named Nate.

Likely going to New York State to write poems in the Catskills "June and July"--or actually, July and August.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering how many parsley plants an Italian would plant this time of year.

Oh, Lodi. Oh, backyards anywhere.

How do you think Rick Danko feels about all of this?

April April April

2010-04-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

I've been tucked away awhile. Don't worry I haven't stolen your tuna, nor your motor oil.

When you show up next time, every scent should be confinable to a short hand note.

I've always had to give April some special weight, as it's my birthday month and though I've never been into horoscopes, my birthday has with indexable knowledge contained a bit of drummed up holiness. Jack Nicholson, Iggy Pop, Nabokov, Louis Gluck. Any who died? Charlie Mingus, down in Cuernavaca, where Joni went for a sort of popular American offensiveness.

April is also the month of the Masters--the first real event of the golf season. The tour starts in Hawaii and then there’s the West Coast Swing and then a bit of Florida, then Georgia.

Hoagy? I used to be a golfer. No peace. Hoagy?

Somehow fortified by a spring rain,

I get scared thinking about heat lightning.

The economy depends on tradition.

Gum gum—here is you.

Hello April

2010-04-01T09:53:00.001-07:00

Must of been "Jemima Surrender" or it could've been "Get Up Jake"

2010-03-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

Mr. Marks, Word

2010-03-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

The new Word for /Word is up. There you will find my review of Justin Marks' first book, A Million in Prizes.

Ed. Jonathan Minton has a good thing going over there. Check out those galleries. What a thing!

Mr. Rerick

2010-03-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

My review of Michael Rerick's In Ways Impossible to Fold can now be read in Octopus 13. Read the review. Buy the book.

In unrelated news: today I started training to be a census worker. The theme of today: confidentiality. So: I can't tell you anything about it.

And no: I won't get material for poems from doing this unless I want to pay a 250,000 dollar fine and spend five years in prison.

As Lesley is off hanging with some guy named Jack Henderson, I'm going to go check on that cauliflower gratin and get set to sear the steak.

Cheers to Yoshimi and Bailey and Lesley and Hannah and Jack and Michael Rerick.

AC

2010-03-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Friday: Two Went Zoo

2010-03-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

And I can say that nothing can undo your skepticism like an animal (especially one you’ve never heard of). And nothing increases your skepticism but, oh, walls. For the bears, why trees if they are shocked and noded up? What about the mote? But gorillas and their scratching; chimps and their arm pits: we all must have a mind.

I might take a role of every book named “Zoo,” but Lord knows the authors wouldn’t answer. Too long in the stripes to give the road crew a nod.

And of course there is the question of who picks up the poo.

Which brings up the babification of nature. It’s like what they did to Bellows at the Columbus Museum of art. Is this art or Rax roast beef? Oh okapi.

"Tell him what we said about 'Paint it Black'"

2010-03-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

Reading at the Rumba Cafe

2010-03-14T21:10:00.001-07:00

Not that I suspect my readership to be numerous nor local, but I will be reading tomorrow (3/15), here, in Columbus, at the Rumba Cafe at 7PM. I will read for two 20-minute sets as the featured reader of the Poetry Forum (a long, long, long standing reading series in Columbus). In the spring of '99, I read with, and by the invitation of, David Citino. So this will be a bit of a homecoming and I'll be thinking about my first teacher. My parents are also going to be in attendence. I promise not to make it a sentimental affair.

Street View

2010-03-12T20:45:00.000-08:00

When getting the mail (Netflix Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season Four, Disc Two), mail that arrived in the morning (I had real pants on, was dressed, no comfy pants, etc. but didn't look nor feel "good"), I noticed a vehicle, well-equipped with cameras, approaching. It stopped in front of our townhouse (don't worry we rent and our freezer is not working and caused all the venison to thaw and bleed). It was--had to be--google. Like the driver, I, the onlooker, paused. I looked at the sun--it was a warm day (yes, smell the newness, the dog wood, even though there isn't dogwood around, o-h-i-o)--and then I look the other way, towards downtown. To a passerby I'd have appeared to have been pondering. And when the man pulled the vehicle forward, a mere ten or so spins of the wheels, I shut the door, back to my mill-about, homebody scene. And I was proud of myself, not for standing there, intentionally, to be photographed--but for not chasing the man down the street as I had back in Cheviot, when a manlier man in pickup pulled into our driveway (we owned this dump, still do) and snapped some photos. I ran and screamed and chased him down the street (this time in comfy pants, though I took time to put on shoes) but he didn't stop and I didn't catch him. I even went to city hall--properly dressed--and asked if they had sent out someone to take photographs."No, it might have been the County Auditor." I almost said, you mean Dusty Rhodes. Is it paranoia receding, confidence on the up take? Not at all. My figure was probably better on Washington and the grass is going to start growing there again and I might always get arrested because some hillbilly fivesome won't let me and my father play through--but in any case, in a week or two, search 1262 Madison Ave., Columbus, OH 43205 and click on street view and see if you see me. Google, I promise I won't sue.

Bill Evans

2010-03-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for two links to reviews for Michael Rerick and Justin Marks. I'm still feeling snowed and had the weirdest, worst, best day yet. In my American literature class it was New York School day and so I felt overly confident—partially because, this is an art school, folks should know a thing or two about little Abby Expression—but I didn't get enough sleep and felt on instinct I could prepare the Ashbery portion in 15 minutes. Geez. I knew what to say. I lectured a bit—all the while wondering if I were in fact the middle aged mother from "Personism." I'm thankful for the opportunity to teach things I enjoy and yet my more distant friends seem to get the better treatment. So, love doesn't equal effectiveness.

And then, in class 2, I walk in for peer review and MLA day and Joe Student says—really there is a Joe Student at the art school—"look at the clock."

I look at the clock. The minute hand—the minute hand!—is spinning. Flying. The cliché becomes truth—time is flying. The second hand was being lapped (whipped, I’d say) thirty times a minute. And consequentially the hours nudged quickly by so that by the time class was over it was 7 PM.

Thankfully it was peer review day. These students take this stuff seriously—so wholly democratic bullshit experience of composition ten years ago, I've found the students to make what you say should happen be true.

All I have to do to get you to believe me is to say, "Look at the clock."

Reading @ Penn Sound

2010-03-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

An audio recording of my reading at the Bon/Motley (1/14/10) is available now at Penn Sound, along with many others from the series.

Maxwell, if you are out there...

2010-03-03T14:24:00.001-08:00

this one's for you.

My mother just sent me an e-mail, trying to cheer me up--I'm not down, really--with approaching dates, like daylight savings time, spring, St. Patrick's day, my birthday, etc. I wrote her back, letting her know--she's a non-poet--that April is National Poetry Month but that Eliot wrote: "April is the the cruelest month / breading lilacs out of dried tubers." Yes, "breading," as if spring were some cutlet, or a mushroom.

Garth

2010-03-03T03:09:00.001-08:00

Hudson defeats gravity.

Monday Nights Around Here Have Been Filled Up

2010-03-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

It's not Monday anymore, but the last two have placed in the small Columbus night readings by two local poets. Last week, Sophia Kartsonis walked an eager crowd through familial toughness and islands and metaphors (she supposedly knows someone who is willing to sell them, but, of course, she don't need them).

And then, last night, the jaw-soaked wounded warror in the the north facing office, had half a pain pill, a chicken sandwhich, and two Amoxicillin and worked the room through the Ghost of Fashion for twenty, and then a stray poem or two, before the Genuis of the Place drove home without a driver's side mirror. As her brother says, you should grow some eyes.

All shady talk aside--and I mean shady on my part, these ladies are wholesome, worthy of the non-hydrogenated world that's catching up with all of us, some of us, a few of us. It's good to hear these first books, at length. The poetry reading is the place to either show your best (what you think is your best, and well, depending on who you are, it likely is) or your newest.

But these are competing desires. And the thing about desire is that it is always valid.

The Poetry Forum provides room for both. It's a hell of a thing.

Punch and Judy

2010-02-24T02:05:00.000-08:00

is always a revelation, except for perhaps the poem on PD.

There was that song, once, I worked on in Slanknerville.

And long before that there was this. Oh the reveal...

And twelve years after I entered this soddy envelope, to the day, some curler with Gail Wronsky hair was born.

Curlers do yell a lot.

Marty and Robbie: the bromance.

2010-02-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

Read more here. But really, how about that photo?

A Pile of Snow

2010-02-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

In the mail yesterday:

Two poems in Spinning Jenny 11, available here. Both are longer poems that appear in the Ap. section of my ms. Ah, ms. So many awful ways to look and you look all of them from across the room.

There's also a new poem from the one in the north facing room in some little review, available soon, here.

Dr. Jenike

2010-02-10T20:28:00.000-08:00

Dr. Jenike will be reading at the Bon / Motley tommorrow (2/11). Her poems will be like folk music to Neil Reck's ears.

Dr. Jenike will be celebrating his birthday at an undisclosed location on Friday (2/12). Text announcement will occur five minutes before cocktails are given their cherries.

Neither will cure a ham.

All the Sunrises Are Weighted

2010-02-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

I realize this is not going to work, if I stall this long. So, I’ll shoot for two posts a week. The purpose has been to avoid other social networking sites, and to avoid gossip, while still having a place for announcements, readings, etc. This is an exciting life.

I had been meaning to characterize a bit of the newer poems I’ve been working on, but then I stopped working on them. I’m nearing completion on a review and have been keeping up with reading for the American literature class at CCAD. I made the mistake, for instance, of assigning (all) of “Song of Myself” for Day Two, and a small Emily Dickinson sampler drawn from poets.org. I ask, “So what did, or didn’t, you expect from the Whitman.” One student says, not in a lazy but well-meaning way, “That it would be so long.” Ah, dear them, and dear me. I also had an odd moment when a student from New York told me that Brooklyn was not on Long Island. But, as I thought, it is on Long Island.

Columbo: Lit a blue snow night. It’s a blue snowy night. It’s a blue snowy night.

If typing once meant machine., typing now means clean= = = = = =

Early Morning Cold Taxi

2010-01-30T03:39:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about changing the name of this blog. I would if it weren't for "Alge" Crumpler.

Paste

2010-01-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

The reading in Cincinnati last week went well. It turns out the Bon Mot/ley is in an old school, now used for cultural matters. There was a bit of wine, in spite of the smell of paint and the lingering aura of kids. One summer when I was probably seven or so, I enrolled in an art class at the YMCA. I must have taken it very seriously, though all I really remember are the sculptures. We worked with clay. I made a few, what I guess were jewelry boxes, the kind of thing you might see someone stash their stash in. And I made a cat. Both the boxes and the cat, had a loping quality, that’s the best I can describe it. But why is it when I remember (or try to write about) these things I get that stuck in the throat, didn’t chew the food feeling and a tinge of nausea?

I’m working on a review for Justin Marks’ first book and he writes:

The shame I felt then

is the shame I have now, though tempered

by my healthy adult knowledge

that I was just a kid. I hated

being a child. My shame

is having been one at all.

I don’t necessarily agree. Perhaps it's that the subject is even old hat. But then again old hat is old hat.

Reading Tomorrow in Cincinnati (1/14 @7PM)

2010-01-13T19:11:00.000-08:00

I will be reading tomorrow in Cincinnati. Good friends, Kristi Maxwell and Michael Rerick, are hosting. The Bon Mot/ley they call it. Details available to your right. I will be reading primarily new material, the characteristics of which I will be posting about later in the weekend... so stay tuned to read about what I've been up to. Or, if in Cincinnati (I refuse to call it the 'nati or other names it probably deserves), then come out & hear me stammer the primary source. Also reading: Jen Tynes and Noah Falck. Join us.

On the way to the Main Library in a different season

2010-01-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome

2010-01-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

All right now all you modern lovers...

A new blog is born. Here it is and so here I am. Primary purposes shall be self-promotion and little else. But we shall see.

What is there to promote: a few readings coming up. Details to be posted in appropriate areas momentarily. I would look to my right, if interested. There soon you will find links to poems, etc.

Cheekiness and self-effacement will be kept at a minumum. This will be hard.

Cheers to you all.