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'Niceties debuts today and pokes a hole in the coma of language. The tired factions, lyric versus experience, this tribal cliché, mellifluous pretension, or language generating language, assaulted usually converse by the plain and sneering, story time, popped out of their tepid beers now by a handier relic, just got outmoded – combined to hurt itself inside a voice both beyond and including narration, the personal event broken to the heart’s proper arrhythmia. A flaying can still be vulnerable even if it takes you with it. The sobriety of our times cannot support this book because the general crusade has been swatted operatic. Anything without khakis is giggled about in these great plots for safety so-called artists use to call themselves important. How much precedence might ones pellet-sized message keep in the face of such wrought mystic twirling up the bowel meant for silence? Don’t fret. Mikesch is here to kick you out of your crib and flout the world that hasn’t started. Think those loops Markus swerves us through tied up in a Finnish peninsular whelp, with an elbow caught between each breath, the chorus tapping out a feel good suicide. I don’t want beauty unless it’s clawing me permanent.'-- Sean Kilpatrick
Elizabeth Mikesch NICETIES: Aural Ardor, Pardon Me
Calamari Press
'NICETIES is a subversive text of lingual dissonance in which vocality precedes sense-making operations. Its phonics disrupt narrative through syntactical atonalities.'-- Calamari Press
'It will hardly do the trick to say that NICETIES is a breath of fresh air. In Elizabeth Mikesch’s compressedly melodious prose, a reader inhales purifying drafts of something entirely unexpected in these literary dog days—not some novelty intoxicant concocted as a careerist stunt but some rarer ether releasing itself at long last into the world to dazzle, yes, but also to clarify so much of what we had never dreamed clarifiable about the ecstasy of our human mess.'-- Gary Lutz
Excerpt
In a cellar, I lived with a man who was humungous. He was a freak when he grew tall young, he said. His knees had bone chips in them. This is why he had a hobble. I had stayed very tiny, which he liked and had listed as his number one must-have in the ad about whom he would like to move in.
The walls where we lived were stone. The first time I saw the cellar, I followed him scuffing. He prickled at the click of my shoe.
Pick up your feet.
I hate to make a person mad. I tugged them off and climbed on his bed. I stood on his mattress above bricks to see how fucked of a slant.
Our bed was Siamesed.
My size made the most room for the both of us. We shared covers, which sometimes I stole. He never got mad about that. We slept in shifts. The part where we would switch who slept, our lapse, was when we would lie down beside one another to sleep through the droughts of no dreams. I blew out the nightlight after I ate soup in bed, from cold cans. I liked to turn my back to him and feel him there. I liked him breathing in the dark closer by than when he went to his side.
He wanted to know if I was staying once I had been there for a while. Mostly, I said to him softly, That may be.
I would count tiles. Spiders chomped at our might. Choruses inside me shucked corn. Sheet stains stayed awake with us looking up.
I adored the encrusted forks—I’d have to clean up after the two of us, after we deserted our pannukakku.
They made it from the place I came from with a bay and a county song for when there was no snow. Where we lived, we would sing through the radio out an old call for the patron saint of precipitation. I found I never summoned her now. When the sky leaked through the cracks once in awhile in our home, I felt something like batter without the leavening.
Here is a secret: I do care for being bundled, which was the draw for me living underground, where it is meant to stay cold. I like kindling. I love to be spun.
In the kitchen in the dark before there is sun, it is me in the sink at the bakery where I make ends. The baker comes in after I slashed my batard. Our refrigerator hums low along to what we do like a little grandmother.
The sheets account for the way we sit still and fuss our lips over cups. When I piss, I flip the fan, so I consider the sinkspout without hearing his sneezing. Then, I try to remember my dreams when I open my eyes.
Once before sleep, he said a doctor called his heart too large as a boy. It seemed he had said I know how I need. He told me if I found him to not leave the sheets on our bed.
I could not imagine being responsible for digging open the earth.
Cardamom is the name of the spice in the bread I braid. I bake in the night for work. I bleach the spice out of my nylons on my breaks: the mildewed roux.
In life, I am the queen, yes, in charge of anything having to do with foods. I make us ham sandwiches, the lettuce limply bowed out.
I want to make myself up to the daylight somehow. The way I lived, there was our sleeping and yeasts from the breads. There were not too many nights where I felt something final. I got frightened to think this would be the way. I thought about eating only onions I had grown down below, the occasional rutabaga. I thought I am tired of candelabra.
His moustache fell into the sink one morning and, worried, I dabbed at the fixture once he left to clean homes. He asked me to bite him until the bruises left yellow highlighter where his arms felt numb.
I once saw someone take a nail to a person.
When he turned over in bed, I had private thoughts about a room.
It was, after all, an agreement, I said to him through space. I saw just his back, but his light was kept on long after dawn. I was afraid to turn it off.
Trailer
Casino Deep Ellum
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Artwork from NICETIES (by Cal A. Mari)
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'Will Alexander is a poet whom critics have not been able to categorize easily. An African-American child of the post-World War II baby boom who grew up in south central Los Angeles, he also does not fit any clichéd image of that generation's avant-garde poets. The son of a World War II veteran, Alexander was influenced by the revolutionary struggles of the Third World that first inspired his father during a military tour of the Caribbean. The elder Alexander found there was a sharp contrast in how black Americans lived in the United States as compared to other Third World countries, according to Harryette Mullen, writing in Callalloo. "There, the elder Alexander was impressed to see black people in positions of power, and his story of that experience left a distinct impression on his son, who counts among his culture heroes Césaire of Martinique and Wifredo Lam of Cuba," Mullen noted.
'Born in Los Angeles, Alexander has remained a lifetime resident of the city. Although he received a B.A. degree in English and creative writing, he has followed his own direction in his writing and painting. According to Clayton Eshleman, writing in American Poet, Alexander was probably first published in 1981 in the small press literary journal Sulfur. Until the mid-1990s, he made his living in an assortment of low-paying jobs. He has since given readings of his work and held artist-in-residence posts at various colleges.
'Critics have observed that Alexander reaches for almost a whole new language, while making use of the inferences of the language he has at his disposal. Mullen explained: "Although Alexander resists discussions of the technical aspects of writing, it would be useful to have a fuller account of his process of lexical selection and combination; to understand how his reading habits and writing practices overlap in the intertextuality and diverse vocabularies incorporated into his poetry; to appreciate how certain rare, unusual, specialized, foreign, or archaic words are used in the poem for their precise denotative meaning, connotative meaning, metaphorical resonance, aural or phonemic qualities, or all of the above." As is common with surrealists, Alexander works through automatic writing, trying to achieve a state of trance, as Mullen pointed out. His preference for the British spelling of English words adds a whole dimension to his use of language, which becomes more than simply American and certainly differs from the "black" language of many modern African-American writers. Mullen concluded: "His literary influences connect him to an international avant-garde, just as his experience as an African American connects him to a black diaspora, and to the political struggles of Third World people."'-- The Poetry Foundation
Will Alexander Kaleidoscopic Omniscience
Skylight Press
'Kaleidoscopic Omniscience is a new collection from lingual contortionist and poetic sage Will Alexander, featuring his early works - Asia & Haiti, The Stratospheric Canticles, and Impulse & Nothingness. Alexander's prismatic and oracular voice cascades around bi-geographic confrontations, painterly morphologies, and the cosmology of the void. "[Alexander is] acutely conscious of the issue of poetic voice, and is unwilling to let poetry's potential for ventriloquizing or exploring the voices of others be subsumed in an impersonal écriture or ultimately homogenous montage. He seems as well interested in the spiritual dimension of poetry, especially in the degrees to which poetry can give us access to spiritual or emotional states beyond those we normally experience.'-- Mark Scroggins, American Book Review
Excerpt
The Apprentice
Here I am
posing in a mirror of scratch paper sonnets
sonnets as rare
as a live Aegean rhino
absorbing the cracklings of my craft
its riverine volcanoes
its spectacular lightning peninsulas
emitting plentiful creosote phantoms
from an ironic blizzard of unsettled pleromas
scouring through years of unrecognized pablums
of constant arch-rivalry with extinction
bringing up skulls of intensive discourse
by the claws in one’s mind
which seem to burn with systemic reduction
one then suffers poetic scorching by debris
by inaugural timber which flashes
by friction which flares up & harries
by unrecognized moltens collapsing in glass
of initial intuitive neglect
as if one’s fangs
were fatally stifled by incipience
by verbal range war didactics
by territorial driftwood
by sudden undemonstrative detractions
awed
by the diverse infernos of Trakl & Dante
one’s youngish body stands
devoured by reverential print trails
momentarily cancelled
by the loss of blasphemous nerves & upheaval
stung
by demeaning neutralities
ravaged
by a blank Sumatran solar psychosis
by a tasteless collision of rums in transition
by a conspiracy of obscured fertility by hubris
as one sucks in doubt from a wave of tumbling blister trees
there exists irradiations flecked with a gambled synecdoche
with indeterminate earthenware splinters
taking up
from aboriginal density
a forge of Sumerian verbal signs
cooked with a tendency
towards starfish hypnosis
towards psychic confrontational drainage
conducting one’s frictions in a torrential furnace of osmosis & ire
yes
apprenticeship
means poetry scrawled in unremitting leper’s mosaic
cringed in smoky interior cubicles
releasing various deleriums
as if pointed under a blackened Oedipal star
with its dark incapable tints
with its musical ruse of unspoken belladonna
poetics
an imaginal flash of Russian chamber lilies
stretching under a blue marsupial sun
like kaleidoscopic tumbleweed
fugaciously transfixed
upon an anomalous totem of glints
upon rainy Buenos Aires transfusions
above the urinal coppers of a flaming polar star rise
of course
kinetic
like magical malachite rivers
flowing from moons
blowing through the 3/4 summits of motionless anginas
I’ve looked
for only the tonalities that scorch
which bring to my lips wave after wave
of sensitivity by virulence
yes
a merciless bitterness
brewed by a blue-black tornado of verbs
in a surge of flashing scorpion chatter
in a dessicated storm of inferential parallels & voltage
like a scattered igneous wind
co-terminus with the bleeding hiatus & the resumption of breath
resolved by flash point edicts
by consumptive stellar limes
by curvature in tense proto-Bretonian fatigue
mixing magnets
juggling centripetal anti-podes & infinities
cracking the smoke of pure rupestral magentas
yes
hatcheries
floating through acetylene corruption of practiced mental restraint
to splendiferous vistas mingled with inspirational roulette
its mysteriums
always leaping like a grainy rash of scorching tarantellas
or leaking moon spun alloestrophas*
as if speaking
in irregular glossological green Dutch
a frenetic seminar on febricity
a reitteration of hendecasyllabic agitation & stinging
a ferocious vacillation
explosive as random “aggregational” nodes
mimed by a black consonantal dissection
its maximal priority
forked at “hypotactic inclusion”
with isochronous internal procedure
with ratios
with phonic penetralia by distortion
primed by anomalous “nuclear accent”
by a cadence composing syllables & compounds
yes
poetics
its force
jettisoned by “hypotaxis”
by ... paratactic co-ordination
& fire
Where Are You From? Will Alexander
Will Alexander reads 'Concerning Forms Which Hold Heidegger in Judgment'
Will Alexander with Makiko Goto
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'I picked Made to Break up, asked it to dance and it broke eight of my toes before we found a rhythm. Thing is–it ended up being a beautiful rhythm. Still, half the time I put into reading it was spent in limbo. I found myself constantly picking this novel up and then putting it down again almost immediately. That is until I found that rhythm. Then I finished it in a night.
'Here’s the set up: A group of friends in their thirties convene at a cabin at Lake Tahoe during a particularly devastating flood. A car accident leaves one member of the group sick and dying, and the weather knocks out any means of communication to the outside world. Instead they are forced to look inward and backward, and that’s where things get interesting. Though it’s always the same narrator, the tone changes radically between the cabin scenes and the flashbacks which take place outside the world of the cabin and in the main characters’ respective pasts. It’s not until we learn to distinguish between those two narrative modes that we really become immersed in Foy’s world. Once I began to understand the method to Foy’s tempered madness I became like an enthusiastic child, finally being let in on the secrets of the older and wiser.
'Foy could have won the reader early on with a more linear narrative or by placing some of the more digestible interactions earlier in the book. Friends at a Warhol-esque bash playing truth or dare, sharing phallic descriptions, stories about pubescent coitus with a stuffed monkey, three brothers sleeping with the same woman, all of these plot elements could have been intriguing up front. Instead, they’re parsed out deliberately. We only come to understand these people we are already acquainted with once we read their backstories. Foy gives you the experience of how knowing a person can change your perception of them, within the confines of the novel.'-- Jon Reiss, Brooklyn Based
D. Foy Made to Break
Two Dollar Radio
'Two days before New Years, a pack of five friends – three men and two women – head to a remote cabin near Lake Tahoe to celebrate the holidays. They’ve been buddies forever, banded together by scrapes and squalor, their relationships defined by these wild times.
'After a car accident leaves one friend sick and dying, and severe weather traps them at the cabin, there is nowhere to go, forcing them to finally and ultimately take stock and confront their past transgressions, considering what they mean to one another and themselves.
'With some of the most luminous and purple prose flexed in recent memory, D. Foy is an incendiary new voice and Made to Break, a grand, episodic debut, redolent of the stark conscience of Denis Johnson and the spellbinding vision of Roberto Bolaño.' -- Two Dollar Radio
Excerpt
from The Collagist
I'd just scanned an ad for a dildo inside Dinky's latest trash, Pink Champagne Bitch, when a turmoil of voices called me back.
"I'm telling you," Lucille shouted, "someone's out there!"
Dinky must have heard it, too. He lurched up hideous and swollen and said, "That's our book . . . Turn out the lights . . . No . . ." Then he cocked an ear to the door. "Who invited her?"
"I came in to check on you," I said.
"In the dream I was having . . ." I waited for him to go on about this dream but his words were dribble.
"In the dream you were having what?"
Dinky covered his face with the sheet and coughed. "Maybe we could ask those chuckleheads to put a lid on it. Do you think we could do that, Andrew?"
From the wall above him a clown gazed out with that comically lugubrious expression old people somehow feel compelled to adorn the faces of clowns in art. Dinky's great-goddamned-grandmother, or someone like her, had probably slapped it up.
"Even if I wanted to," he said, and looked away, "I couldn't." I watched him fumble with his pants. He looked like a child, with a child's confessional eyes. "Hickory, I mean," he said, though I'd known what he meant. His lips were trembling. He was speaking of himself as I. "I only wanted someone to hold," he said. I realized then the clown was staring at me, too, or so it seemed. I hated clowns more than anything, to say nothing of paintings of clowns. And now Dinky had to go and lay a guilt trip out. "About getting her on her back. You know I didn't mean it . . . Right?" His hands came up as if with a toxic globe. "Look at me," he said. I tried to look out the window but only saw myself. "How can a guy get any sleep with that?"
We heard Basil say, "Turn out the lights," and then Hickory something about a lamp. Meanwhile Lucille had begun to chant: "O my God O my God O my God."
The sounds were undeniable, clunky and deep at first, like a hammer on a hollow box, scratchy and thin the next. By the time we reached them, Hickory, Basil, and Lucille were at the window again, with just their eyes above the sill.
"Watch it, you guys," Lucille said. "Someone's out there."
"No one's out there," Basil said.
Dinky slid down the jamb and turned into a ball. "Is that why we're all on our hands and knees?"
"There," Lucille said, and pointed. "Did you see that?"
For just this once I wished she'd been lying, but she had seen what she'd seen. A shadow moved through the rain, then faded into mist. Then the sounds began again, leisurely nearly, steady, like a bridge troll, or maybe a giant, crunching on his bones.
"Who do you think it is?" I whispered.
On a talk show on the tube three enormous women argued round a little man while the singer from his box moaned about a girl with hair full of ribbons and gloves on her hands.
"You're out of your mind," Basil said. "I didn't see dick."
"Someone is out there," I said.
"Then that's it," Basil said, and strode to the door with his hatchet. "I go out there and holler, and no one answers, I don't care if it's the Queen of fucking England, when I see him, he's as dead as fuck. What's the matter, baldy?" he said when Dinky wouldn't budge. "Afraid of the big bad wolf?"
"The guy can hardly walk," I said.
"He's good enough to get out of bed, he's good enough to kick some ass."
"Blood," Dinky mumbled. "Bright red blood."
"Don't do it," Hickory said.
Lucille began to wail, something I couldn't get.
Basil glared. "You coming or not?"
We went into that fist of night, hunched against the rain, scared as hell, too, speaking for myself. Something was out there, in the wallows beneath the deck perchance, lurking and munching, and we were stoned and drunk and tired, to say nothing of critically blind. I looked to Hickory above me, her hand on Dinky's arm. The best my friend could do was prop himself up to watch. By the way she cradled him, I could tell it was all for show. She wanted him to think she thought he needed checking. The rain had soaked me through again, now. I felt dirty and soft and stupid as could be.
Basil moved crabwise down the stairs, brandishing the hatchet. "Whoever you are," he said, "you'd better stop fucking around, cause we mean business."
Once upon a time I'd fancied myself that bearded miser's secret spy for truth—once upon a time. Because now we were stuck in a game. Anything could happen, anything at all.
(cont.)
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D. Foy's Indiegogo Campaign Video for 'Made to Break' Tour 2014
Laundromat photography book
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'Witch Piss is a Chicago novel, but not a “love letter” like so many reviewers are wont to attach to any book so steeped in locale, so enamored by the idea of place as character that they forget that any place is the sum of its inhabitants, that New York, Paris, London and, yes, even Chicago, aren’t worth shit without people.
'Witch Piss is also a homeless guy named Spider Man and his shit-stained, wheelchair-bound girlfriend Janet. Witch Piss is crack pipes and piss jugs and temporary housing. It’s chess played on overturned buckets while oil from the Blue Line rains down from above. It’s a food pyramid built on burritos and 40 ounces. It’s “Howx” and Thox games; it’s “Hoowee, namn,” and “Gah be nuts!” and “Suh-mashed that bitch!”
'The written tradition is the oral tradition branded into parchment and paper, emails and ebooks, so when everything is fucked we can look back and say that at one point, things weren’t so bad. Sam Pink has taken the art of the oral tradition and pressed its face to the page, writing not so much in ink as in blood and spittle and King Cobra. The characters of Witch Piss speak from the streets, and Pink captures every nuance. Chicago slang, words cut and twisted from the throat to the tongue, bubbling forth with new or missing syllables and letters. The vernacular of Witch Piss is Chicago words, Chicago stories, but also human stories. The universe seems large, but you can traverse it in a few city blocks. ...
'Pink’s greatest asset is his bear trap prose. You’re reading Witch Piss and everything is normal. Well, not normal, but described pretty plainly. No purple prose, no literary ass sniffing. ...
'He also wants you to laugh. And feel sorry for people. Or not give a shit. It’s difficult to tell because the “plot” of Witch Piss is built, like some of the characters’ homes, out of cardboard. This is not a dig at Pink or his novels; plot just isn’t as important here. It would only cloud this travelogue of the grotesque. Ignore the questions swirling in your head and let Pink’s prose take over. Like a severed artery, building to burst when the tourniquet is in place, gushing all over the walls when the pressure is off, what Pink bleeds is Chicago itself—vile and angry, cold and lost.'-- Timothy O’Donnell, Atticus Review
Sam Pink Witch Piss
Lazy Fascist Press
'Sam Pink's newest book is classic Sam Pink: A minimalist view into people's lives. On this one, we have a nameless protagonist wandering about town, meeting people from the gutters, from the alleys, and bonding with them just for the bonding itself. The character's voice is bleak, as it is his world. The characters, the superhero obsessed Spider-Man, his wheelchair-bound girlfriend with a penchant for theft Janet, etc. They are all real people, and it is Pink's greatest skill to make us love them, make us root for them, make us bet our own emotional well-being on their sucess. Sam Pink is the true weaver of feelings of the 21st Century.'-- Pedro Proença
Excerpt
'damn, can't believe i'm a werewolf now,' he thought, walking down the street looking at his hairy paw.
but he'd known all along he was a werewolf, in some way. much like how an omelet knows it's an omelet, in some way.
he smiled his fangy smile and slicked back his luxurious werewolf hair with his claws.
'fuck it jo,' he thought.
just then, a clown jumped out of an alley and stood before him, menacing.
the clown did that side to side neck cracking motion then cracked his knuckles and said, 'well well, werewolf man. seems like it's time to settle some old business eh?'
'who the fuck are you?' said the werewolf.
'you mean you don't remember?' said the clown, rolling up his clown sleeves. 'perhaps you remember me by my old name, dr. scribblius q. choppletoots. i pinched your butt at a 311 concert many years ago.'
the werewolf touched his butt and whispered, 'you motherfucker.'
the werewolf went to run at the clown, but the clown pulled out a small laser gun and said, 'not, so, fast. impetuous aren't we?'
'it ends here,' said the werewolf.
'my my my,' said the clown. 'look who suddenly became a werewolf and grew some balls.'
then he began pacing, keeping the laser in his hand.
'werewolf,' said the clown. 'let me be clear, there is nothing i'd love more than to laser you in the nipples and finish off what i started long ago. but to be frank, i simply must return to my laboratory to finish work on my Klaktonius Decimator. so i think,' --he laughed-- 'why, i think i'll let my friend deal with you instead.'
and with that he snapped his fingers.
out from the alley there came a giant anthropomorphic muscular lobster with a mohawk and nose ring.
'meet my friend, Nogzor,' said the clown.
Nogzor snorted like a bull and stepped forward menacingly.
the clown said, 'i'm sure you two will be good friends.'
and with that he pocketed his laser and got on his rocket-powered segway and took off, laughing like 'snee hee hee hee.'
the werewolf smiled and did that neck cracking motion and said, 'it's just too bad i ain't got no butter with me.'
then they both rushed towards each other and performed simulataneous jumpkicks.
Sam Pink reads from 'The No Hellos Diet'
Sam Pink interview
"Rontel" by Sam Pink -- A Single Sentence Animation from Electric Literature
*
p.s. Hey. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! There was. Oh, as a fellow lover of Tokyo, I so hope you can be a regular there. I'd love to be. Anyway, I can feel your pleasure in my bones. I'll google 'Hi-Red Center'. Sounds very cool. Enjoy every morsel. ** DavidEhrenstein, Thanks, I'll go see what Mr. Fiennes has to say. ** _Black_Acrylic, That new Shackleton is really nice. Well, consider it a done deal then. The Art101 post. Great! Just let me know what's what and when, and let's do it. It would only be an honor for here/me. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man. I love Bee Mask too. And Var, of course. The new Wild Beasts is really good in a sneaky way. Wow, I wish you had that on video too. Maybe you could do a historical re-creation? ** Sypha, Thanks for the not so belated kudos re: the playground post, sir. Agents can take forever if ever, I hear. Ha ha, 'fuck that shit' could be a way to go, but you might wait a little bit and give it a fighting chance 'cos you never know. But, yeah, self-publishing is as legit nowadays as anything else. ** Brendan, Hey. Thou, yeah, right? Me too, obviously. Cool. Oh, man, thank you so much for the garden pix. I luxuriated heavily. So healthy! That pepper, those cacti. You're the blog's official green thumb bearer. Have you and Joel compared notes? You guys should. And that last pic, which I think I saw on FB maybe (?), is a beaut, so true. Anyway, you spruced up my visual component or something, my friend, and you're a serious bud! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hey! Too long a time no see, for sure! Excellent! The trip to the moon, ha ha, was mind-blowing. Thanks about the gig. I know, I was crushed when I read that Vår are no more. Their album was my album of last year. I imagine you've already heard their new, pretty, Art of Noise-y farewell track, but, if not, it's here. No, I haven't seen the Pitchfork Festival line-up. You mean the Paris edition? If so, shit, I'll find that straight away. I like Marching Church. I think they're getting increasingly more interesting. Wait, you're going to interview Elias?! For the blog ... wait, for this blog? No, you didn't mean for my blog, did you? I'm being greedy, right? Anyway, in any case, that's amazing! Oh, I'm sure I can think up some questions for him. Can I have a day or two? I really want to meet that guy. Just the other week I was really, really urging Gaspar Noe to cast Elias in his new film. I keep missing my chances to meet Elias. Shit, that's so great, you interviewing Elias, shit! Man, thank you for letting me think up a question or two. Wow. ** Steevee, Hi. I got the new Thou through ... channels. Yeah, 'smug' and self-consciously hipster seems to be one of the big beefs with Jarmusch's stuff. Except in a couple of cases, I've always just found that vibe/sensibility in/behind his films interesting and flavorsome, I guess. ** Starlon H, Hey! Wow, it's really nice to see you! It's been ages! Best laid plans, I guess, but whatever, you know? Writing poems in college is as fruitful as anything else. 5 good poems is a pretty good ratio, actually, I think. Some big or great or something poet once said something to the effect that if you can write more than one good poem, you're a good poet, which, I don't know, made sense to me somehow. Well, I've been reading the books in the post today mostly. I just got a couple of books in the mail that I guess I'll read next: Lucas de Lima 'Wet Land', and Richard Hawkins 'Fragile Flowers'. The Romantics are a great bunch to have a love affair with. Oh, I like them a bunch, even though I haven't read/reread them in a long time, which I should do. Sweet reading there, long story short. You sound good, you do. Please stick around if you feel like it. That would be a boon. ** Rewritedept, Right, office non-chic re: the shades, sure, what was I imagining. Dead baby sleep ... I'm going to spend the rest of the morning trying to imagine that. My yesterday was ... maybe not exceptional. Productive, I guess. Did this and that. Nothing earth-shattering but, you know, goodness prevailed. Jump out of bed ideas are usually the best ones. Unless you're drunk or too stoned in bed. It's all about editing, man. Best day! ** Misanthrope, Huh, are you weird as shit? Am I too weird as shit to know? I think so. I mean I think I'm too W.A.S. to know not that you're W.A.S. 3 and counting! 3 is a good number. I have an odd numbers fetish, as you probably know or could tell if you spent a minute thinking about it, which you shouldn't. Sounds like you're mending unless it's one of those irksome phantom mending signs. I hate those. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, you love Yan Jun! That's cool. Yeah, he's great, really subtle and thoughtful. Am I growing younger? I think maybe it's that my insides are in a lifelong holding pattern or something. I wish my outsides were. Well, no, I don't really wish that. Maybe a more slow motion trajectory. ** That's that. I read those books up there and had a very positive experience doing so, and so I recommend that/them. I even managed to read 4 books rather than my usual 3, which I guess means something that is probably not so interesting. Anyway, see you tomorrow.