woody allen interviews billy graham

Part I:

Part II:

a new niece

 Hannah Caitlyn Belz - born yesterday to my sister Jane.

the onion isn’t funny anymore

Look at this tripe:

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/adults_have_misclassified_me_as

52nd city “sporty” release party

This just in from Thomas Crone—I’ll be there from 4:30 on—

Where: Riley’s, 3458 Arsenal, 314-664-7474

When: Saturday, July 28, 3-6 p.m.

No cover, free food and drinks, all ages

This afternoon will mark the release of 52nd City’s fifth print issue, along with our previous effort, the CD “Sound.” The new mag features a variety of St. Louis writers, illustrators and photographers musing on the topic of “Sporty” and will be on sale for $8, with all previous issues available, as well. Expect a few sporting events to be held in-and-out of Riley’s on Saturday. Owner Bill Kapes is generously offering some free food and drink… while supplies last. Our new web issue will also go live on this day.

you bore me

Hey! Ophelia stole my line!!

terrorist threat at siue

Sad news from my former place of employ:

Olutosin Oduwole, who was taking summer classes at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, was charged Tuesday with attempting to make a terrorist threat, a felony. He remained jailed Wednesday in lieu of $1 million bail.

According to the affidavit, the 22-year-old wrote a note demanding that money be deposited to a PayPal account, threatening that “if this account doesn’t reach $50,000 in the next 7 days then a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting will occur at another highly populated university. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070725/ap_on_re_us/student_threat_charges

Oh yeah, and the guy is on Facebook, too.

white dove

I can’t stop listening to this new John Vanderslice song:

http://barsukmusic.blaireau.net/JohnVanderslice_WhiteDove.mp3

It’s haunting. Awful. Beautiful. Horrifying. Listen to the lyrics!

Did he play it at the Billiken Club on May 2nd? Someone, anyone?

::

Editor’s note: Here’s a video of “White Dove” shot at Tiny Telephone Studio in San Francisco. Looks like it was just posted today!

visualizing thought

From Amy VanDonsel’s blog (this is why I hang out with artists) …

I hate my brain much of the time. If I were to draw a diagram of its process (and I use that term loosely) there would be two parallel lines stretching out into the distance. One would be my basic things-I-have-to-do-like-drive-and-have-logical-conversations line, and the other would be what I not so affectionately refer to as my ‘narration,’ but I’m not going to get into that right now. Then, superimposed over the top, would be a multi-dimensional spiral with little small, snaking curls coming off. The main spiral, and curls, move around and up and down in order to intersect a field of floating dots over and over in different patterns at different times. It’s really annoying. I’d like to have nice, ordered, linear thoughts so I could actually make some sort of progress and have a decent conclusion once in while, or ideally, even the once a year brilliant insight. But noooo…. instead, I have the whole spiral with branches repeatedly intersecting the dancing dots. I really have no idea how I manage to have a coherent thought at all. Sheer force of will, I assume.

in the silent morning

Can’t you at least tell me
why you have become silent,
beautiful morning that once
contained birdsong, truck
engine, faraway jackhammer—

can’t you at least make
one noise to illuminate
the outline of your former joy,
your hanging boughs full
of bright leaves?

For light has become
a visible blank in which
only my own thoughts appear,
like transparent birds
ascending, disappearing.

the razor blade

“So this is heartbreak,”
said the razor blade.

“I lie on my back
all night and don’t sleep.”

Razor blades are just
stupid enough to mistake

their inability to sleep
for an effect of heartbreak

but smart enough
to articulate pain.

“So this is pain,”
said the razor blade.

“So this is what the aftershave
warned me about.”

It was funny to watch him.
“What has happened to me?”

he mused. “Or what
have I done to myself?”

“happy”

“Happy” or “enthused”
or “have something fun
that they are up to” or
even “up to.”

“In the past” or “past.”
Or “she was kind
to me,” or even
“she.” She was

happy, once. She was
kind to me in the past.
“They have something
fun that they are up to,”

people would say, seeing
us together, or “what
are they up to?”
or even, “up to?”

In the early spring
she wore a cotton scarf
every day, it seemed.
I unwrapped it

and kissed her neck
in the early spring.
I gave butterflies to her,
she later told me,

in parting. She kissed
me in parting. “In the past,”
she said. “Past.”
“They have something,”

people would say,
“something fun
that they
are up to.”

listen

You can hear me read a “state of poetry” address and several of my poems online: http://www.miporadio.net/AARON_BELZ/.

I’ve been told by an NPR news anchor (yes, the irascible Tom Weber) that in these recordings I sound stiff, cultivated, like I’m reading from a printout. I’d like to hear the vox populi on this one, so please listen and leave a comment. Thanks!

help me fill in the alphabet blanks

A-Rod
B-boy
C-SPAN
D train
eBay
F bomb
Gmail
HD
iPod
Jay-Z
Kmart
L Word
M-Class
*NSYNC
OJ
P-Funk
Qbert
R2
S-type
T. rex
YouTube
V-jay
WB
X Files
Wi-Fi
Z Pak

the book that took me ten years to write

“Belz is ridiculous. He is self-proclaiming like the kid playing pretend who keeps forgetting his alter ego and making up a new one. His poetry takes on the tone of something preposterously purposeful. The reader is well aware that he is highly unqualified to say the important things he says.”
—The Bagpipe

“Aaron Belz is out to get you. Get you thinking, get you laughing, get you good. The poems in his first full-fledged collection, The Bird Hoverer, will get to you, too. In other words, they’re smart and funny, and also big-hearted.”
—Jacket Magazine

“Belz’s conversational poetry is alive; it’s a living, breathing entity, pulsing with pop culture life. Violet Affleck gets a shout-out in ‘For Ben Affleck’s Daughter,’ and the poet himself has a very sexy tête-à-tête while watching Cheers with Meryl Streep in the poem ‘In Bed With Meryl Streep.’”
—University News

Please do us all a favor and order it from Amazon. Why wait? Seriously, why?

Or if you’re in St. Louis, buy it from Left Bank Books in the Central West End.

the wereduck

We fear the wereduck, of course—
the man with feathered hair
who once a month becomes a duck.
But then, what don’t we fear?

We don’t fear prison, it’s too
far off. We don’t fear death, taxes;
we’ve learned to pay our due.
We’ve come to not fear sex.

It’s just that blessed wereduck,
sitting there, his seventies hair
morphing, slowly, once a month
to real feathers that gives us a scare.