scooter for sale…sold! *sigh*

some people…don’t have maps

Follow-up: “That wasn’t Miss South Carolina’s final answer” (USA Today, 8/28/07)

cementland

City Museum has been the best thing to happen to St. Louis since the Gateway Arch opened to the public in 1965. Now, City Museum’s founding visionary Bob Cassilly is building a new outdoor space called Cementland: “One Part Cement, Two Parts Whimsy, One Odd Park” (New York Times, Aug 25). He’s building it in the old factory/warehouse district just north of the Arch, by all counts one of the most desolate parts of St. Louis. I’ve explored it mainly while bicycling on the St. Louis Riverfront Trail or having fun at the freaky Artica Urban Wilderness Festival. It’s crumbling; it’s beautiful, destroyed America. I can’t wait to visit Cementland.

the onion: “poet takes extra 5 minutes to vague up poem”

ANN ARBOR, MI—After completing a poem originally titled “Last Dawnbreak,” local poet Keith Taylor spent five additional minutes removing verbs and punctuation in order to give the piece a level of vagueness more suitable for publication.

“Harshness your light fallen—Sporadic. Droppings.” reads the now-untitled poem’s opening line. “Juniper glass, my world of 19—. Orion! Orion!”

Though he has already replaced the names of his friends with largely unknown African deities, Taylor said the poem would not be totally ready for publication until his 5-year-old nephew completes work on the third stanza.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/poet_takes_extra_5_minutes

how to tell if your nose is runny

Stand in the breeze.
Put your finger in your nose.
Now hold your finger up in the air.
Does it feel cold?

world cultures

In world cultures that favor honest,
direct use of language, euphemism
is considered socially unacceptable.
In some it is even held to be morally
reprehensible. In the most honest
and direct culture of all, the word
“euphemism” is itself so taboo
that it is expressed only via
the substitution of agreeable
or inoffensive expressions, such
as “martini” or “banana split.”
In this culture, to say that “jane”
is a “martini” for “prostitute”
elicits knowing nods and grave,
grave, somber facial expressions.

I find language, the use thereof,
the manifold ethical considerations
connected thereunto, and the cultural
structures that both produce and
arise from said usages and considerations
to be utterly fascinating and frustrating
at once. To even refer to language
as “language” is, in fact, a kind
of “banana split.” Don’t get me wrong:
I enjoy euphemism. Maybe I’m
just being paranoid?

it’s HOT in st. louis

leaving

for the Parkers

Everything is leaving, slowly,
going where it wants to go.

Green leaves, the little buds
they love, the boughs that hold them

all are slowly growing
into darker leaves and blooms

on branches, then fading,
falling, disappearing into nests

and beaver dams. Even beaver dams
are leaving, crumbling as

the seasons roll, spring to spring,
each summer’s summer,

year by year—they join the river
and head south toward larger waters,

leaving us to sit and wonder
on the bank of water’s sorrow

what will come to grow here next
and where we’ll be tomorrow.

That is not hope: it’s just false promise.
Everything is leaving, slowly,

until it will at last be gone.

dear english colleagues

I left
a brownish-gray cup
(crafted by Clarence Miller)
on a table

in the Humanities Bldg
second-floor lounge
I would like
to retrieve that cup

If you come across it
please let me
know
Thanks

::
(based on an email from Thomas Walsh)

uncannily midwestern

I’m happy to see that my latest ‘rumination’ for St. Louis Magazine is online. It mentions fave artist Sarah Giannobile, photographer and old friend Mark Schepker, and trumpets the virtue of a localist vibe.  La province est morte… vive la province!

unable to write a goodbye poem

You ask what kind of session
I am having, and you ask

what I have been asked
to do. I have been asked

to use words to reconstitute
a pulverized heart—

pulverized by leaving—
and the kind of session

I am having is a freak
out session, because I can’t.

gabriel fried makes best sellers list…

This just in from our friends at Sarabande. (Gabriel is coming to St. Louis to read in the Observable series on November 1.)

+ + + + + + +

DATE: 08/08/07

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RE: Making the New Lamb Take by Poet Gabriel Fried Makes Best Sellers List

Sarabande Books is delighted to announce that Gabriel Fried’s debut poetry collection, Making the New Lamb Take (2007), has reached No. 16 on the Poetry Foundation’s Best Sellers list for Contemporary Poetry. Fried shares the honor of making this list with such exalted poets as Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, and Nikki Giovanni. Making the New Lamb Take is the second Sarabande title to garner such an achievement. Fried’s collection won the 2006 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, judged by Michael Ryan. Ryan states in his foreword: “. . . there are poets who, young or not, are fully formed when they appear with their first books (like Whitman and Frost and Bishop). It’s impossible for me to imagine poems more fully integrated or more fully realized than those in this book. . . . That Gabriel Fried has the talent, skill, intelligence, and wisdom to have an exceptional future as a poet is unquestionable. . . .”

the poem and the vacuum cleaner

The poem that succeeds,
like the vacuum cleaner
that succeeds, sucks
to a certain extent,
which is to say that
it doesn’t suck totally.
But the vacuum cleaner’s
audience focuses on
the extent to which
it sucks, the poem’s
audience on the extent
to which it does not;
herein lies the only
difference between
the poem and the vacuum
cleaner. Both are used
around the house. Both
need to be “plugged in”
to function properly.
Both are occasional,
trotted out most often
on holidays or when
preparing for visitors.
Both have words
on them and motors
beneath the words.
Both, indeed, suck
to a certain extent.
Yet also consider:
a poem cannot be
read by birds, while
a vacuum cleaner
can be operated
by birds (the right
kind of birds). That
might be splitting hairs.

you can pick your friends

You can pick your friends,
we used to say, and
you can pick your nose,
but you can’t pick your friend’s
nose. We said it often and
understood what it meant:
man lives within constraints,
be they moral or natural;
our little lives were limited
by rules or laws, boundaries
we knew were there and
dared not cross. Nowadays,
my son tells me, you
can pick your friend’s nose,
you just can’t eat the booger.
So there are still constraints,
but things have changed,
and I’d say for the worse.
My father says that in his day
you couldn’t even pick your nose.
For him things have been
changing for quite some time.

why do i love you?

I love you because you
are funny and tragic
like the man who
having lost his banana farm
in a poker tournament
tells the only knock
knock joke he can think of
and then with tears
in his eyes takes off
his glasses to wipe them
on his shirttail—
it was his great
grandfather’s banana farm!
Also, you are cute.