exhausted

a lot has happened the past month. does it sound like a cliche to say that i have sufficiently fallen in love with new york. i leave for alabama in a week. a part of me is looking forward to it. a part of me is dreading it.

discovered: hannah weiner. it's wonderful to go back to a writer whom you felt indifferent about and seeing the work and understanding it in a different way. (http://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/weiner_indians.pdf)

wrote a poem. im pretty exhausted. little sleep the past month, but still loving the studio program here.



* * *

(from "some firsts" series)

sunset 1

uberlyptic, utter -
dance, in quiet
reckoned, view(s)
a trip of deep plains
unssized, the tires,
kut inside, it feel,
please feel
you dunce. eroded.
what's in my pockets,
what's luck tangential, what's
insight, err
and roof-top
indepedence, or
just busy, the light
thru ropes and branches,
like life at some west-end
but broken,
but conform or fight,
no tiny numbers, what
meaning, right(s)
whats left
whats me, into?

shadows, 1 Uptown, the weather

blogging mite be sporadic this next month. im currently in nyc, participating in a studio architecture program @ columbia.

update on spahr's chapbook: the folios were boxed. val at one heart will ship in late july, so i'll have time to finish up the folios (hopefully) before orientation (boot camp) back in alabama.

currently reading: sporadically, a book on the objectivists. i need a small break from poetic theory.

michael ondaatje's _running in the family_. his one-worded sentences and sense of timing is impeccable.

peter eisenman (for those of you who don't know, he's an established architect, known more for his conceptual theories than his work) said last week: "all sustainable development architects are bad architects." mark wigley said (another architect taking part in an ongoing discussion series between himself and eisenman): "sustainable development architects are irresponsible, because they're not pushing the boundaries of beauty and structure." what world do these architects live in? do we even have a choice these days in not taking a somewhat sustainable route??? it clearly established that both are working within very specific parameters of "beauty" and "architecture."

we finished posting up broadsides for the RAT project. unfortunately, the NYPD caught on and was on the brink of charging the folks who started the cool project thousands of buckaroos for illegally posting up fliers. the trouble was really posting up the broadsides in certain parts of manhattan ( = $$$$ + prissy).

our first studio project was to construct a 3-dimensional object that expressed the relationships between light, time, and a specific site. part of my studio critic's assignment was for each of us to build a tool to make the 3-dimensional object, and we could only use this tool to construct the object. the 3-dimensional object then also became a drawing tool - the shadow patterns was supposed to reflect our observations.

i realized at the end of the project, my model was really about a dead track on the 1. the center track at 116th isn't in use. yet, it's a track. the only time when one realizes that it's day underneath is seeing the reflection of the light around the pools of water on the dead track.

simulations

happy independence day - whatever that truly means ( i.e. the celebratory what in indepedence??)

it's about to rain in the city. i ran into an old high school friend in prospect park, out of all places! ivan is finishing up his phD in philosophy at univ of michigan. i see him sporadically, but he is honestly and truly one of the nicest, good-hearted human beings i know. im headed out in a bit to catch up and eat some veggie burgers (im guessing) with him and some of his friends.

anyhow. a poem.


* * *

simulations


i. first dream

A clear blue day, height of a wood-post fence. A fist, a riff, waking
to remember, at a slower speed of auditory. Hissssss, split, riff.
Listening, if patiently. If it was another time, another prevailing
weather. A clear blue day, spray-paint inscriptions of names and
holidays, territorial to laid thick. Fade like the fate of a letter
written by a skywriting plane, fog, a crowd. A smoke machine, as well
as a visual recording machine. A balcony, a boulevard, open, arrivals.
A small room with portraits of icicles. Desolate and sculpture, a
feel of incidental, the panhandle of Texas, Nevada. A clear blue day,
the sight of telegraphic poles, when it rains, a stir of adolescent
angst.

philadelphia

peeps. things are happening in philadelphia...

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Lee-S/Lee-Sueyeun-Juliette_Complete-Recording_UPenn_1-16-07.mp3

nyc, ahhh

just arrived about a couple of hours ago. nyc has this expansive feel to it. so different from sf.

currently reading:::

_the objectivist nexus_ edited by rachel blau duplessis and peter quartermain.
press: university of alabama press (hank lazer and charles bernstein edit some pretty amazing books - check out the series sometime).

reading about louis zukofksy, in general, makes me very happy.

what was objectivism - i havent read too much of the historical proponent of it. zukofsky is fucking amazing. i like some niedecker stuff ("i'm going off the page..."). george oppen is ok. i am into basil bunting, or what ive read so far of his work.

objectivism was a movement of poetics (and yes, objectivism was a kind of lyric, for those who disagree...) that was distinct from modernism (pound, eliot, altho those two poets were also very different), with much of the nexus formulated between 1927-1935. the poets most often recognized as the main core are basil bunting, lorine niedecker, george oppen, carl rakosi, charles reznikoff, and louis zukofsky. objectivism suggests exactly what it implies - objectivist poetics wrote and saw a poem as an object. most of the time, they were suspicious of metaphysical, metaphorical writing, and rejected symbols. the literal sufficed.

apologies if that was dry. i often have to re-articulate and re-define things to prove that ive digested it.

a warm and lovely night in brooklyn...