Other Projects: Robert Frost on Twitter

Apparently the New Year will not be bringing many new cut-ups to this page, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

In other news, I have been playing the part of Robert Frost's Twitter executor for the last few months. The Straddler, an online literary journal, has a sampling of the poet's updates in its latest edition.

into

my word "home"

my movie that doesn't make
small talk my five words

my approach that pounded harder and harder
my drowned-out
end

my woman
who is not
my bad times

my
performance
that collapsed

(source text)

Links: Poetry at our mercy; ego management

"Are you Christmas blogging?" my brother Brian just asked. Yes. Yes I am.

My friend Ben recently wrote an excellent examination of the state of Poetry (the magazine, not the, um, "form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning"). It's over at Luna Park, a new-ish online journal (one that's apparently turning into a new-ish blog in the coming weeks).

This site will hopefully be updated more frequently in the coming weeks: my duties as a grad student (for which I am actually paid) have been getting in the way over the last month or so. The poems may look a bit different if all goes according to plan. Some may even be readable.

Now that the obligatory self-deprecation is out of the way, I may as well link to some old coverage of this here site. Back when I was more diligent (and not working), a few people wrote some very nice things about the page. Deirdre Fulton (not, in fact, the mysterious Sharon Steel) over at The Boston Phoenix interviewed me for Word Up, the paper's lit blog. If you know me, I've probably already shoved said interview under your nose, but my ego hopes that strangers check in on this page from time to time. And yes, that's my mom and one of my uncles in the "Comments" section below the feature. Secondly (and lastly), Miriam Rosenberg at The Wave, a Rockaway newspaper, checked in with me after I made a poem out of an article describing the tragic death of Patrick Hernandez. Thanks again, Deirdre and Miriam! Thanks also to Jason B. Jones over at Bookslut, who linked to the site back when it was a bit more active and was also nice. You are all good people.

Look for more activity emerging from this dark corner of the web in the coming weeks. And thanks for reading!

I write you.

The usual typos – jealousy,
detachment, hopes – were enough.
You entertained inadequacies in darkness
like a bishop: They were concrete; they
were not mentioned.

(source text)

Guidelines for Priests

Avoid the cost of a stable
Identity; look for apples.

(source text)

beat

sometimes their defense of drowned art
led to death embellished, weeks of
drunken lunch, murder
unconsummated, a regard for autopsy
over cynicism, conflicted
shoelaces

a buried name
where a better life had been
stowed away.

(source text)

King and Mountain

In quiet moments

the king lost faith in
order: its violence,
its clarity.

In another castle

a new prophet of winter is at rest
in an elliptical sunset; he
possessed nothing.

(source text)

end of the line

The world I

no longer

belonged to

kept going

while I consulted

with the depths in a

dream I visited

but couldn't break out

of in the end.

(source text)

staying sick

We declined to be named
like people, refused
a ring, sought escape
in a performance of collapse.

Not to worry: that's
the way we like it.

(source text)

Mind Your Manners

Crowded conversations
in transit launched
your reputation.

Now you
excitedly drone on without the bedlam
that colored your old poetry.

You have retired
to the common
horror of yesterday.

(source text)

Another I

Each distortion murmurs to the world
like a drunken gypsy
and dreams itself into existence:

I am more than an actor:
filthy with these little lives
at home, on an evening walk:

I won't bathe:
in time I'll head behind these visions

(source text)

The Chameleon

I love the idea of conclusion;
You don't need to believe in it
To admire it for its honesty.

(source text)

street heart

this blinding city

gathered souls to sacrifice
guides strangers home
quietly drums
made a shadow on a door

nobody knows.

(source text)

his own enemy

Last night he
turned into fireworks for
a while, and attacked the endless.

His laugh
is like a coat he wore in a better decade
and grew out of.

(source text)

after summer

In rotten cities
where our money is

We stow our
spoiled bone

And wait for a few shreds
of unprecedented metaphor

(source text)

The Stand Ins

They make moments talk
by roughing up everything incidental

And they enjoy their doomed life together
beyond changes

Their destruction untangling it all

A tattered, honest
shape to carry out to sea

(source text)

around, not old

you're accustomed to talk
so perhaps a wrinkle
can throw you off

those years being made
less cerebral

it will come down to
thinking you lasted

(source text)

young time

these guys down their belief
like martinis

all night

(source text)

Moving Day

It's hard knowing well
the old done away

But reality
was moving

And endless horns I had already held dreaming
Planned the day I had already begun to hate

(source text)

Room For Doubt

You dismissed the bitterness,
the anxiety, the impassioned
roar of somebody surviving.

The invisible remains,
hopeful that you
will be going away in time.

(source text)