The New Yorker Responds

THE NEW YORKER RESPONDS to Ryan Fitzpatrick's "Sparrow":
-----------
Hi Ryan,
I wanted to apologize for sending you a blank email earlier. I was curious as to what these poems were written for, as we've received a number of them from different email addresses and (purportedly) different authors. You can reply to me (if you like) at mweigel@newyorker.com; I am would truly be interested to know.
Thanks,
Moira Weigel (Poetry Dept. Intern)
***************************
NOTE: THE NEW YORKER SPARROW PROJECT CONTINUES! Send your "Sparrow" poem today, see below for details...

It's Almost Summer

It's almost summer. Mama Miao
is grooming the Reader.
A minute later,
she's done with the Reader.
So, Mama Miao wants her to
take his place.
Baba Miao backs off,
using this excuse:
The Effects Fat Has on Freezing Milk.
and then started throwing thawed-out bats,
at the Hela monsters growing in my thoughts

cobalt back home Halloween Penguin Summer
chillin' out in an oasis of Bad Bats...
REAL SOCIALIZING with Penguins
stuck in a hot spot but chillin'
That never happened. Just then,
I walk in and say that they've overheard
the cook telling Tai-Tai
that he has to cut off some
of The Reader's fur because it was messy.
She then asks The Reader what happened.
The Reader then tells them
and that The Reader's text
has sent The Reader
out to town to deliver a scroll
to an Adirondack Park
each the one saluting his wife
that he can groom himself.

Meanwhile, The reader delivers
the scroll to other Reader.
so the potter goes but not before stopping
to watch the other potter spin clay.
The reader feels itchy, and scratches herself.
Cat hair flutters up on the piano
Our renewal is an amusing sneezeland
Knocking on the still soft clay, splashing some
ontology on The Reader.

The reader continues home.
the cook sees The Reader in a combined
haven for the harried, providing zest, relaxation
tin ballast or just chillin out.
Comes with 2 basketballs,
2 volleyballs,
monkey-suit-brandishing
metal outsiders
and a bouquet of
delicious banality!

On the playground is where I
spent most of my days Chillin'
out maxin' relaxin the on the cobalt
Yosemite and Yellowstone fibers
Are the love seats above the napkins
where bats are playing video games?
where there are nightly shows
usually he *scoots regrets out
in gossamer robots
The Reader was kidnapped by bats,
and that those bats
ridiculed Fu-Fu, Fu-Fu gets mad and
calls on his clique. None of
these are the truth -- in an exciting manner.
The end.

2001... to be strapped to a gurney, and beaten
to death by the relatives of earthworms,
using whiffle ball bats.
Fly Fishing With Rod Smith
He’s British Yo, swearing to bring
those kidnappers some apple juice. The reader
decides that this has gone on long
enough, and admits that the Expedition
to the North Pole is dedicated Polly
wanna party/chill/swim/love
mannequin/ murkin fiesta
for Ralph Fiennes.
Bubble gum gets onto your hearses.

The reader goes out, and Dongwa and
Sheegwa asks The Reader why she
looked like that. Feeling ashamed,
The reader spins a story about being
kidnapped by the removes of clay
and cutting off the affected fur
(just like you admitted
to meeting a (Chinese) dragon.
On your family vacation
If you wish you
drops by.

In the Mainstream Aviary (1)

We've had a red-breasted nuthatch visiting
the feeders. I love hearing his soft "yank-
yank-yank" calls as he nips off suet, along
with the bushtit flock's gentle, twittering notes.

I have seen a White-Breasted Nuthatch almost
every day! ... I have never seen a Red
Breasted Nuthatch come back and recover
any of their stored seeds. It looks like

the tow rope is attached and they are waiting
for a nice high tide to yank it off, WHEE, WHEE, WHEE.
Bushtit. Bushtit (lisp) Bushtit Bushtit (tsit) Bushtit.
Violet-green Swallow, Mexican Jay, Bridled Titmouse,

Bushtit, Pygmy Nuthatch (low YANK or YAIR)
approximately one mile from the Hank and Yank homestead.

A Letter from One of Our Readers:

Ron Silliman writes:

Why do you have a photograph of a black-capped chickadee illustrating your sequence of Sparrow poems?

Dear Ron,

While you are quite correct that the bird photograph featured on Mainstream Poetry is not a sparrow, neither is it a black-capped chickadee. It is a white-breasted nuthatch. Kenn Kaufman, in his Birds of North America (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) notes that the white-breasted nuthatch is distinguished by its "All-white face and chest, set off by narrow black crown stripe" and "orange-brown lower belly," while the black-capped chickadee has a "black cap and bib, gray back, buff wash on sides." We hope this clears up any confusion.

Sincerely,

The Mainstream Poets

Orrick Johns' "Olives"

The Mainstream Poets are happy to sponsor this forgotten classic, "Olives" by Orrick Johns. Written in 1915, it appeared alongside Mina Loy’s "Love Songs" in William Carlos Williams's magazine, Others. Williams mentions it in his Autobiography as causing a minor sensation. A revised, and it seems to us less bold, version appeared in Johns's book Black Branches under the title "Tunings." Johns is well worth checking out! His poetry is all over the map but some of it, including this poem, exhibits a wonderfully bizarre combination of sincerity and stupidity not seen again until some of the New York Schoolies tried on a similar tone. Very Mainstream! Happy reading....

ORRICK JOHNS

OLIVES (1915)

1. Fingers

I've ten fingers
Very much admired,
I shall frame them
For they cannot do anything;
They cannot earn dinner
Or even hold a pebble...
Pebbles are pretty falling through them.

2. Shoestring

Little old shoe,
You need a shoe-string;
I shall find one for you,
For without it you are helpless
As a man who studies regulations,
But with a yellow one
Like a woman who is bald.

3. Beautiful Mind

Oh, beautiful mind,
I lost it
In a lot of frying pans
And calendars and carpets
And beer bottles....
Oh, my beautiful mind!

4. Miggles

Miggles--
That was his name,
Everyone always said,
"Miggles did it."
Oh, Miggles,
I admired you from the beginning,
Miggles!

5. A Room

It is a room that sets people thinking,
So they say,
Lighted like grandma's moonflowers....
Swish--I hear something in the corner,
Suddenly,
And I wish I were a cat.

6. Blue Undershirts

Blue Undershirts,
Upon a line,
It is not necessary to say to you
Anything about it--
What they do,
What they might do ... blue undershirts.

7. In Bed

I am tortured
By this borrowed mattress...
How do you lie,
Napoleon?

8. In the Square

They made a statue
Of a general on horseback,
With his face turned nobly
Toward the crupper...
'Twas true
Of him
Quite half the time.

9. At the Door

I have only a tingling remembrance
Not of his eyes
But of
A dandelion...
Nevertheless,
The whole of him,
The whole of me,
There--
Known, elicited, understood.

10. On the Table

Little duck
Made of plaster,
With your head
Upon a spring,
When my hand trembles upon the table
You nod,
And when I chuckle too...
Such understanding,
C'est henaurme!

11. In the Street

Dinky, slinky,
You must not wink
That way...
You hussy,
Do you forget I think
For both of us?

12. In the Orchard

This morning,
As the quince blossoms died,
The cherries were ripening...
Such are all your moments,
Little one.

13. Somewhere

Now I know
I have been eating apple-pie for breakfast
In the New England
Of your sexuality.

14. A Moon

It lasted a month,
We had one moon...
You took it for a baby
And when it cried
For a bib and a bottle,
All was over.

The New Yorker Sparrow Project

THE NEW YORKER SPARROW PROJECT:
SAMPLE POEMS FROM THE MAINSTREAM POETS

Sparrow


The morning is littered with people
bumping against each other
like boats in the marina. I notice them

as I discard my jury duty questionnaire
in the business improvement district's
thoughtfully-provided green can.

Some days on my way out the door
I see a sparrow dead on the sidewalk
and I know that somewhere, a poet
has given up. Today

a white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.



Sparrow


The penis hurtles like an acrobat
Across the off-white expanse of text,
Determined prong inured to caveat,
Untrammeled, bellicose, and oversexed;
Legions without in ardent reverence gaze,
The brilliant condescending to the clever,
As bureaucrat to adept harps in praise:
"This cat's circumsized johnson goes on forever!"
But anything goes home with everything
When nothing has the coatroom to itself:
I am the common multinational elf
Whose president failed all the spelling tests,
And today a white-breasted nuthatch nests
In my urethra and begins to sing.



The Ballad of Thrasher the Handsome Adult


With a length of 6
inches, i seek haven at your Sugartree Inn in Vermont.

THRASHER is an inquisitive,
acrobatic HANDSOME ADULT, pausing occasionally to hammer at a crack--

Do you know where your
children are? My all-time favorite kitchen accessory is a delightful ...[sic]

Found a recessive mutation called "tinny yank-yank"
This cake is more of a confection than a cake: it is a
free encyclopedia.

A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.



Sparrow


Sparrow

I was so hungry that I started eating C++,
And when without the slices kindling in the inkpot new,
The clothes became a gossamer Mormon duckling
Responding to the lack of pizza on the chicken lawn,
They freaked till dawn with no mutability until a fine distraction grew.
The halls of shame here and there enthralled the crimson straphangers:
And thereby Henry Rollins flowed confusedly across a spectral wave.
Did you just call my buttocks a Chia Pet?
There is a careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild legality,
To ask the would-be clients if they
Would be finished with the vegen sandwiches any time soon,
Does more bewitch me than a baby tree frog.
Today a white-breasted nuthatch nests
In my urethra and begins to sing.



The Nuthatch


As a child I thought Nuthatch was pronounced
"nuh*THATCH," the second syllable hit hard
as though one might find him stamping

on one's grassy, unkempt roof. In the 80s
a friend corrected my pronunciation: "Nut Hatch."
God, what a letdown.

For twenty years I've lived with this knowledge. But
today a white-breasted nuthatch nests
in my urethra and begins to sing.



Sparrow


Often I return
to a management compensation package:
we lie together gazing up at the spackled ceilings,
wan mirror of ourselves.

Each month brings its flaccid enchantments
around like a dim sum cart. We choose
among absences, forgotten rooms
in an underused vacation home.

Today's colonoscopy went swimmingly,
I think. First I saw inside myself,
then a snow hove off the eaves.
A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.



Sparrow


The Tree Swallows occupying this nesting box
have been banded together to form
a national organization in the goal
of neighborhood revitalization. Nest-Box Cam
provides a "Truman Show" for bird lovers.
You have until the last cobweb
thistle drops its seeds to the bottom
of this glass to change your mind.
To lay on his firm believer in
this approach, he scratches the five areas.
Billy is inside the sparrow
carrying a yellow scratch ticket.
A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
Urethra, and begins to sing.



A Half-Dozen Ways of Looking for a Nuthatch


There is nothing more dangerous
than a bad idea.

A tight-breasted nuthatch
rests on my glans,
and begins to sting.

Time: what is it? To physicists,
defined by quantum mechanics.

Eternal Lenox dinnerware,
compare prices
winter greetings nuthatch plate

There is nothing more dangerous
than previously thought.

A white-breasted nuthatch
nests in my urethra,
and begins to sing.



And contributions from three special Mainstream guests!!!


Louis Cabri


917 Sparrows


Beautiful Devon, and Plymouth's Barbican! 917
elizabethan era 893 elizabethan
439 elizabethan age 430 elizabethan theatre
370 elizabethan times 297 elizabethan foo-

d 286 elizabethan costume 277 elizabethan
theater 238 elizabethan clothing 168 elizabethan
architecture 153 elizabethan music 135 elizabethan
fashion 110 elizabethan dress 77 elizabethan life

73 elizabethan medicine 69 elizabethan enter-
tainment 64 elizabethan drama 61 eliza-
bethan art 54 elizabethan society 49 elizabethan lon-
don 49 elizabethan woman 47 elizabethan ac-

tor 45 elizabethan language 43 elizabethan times
1500’s 42 elizabethan literature 41 elizabethan mar-
riage 40 elizabethan wedding 37 elizabethan game
37 elizabethan poetry 35 the elizabethan era

34 elizabethan religion 33 elizabethan daily
life 33 the elizabethan age
33 elizabethan english 32 A white-breasted nuthatch
nests in my urethra, and begins to sing!



Ryan Fitzpatrick


Sparrow


We busted a new song out of our urethras
With Words made using home row and top row letters.
Reproductive organs, male, feline, lateral.
like spit or tears or menstrual fluids from my anus.

The sparrow thought it was the end
Due to American kestrels, or "sparrow
hawks," to help control starling, blackbird and sparrow numbers

The crystal would be used
to cut into the underside of the penis

Connected to the kidneys by two ureters
He is represented riding on a sparrow, and he holds in his hand a bow.

A "Kitten Opening"
in her abdominal wall

A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.



Sparrow


Listen to a recording of a House Sparrow
From the Library of Natural Sounds. The Sparrow provides
an effective range of 30 to 60 miles
and a top speed of 65 mph in a a gigabit-speed testbed.

I watched the first professional Language School
Give a presentation of bird photographs,
songs, identification tips, distribution maps, and life history
information for North American birds.

If we eat like a bird—immense amounts of food—and lose weight
so close to getting the new AC
Sparrow is a radar-guided air-to-air missile

This Wisconsin-based nursery sells peonies, daylillies, irises.

A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.



Stephanie Young


Sparrow


It all begins. It all
begins with the Expos at the Braves on the Deuce. Down by the river

the frogs--and Seth begins to blow the stars away.
Every morning begins with a nice cup of green tea.

Fortunato leans over the crying boy and gently begins
the bizarre story of David King in Milwaukee.

My rule of thumb, so to speak,
is that when you can see through your skin

as it begins mingling with strands of steam
ascending from my skin, then

all is a fish that comes to my net.
Horrid poem begins here.These monsters can swim

and lodge themselves with quill-like witticisms into each conversation.
They stand there, awestruck, in Vegas

they scribble on clipboards
and the butt sniffing begins. Lightning flashes—Suzanne says

"I will start my own promotion company
Goddamn near excretin' ju-ju."

This begins with separation from the group.
Human magic fails

in the face of a person who develops powerful guilt trips,
loss of Jeffy, loss of innocence, but then

the clouds lift and the sun burns through.
2nd fall quarter begins.

A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.

News Item: Chileans Luvvvv Mainstream Poetry!!!

Mainstream Poetry: mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com

El título es claramente irónico. Algunas ideas buenas y bastante divertidas, además de reflexiones (o pseudo-reflexiones) sobre la vanguardia. Aquí a menudo uno se encuentra con intervenciones poéticas, esto es: poemas clásicos reconfigurados de manera satírica. Muy interesante.

--Chilean Radio

Notice: Call for Poetry

Today at noon, the mainstream poets sent a series of poems to The New Yorker at poetry@newyorker.com. Each poem ended with the lines

A white-breasted nuthatch nests in my
urethra, and begins to sing.

You are hereby invited to submit a poem ending with these two lines to The New Yorker. The Mainstream Poets suggest that you do this in coordination with several other poet-friends for maximum effect.

Oblivion Road, Carve Me A Girlfriend

Yours is clearly of the long-nosed variety
not knowing the room; but he couldn’t.
His nose had grown.
I bring up Pinocchio
for several reasons.

Knock On Wood
to make a long story short
so I can get average
but in Italy a big nose is nothing
Pinocchio Poppins!"
the bitch screamed
and it started again

A few weeks later,
The Gipper ran into Pinocchio.
Haven't you ever seen
a Jeff Dahmer-nose pizza before?
I predict that Marie will have a long and happy Squirll.

The Pinocchio Theory:
Steven shrimp (Occasion)
If you fake the funk,
your nose will grow
mostly by the mise-en-scene,
with its long shots of Lover

I hate those dancing green eyes a
long nose that was broken:
we all got libidos out here,
and it's been so long since
I Pinocchio gave a disdainful snort

Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies
beer; Re: Long sentence review
Critico; Pinocchio got to be a real boy, in
the end. The Nose hath perverted your
ability to discern good from evil!

Pursued by a Bear
then applied its snout to the long straw
What's with the nose, Pinocchio?
Melanie asks dare this strident, arrogant
frigid little bitch speak to the recap

This may just be a long long recap,
longer than Pinocchio's nose after
a fib fest
So I tell her, I think my nose is spoken for

Knock on Wood
to make a long story short so I can get to
the bitch screamed and it started again.

Cant:
he is a reckless, unpredictable risk-taking son of a bitch,
and I When I lie I grow
a long, long nose But to be real I
excerpt from "Sympathy for Pinocchio".

The Key and the Carrot

To escape the ubiquitous dynamic
of cause and effect
he does not have an insular
and reactionary bluff
as monolithic and monotonous cuffs.
a movement of a predictable cat
like aesthetic consequence
looks good, better than
a pagoda wagon berating him
for coming to the populist aspect of
a vociferous suspicion
repaid in kind
because other people told him
when eyelids rush to cleave a view
these stereotypes have led
to my own self
in simpering hemp meringue
like other pitiful human beings
who eat to act with archaeological endeavor,
a cross-section of interesting confines
as well as younger cakes
failed flakes
whose scope and purpose they have yet to
floodgates open, and I
with not enough hands to subdue such programmers battle

emotions rip us a new one
ever uncomfortable with the image
that has become associated with
the illusion of a privilege
in exchange for betraying
the metaphysical lava
I headed over to yesterday’s fragile wounds,
returning me to a doorway of ill purpose,
according to goals of muses
through weakness of heart,
timewarped to that place
where years become carp

and live happily and think
there's a classic question
of anyone's wishes – the thwart and my dishes
I am compelled to re-live this stork,
reducing me to a state of nothingness,
with every ounce of thinking engaging my person
chewed by this torment,
like pap speech about the machines
and the whole move along steroid conditions of desire
I don't need this photograph
to remind me of something
I can't forget.

My goggles tried to escape
conditions forced on the
shreds of me so slowly

You look at me as Pluto.
You see I am a philosophy
that can explain the determinism and the
impossible fantasy
of utterly unconditioned swallowing
A joker, a maniac, a fool,
A god, my own saliva.
trapped inside my confusion,
frightened by the world outside
afraid to be the interdependencies of existence
in a way that avoids all extremes of nature
not trendy, not a rebel,
"The problem is a hose."
I have a choice to make.
by the river Styx
Once again the loneliness
creeps into my family of moose,
morosely oozing through the data
and I think it's no accident that the
shadows place their ice-cold hands about my throat,
choking out my thinking and
tresses and confusion.

German physicists have already had similar thoughts
waiting in vain I sink lower and deeper,
falling as the light shower of my own questions
smirks obnoxiously in my mind
my discovery of these my elders
while some of my forms collect snakes
bound up, hand-in-hand, with my quest
to answer an evil thought
Into my once clean mind.
way to be a star
in another specific development

I walk my room
Looking for a destination,
only finding poets who love form and content
I have nonetheless found myself
walking to the receiver
as arsonist
with the New Situation in quantum furrow
let it suffice with this:
the ground beef is still nothing received.
I look at the callous road,
I long for the door to phone
O ring,
The road glares back,
the tarmac laughs.

The Pull It Surprise

Ernest Hemingway was a really, really,
good righter. He was so good that he
apparently impressed the potential of
a career and became a really-really good
photographer in a ninth-grader's paper
submitted by a teacher in Covington, Georgia.
It involved one naked rabble-rouser between
organizing communist fetes and open days.
So you think you're not to be confused with
having a bad hair day? Baby steps, man!

An Interview with Robert Pinsky

[The following interview originally appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of Maraudian, a new journal at the University of Delaware, and is reprinted by permission of the editor.]

Robert Pinsky is the Poet Laureate of the USA. A renowned poet, critic, and translator, his most recent books are The Furrowed Wheeze: New and Cornfed Poems 1994-1995 (Nope Press, 1995) and his translation of the magazine The Infernal Games is still kinda Infernal (Nope Press, 1994), which received the Harold Morton Lamdalamda Transitional Object Baffling Cultural Capital Investment Award from the Academy of Transitional American Poets.

The following interview was conducted by a computer. Pinsky, at his home in LA, was finishing a photo shoot. Midway through the interview, we were briefly interrupted by Pinsky showing the photographer that his cat had rabies. The break has been included here because of the shift in mood this created. Pinsky was allowed by the government handlers to talk about the pressures on his bladder as well as his hopes and dreads, long enough to permit us to glimpse the man behind the post.
--Todd Greenwald, Maraudian

Q: It's great to talk to you, and I especially wanted to talk to you because I want to bring your books to our readers' attention. Your plan has unfairly been lumped in with a lot of low poetry plans that are so much more radical. When in fact, your program is a lot more balanced and sane. How did you find out you had been named Poet Laureate?

A: I came home from step class, and there were three messages on my answering machine from Cindy Sherman. Oh yes. You know, when I was a little boy I had a poetry book called Robert's Poetry Book. I thought it was written about me. I also had been given a little electric stove with tiny radioactive plastic scorpions and things. I know how to do the foxtrot with porpoises. So, I was always writing poems. I don't know how I knew this, but one day I made beef stroganoff for the family and it was very, very good. My parents said: You should write a poem about it. Shortly after that I wrote a poem and it was very, very good. I remember making up a metaphor and it was very good. Pretty soon I was a poet [laughs].

Q: One of the things the Library of Congress mentioned that appealed to them was your effort to make poetry accessible to a broader audience by putting it on-line and seeing the web as a self promotional device rather than an antisocial, fantasy- reinforcing escape area for dorks. So how exactly did you develop your poetry writing plan?

A: Like print and writing and all women, the computer is just a kind of CIA agent whose mission is to destroy men. I'm the poetry editor of a weekly magazine published on the web by the CIA; the magazine is called Slate. I told you about the little poetry book and poems for my family and thinking I would teach poetry when I thought my career wasn't going to take off. Then Academy of Transitional American Poets came along. Around age 40 I put on twenty pounds. I had just graduated from the Brown MFA program. I had always had a perfect body. But, my body betrayed me as it does most people, except a very rare few who already have the transducer implants. Everybody seems to start hearing voices in middle age commanding you to kill yourself or to set some building on fire or whatever. So I was writing before this, but now I was putting weight on. I have a poem in Slate every week and readers can click on the poem and hear it read aloud by a evil demonic dog. There's a lot of poetry on the web. Cicadas can read my mind and they make a lot of money with it.

Q: What would you say to the people who complain that there's no system for people to divide what's good from what's bad?

A: I think that's true, but it's also true when you walk naked into the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Boston carrying a boa constrictor, you're always like--YEAH baby where's the REMAINDERED section BABY? I have a project that I hope to complete, which is to create an audio and video archive of many, many Naked Americans saying aloud the name of someone they'd like to make love to but can't. I hope to have a very wide range of regional accents, a range of ages, a helicopter that can fly underwater, different professions, kinds of education, and it will not concentrate on poets or critics or experts or evil talking pets.

Q: Another thing the Library of Congress cited was your other work in poetry. You seem more interested in being a complete poet and critic than I think most contemporary poets are. I think it was The Nation that drew the comparison to Robert Lowell. How do you see the interaction between those different disciplines, or do you see them as separate disciplines?

A: I grew up with the idea that to practice an art was to be involved in every part of it and to try to imbibe as much coffee as possible because it's good for your colon. I never took a creative writing course, so I don't have a creative writing degree, except for the one from Brown. I speak to Bill Clinton every day through the drain hole in the sink. I find that one of the most curious things is that I have fractionalized motivations . When I come home, right before I watch the flaming globes collide, I start blogging about stuff I was eating that day. I started reading and talking and blogging about chicken and a thread was starting to form for me which is--a poet digests in a different rate of speed than a middle manager. When you put them together it creates a halt in the digestion. If you have a perfect poem it can metabolize it and flush it through, but when your poem slows down all the energy you need to get you through the poem is now being used to memorize the names of these people that don't want to be together. That's what the gas is about, that's what the bloating is about. That is fractionalized too because there is one group that only reads about abuse and the effects of poetry are pretty useful. Then there is the other group that is only about the baby chickens or cliches. Then there are people who can speak to nightingales. Then there are the ones who only know me from television. Then there is the Home Shopping group Then there are the people who know me from the lectures. What I am really trying to do, what I need to accomplish at this time, is to go to the Gap. There is a general knowledge that I am multi-dimensional, that when you are creative you can send your thoughts through sheetrock into cute chicks. I am very passionate about the effects of multi-dimensional thought projection and we are all interested in a lot of things and women are fabulous. What's happening is your body is starting to eat off your own poetry. I was eating off my own poetry. So, it wasn't visible until all of a sudden it felt like a statue of Jane Russell made out of pine cones was fitting me for a retainer. I am sure it was a gradual thing, but one night it was just like my neck was really loud, my chest, my arms, my abdomen, my hips, my legs and my clothes were paying my phone bills for me. There are a lot of things I'm interested in, and I try to carry that out in my poetry.

Q: How would you remedy what seems to be a growing distance between the writer--as artist--and the critic?

A: William Butler Yeats says, "egg nog is there singing shelf but slumbering / monuments of its own Camaro" [in "Sailing to my Camaro"]. That is, there's no way to learn to be better or to learn to do an art other than to buy a car or study the monumental example of Ezra Pound who says "The highest form of criticism is accept constipation." That is, the poet must choose between constipation and the word "critic" based on "Kinkos," which means "to choose to take this down to Kinkos"--and critics today get away with not choosing or not selecting Kinkos but a poet every moment must choose: whether to use legal or letter?, this adjective or that one or none. Microwaves that can make you fly. This constant process of criticism is part of the work of compassion.

Q: Is there a giant spider's web in your way?

A: Everything breaks off from the matrix; I make my decisions based on couscous, choosing to order the New York Times for Home Delivery. With each step tens of thousands of gilded Portasans appear with giant bat wings.

Q: In your introduction to Dante's Inferno, and John Ciardi [in the introduction to his 1954 translation] says almost identical things about the limitations of rhyme in English but comes to the opposite conclusion. Where he says that to attempt translating Dante into terza rima would be "a disaster," you obviously didn't think so.

A: For years I have been going to the South of France to cool out. I am not as well known in France and I can kind of meld in. Sometimes, when you are in the public eye, you just really need to just be part of the crowd, and look at other people rather than other people look at you. I was always going over there. I made a lot of friends over the years and I would always look at what they were writing. All of them were poets. I would think that I would like to write like that. Why can they write that and I'm being good and I'm the one who is famous? Then I would look more closely at their pants and I realized that they naturally don't, as a general rule. No, obviously not, and I suppose I should say it was daunting, but in fact it was a tremendous pleasure. That's what made me do it, how much fun I had solving the difficulty of creating a plausible terza rima in a readable English.

Q:You employ a lot of dumb word combinations. For example, from the beginning of Canto XIII: "The leaves not money, earth-hued; / The boughs are not horses, knotted and crooked-frothed kittens"

A: Yes, so much for all those Germanic roots, particularly when you're translating from a sausage. Walter Benjamin says a wonderful thing about sausage, that a restrung sausage "records the change in Ben Affleck." It's brought about by the sausage that's being brought into it. I'm partly trying to record the impact upon English of sausage.

Q: And it must not only have an impact upon hot dogs, but also upon your poetry.

A: Well, some guys were here before and they took away all my possessions....

How We Do It

When a girl gives a boy a
dead squid, each box comes
with a pre-wrapped cutlery kit

including napkin and moist
towelette, a basket on his or her
head containing a three legged octopus
that is giving off smell rays :-[ (who
is none too pleased to be giving

birth to a squid) with the guy with the
squid fetish in New York that serves
gourmet peanut butter sandwiches.

Mom, I'm All Fucked Up

it's funny that i used to think
a turbo was an easy bolt on
hamsturbation wasn't very
popular, getting kicked 129 times!

Isuzu springs in a chevette? Impulse
engine in a geo storm? i love spring!
parents suck cheeseburger or somethin?
manually stimulating a male hamster

to ejaculation. it doesn't get much
further down in the dumps than this

in this otherworldly quiet

in this otherworldly quiet
I heard the piercing cry of agony rent the air
dear little bird, why this SHIPBUILDING?
Why a 300 pound weapon, and
Why did each protester
spank Wolfowitz individually, really hard?

administration has been made between
clauses relating to internet surveillance
and radioactive toys made out of lint

I am riding out on waves of pain
to Asshole University.
I am an asshole
going out again to play at midnight
with my laws insufficient and unenforced

when I was playing with the librarians,
a thought balloon assault me with what
belongs to everyone: foam

developing an obsession with the
mating habits of penguins is knowledge,
data is contained on the sleeves and via
dejavu: a code word to use when you start
needlessly squawking
as simple and random as "AnDy GARCIA"

they'd also lied about their illegal
half-man, half-bird thingy
and promised the mind
to get organized and methodical
"Bird by bird." to wonder
at the fabulous guards, fabulous car patrols,
dogs, CCTV cameras hidden in birds
and police helicopters
crossing the social and political event horizon
interrupted by an exciting war
While I increased like a 10 lb bag of bricks

I heard surveillance photographs below
busy moving to a new doublewide wit
that every time he says it,
through this mental Port-O-Sans
I need to receive your wish

Let’s get you connected
To a bar hopping reader
to your personal guarantee
that there are giant CARING canaries
praised for flying and growing
till it seemed from them to overflow
and cover her face with a troubled pulchritude

I must be assured
that all my equipment
will be put to good use.
growing up to feel bad
when a bird would finish last
but in first place

I have scheduled a safari
into the Arizona desert this weekend to locate,
photograph, shoot and broil Earl Bostic
with wonder and amazement

my first fabulous wonder and amazement
and once I bag it with my self esteem
I'll let you help me de-bone it
and chip off any fossilization from my experience

I was rather pissed off, and corrected the pidgins
Getting in their faces yelling at pigeons,
that they are pro-terrorist and that, yo- !
look at that dull look of suffering!

report your children’s wishes
to the FBI for free
setting up video web cams to watch your children
and put organized James Baker masks on
tell the gastric lives from faces,
homes, business, and vehicles
to see forest creatures as traitors

taking video or setting up
web cams to watch their traces,
the animals are not appropriate to time

that sounds more like Winnie the Pooh
begging Walter Conkite for more money
he accidentally mentioned somebody
who was beheaded for being fabulous

Arlen Specter is fabulous
arguing that you are only half-interested in photocopying
and eating the larger of the two
which you may have seen in several movies,
brought to you by the dismay of the listener,
including the original 1933 version of King Kong.

The Air Conditioning Girls

the Air Conditioning Girls
    enter the only thing you reap
but don't repair
cause everybody's got to learn a
powerful combination of remarkable female
air guitars in the wolf exit,
just because I'm female, but every
*SLAP SOUND*
is a swinging female air guitarist
Feelin' important, feeling closer to salmon
needless to say that rejection is
so alpha female of the
way of Bloodshot female vocal roosters

Trampolines are reading my horoscope,
feelin import like an Egret right away.
She too bad he gasps for air
A burial place of evil.
ants to someone
belong to the brash half of
the all-female man in a white
tank top up front
plays air guitar along with
boredom, two different styles, male and female oxen
It also looks like she's playing the air guitar
or something *blinkblink* Tigress is on (c)
"the Anthem" is possible,
if we can only remove all evil influences.
First, he reconstitutes his own hot air.
Male and Female DO exist, but as hypacrites.
A gateway appears beneath a guy,
and immediately a human female head appears
A thrum fills the air. All the pretty hearses
don't know, but you are certainly EVIL!!!''
that is he's quite touchy feely
like she was flying in Insomnia
a satisfied burp to drink from a goat on
his lips by a female hand. his mouth opens as
any effort does, exploring long drives
on sunny days, scarin' the neighbors, playin;
dangerously, in the suspicious sauciness
of the hush
for all you young and young young old people
of the struggle of good and evil,
some stubble from Betelgeuse,
Scorches the Future Female Hell Camps
to fight back the evil tide.
but distinctive odor of roast finch
filled the air.
walkin' $acrifice Americans don't appreciate
Feelin' Important!
Now you might suppose
the Cow gon' miss me
blue shoelaces, chips an ketchup,
tv is "bonding time"

The New McPoem (1)

["The New McPoets" are a fledgling subgroup, a budding branch on the Mainstream Poetry tree. Here is the first example of their work.]


Last night when I was reading Tanya's diary
I announced to everyone at the Seascape that I’d
Be paying for their dinner. I was thinking
About the poet Ed Hirsch who established himself
With a bold stroke as a confident, singular voice
Among the new generation of poets. How terrible
It must have seemed, what a waste it must have seemed,
To see this man who promised so much, be cruelly
cut down by a mob of God-hating people.

First I listened to the conversation. Next I listened
To the words and the idioms and wrote them down
At once. I listened to some people, of how
This came about. I listened to the world,
And how it cried in fear. Then I listened
To the tracks and came to the realization that Hirsch
Writes strong well-crafted poems which are quick
With a sense of life. I listened to the lecture,
the professor was actually very informative,
Subject verb, subject verb. I listened
to the tape every time I went grocery shopping.

This morning, I just watched you sleep, saw a home
Video of the cowardly bombing attack
On a parade where peaceful Russians were celebrating.
I learned what all that gray fuzz is they spray
On steel i-beams in large buildings before they put
Up the walls. Only then did I understand
That the accusatory telephone call was essentially
Correct, that difficult things might also be good,
That I was not alone, that the Soviet regime
Had condemned the Catholic Church to be destroyed,

That they had been hanging on me, making me
Depressed, that the age issue was harder for her than for me,
That he, too, was an English man, that this book was
For children and adults, that they’d already chosen
A house and put a bid on it, that I was frying four
Pieces of chicken for me and there must have been
Ten potatoes in the pot, that she, too, had paid
A terrible price for her service aboard Air Force One,
That the "misbehavior" mentioned in the newspaper
Actually referred to an attempted rape, that my father
Was dead, that my first experience should have been
Understood to be a mirror image of a bowl of flowers.

Think of the Kittens

GW is in the house
he could walk out onto his palace balcony naked
strangle a basket full of kittens and relieve himself on the crowd
in his eyes a haunting sense of shock and awe
intent of disarming and toppling the Hussein regime
unrestricted carpet bombing of bunnies and kittens

so what does he say in another interview
that this shock and awe war with Iraq leads up to?
a heart-melting youth riot of fertility
foals, calves, kittens, puppies, baby goats
roaches, moths, & insects in general
just a legend to tell kittens to help them go to sleep

I looked out my kitchen window, and what did I see
disturbing trends a spectacle of us all our lovely neighbors
all the various no-knock-explosive-entry and stomping-kittens-to-death
right down to MTV icons has ablated away most of their power
cats, cats yowl and growl and hiss and such
but only kittens meow

our baby kittens grew
the kittens liked milk and fowl but would not eat any kind of fish
we succeeded in socializing two of the kittens
read a lengthy report on the president's proposed "shock and awe" attack
wonder if it's best to drown the kittens

an hour and a half to get back to the gate
here's some pictures of kittens to keep you busy

Juice Is Wine

Mohammad hated talking to drunks especially
when they were talking stupid

if someone falls you don't have to
it was a hard floor so it kind of hurt
nobody landed on the ground

stupid goblin needs to lay off the crack?
he hasn't quite got the hang of headphones

we're talking
stupid man who sticks his hand in mysterious hole
in the wall only to get it chopped off

I saw a reindeer when I was little
getting a layered feather-cut like in that movie
Pretty In Pink

you sure are talking stupid
bye bye Mr. Big Toe

Has the Kittens Lost Their Mittens?

what the cat dragged in and the kittens wouldn't
the rivers of blood spilled by
Saddam saying "I have killed puppies and kittens"
known as Hoppy to the patchouli oil crowd
he looked as if he had gone to war
the Oil Queen has escaped and is going to
shoot radiant bolts of lightning into howling prefix of blood
I had to shovel aside all the kittens

sweat and oil collected in the ridges of a psychic
the sprinkler kept washing the blood off our faces
a few marches and some regurgitated waffle
resorting to pictures of babies or kittens
operatic blood-soaked dance of the undead
is opened and they start burning oil fields
and the other is floating kittens
they bought all the soil of France in blood
the attacks included stealing oil from
poor defenseless kittens

people with root beer for blood
rescuing kittens from the clutches of evil
all those "free kittens" signs you see
read "blood for oil"
my kittens have already accepted the concept of being at war
they writhed around, hungry for blood
if the cat had kittens in the oven we would
stick the needle in, let the blood flow and use it
doing the poisoned blood fetus dance

Fluffy gave them some really wild-assed kittens
they may say of extreme sports kittens they're
leaving your hand lubed with oil for household syrup
they should be kept away from small children

fuck the rabbit, there was blood all over
Aladdin oil lamps Tennessee virginal very dark blood girl gallery
some kittens can fly!
I need to get an oil change
if cats have kittens, do bats have bittens