THE UNRULY SERVANT

Dwight Ripley at Tibor de Nagy

2012-01-25T05:34:00.000-05:00

Setúbal, 1962, ink and colored pencil on paper, 14 x 20 inches

Dwight Ripley: Travel Posters and Language Panels is a new exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. It runs from January 28 - March 10, 2012. From the press release:

Dwight Ripley was a British born artist, whose work was the subject of five solo exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy starting in 1951. A polymath, Ripley was a serious botanist, the author of a volume of poetry, and spoke fifteen languages. However, it was for his artwork that he was most recognized. Six of his drawings were included in an exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s legendary gallery Art of This Century.

Ripley’s “Travel Posters” and “Language Panels”—two series of drawings made in 1962 and 1968, the last decade of his life—combine inventive graphic clarity with allusive puns based on popular art forms. In his “Travel Posters,” the enticing scenery has been configured from the scientific names of indigenous plants, but spun in a cursive web that suggests the wandering line of Surrealist or abstract art. In the “Language Panels,” his etymologically-driven idea of the comic strip, the drawings have been divided into mysterious quadrants that imply narratives of both discovery and danger. Colorful, unusual, and pioneering in their steadfast insistence on colored pencil, the drawings are prescient of the epistemological savvy and environmental awareness that came to characterize the era we still recognize as our own.

Douglas Crase has also written about Ripley on the Best American Poetry blog. An opening reception will be held at Tibor de Nagy (724 Fifth Avenue) on Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Dao De Jing

2012-01-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

Now that the first three issues of Gondola are almost ready for the printers, I’m engaged in a translation of the Dao De Jing. I’ve made a first pass, and will now start to creep through each of the 81 sections, refining, refining, refining. If I’m largely silent here in the coming months, that’s the reason.

New School Memorial Reading for Paul Violi, December 2, 2011

2011-12-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

Paul Violi Memorial Reading at the New School

2011-11-29T05:05:00.000-05:00

This Friday, come celebrate the life and poetry of Paul Violi, with readings of his poems by distinguished poets, friends, and former students. I’m honored to be one of the readers, along with Paul Auster, Star Black, Patricia Carlin, Billy Collins, Elaine Equi, Matt Hart, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Amy Lawless, Charles North, Ron Padgett, Robert Polito, Michael Quattrone, Helen Schulman, Tony Towle, Maggie Wells, Bill Zavatsky, and many others.

This is a free event. If you’re unfamiliar with Paul’s work, this will be a great opportunity to hear his words. If you already know and love him, please come to help us honor this great man.

Theresa Lang Center

Arnhold Hall

55 West 13th Street

2nd Floor

Friday, December 2, 2011, 6:30 PM

Francis Wolcott on Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-20T04:20:00.000-05:00

I Could Say “Elves” To Him But It’s Not Elves Exactly

2011-11-17T23:59:00.000-05:00

This range was composed on 10/30 and 10/31 after my visit to Zuccotti Park on 10/18. It was first read at Zinc Bar on 11/6. The “Jake” that this range addresses is Jacob Bromberg, a contributing editor to The White Review, who was kind enough to solicit me for work over the summer. It’s a thank you not only to him but to many, many others. The title is taken from Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” a poem that addresses, in part, the necessity and ridiculousness of tradition.

I Could Say “Elves” To Him But It’s Not Elves Exactly

Jake—maybe ya know but have no

idea what we do over here. Some

some idea. You know Violi?

Imagination magnificent he founder

First Community College du Loup.

You’ll admit its pyramid & indigo bulge

apart from the island proper.

A topnotch twirler tho know

his baton doubled as laser blade ’cause of

artificial. Wide the gap in our Custerdome

“bodacious cowboys” “such as your friend”

“will never be welcome here” dear cousin I can’t do

party. Find the hotspot I plotz. No lingo

mi gringo conmigo y su mujeres.

Soy El Hombre Mayor.

Ellas saben lo que estoy hablando. Ante up.

Six months from now & six months from

now then the beginning of the begin.

Stipe’s no farmer. Buck’ll boogie. Mills’ll

quote 40,000 miles more to Athens.

My sonnet “Anti-Horse” addresses that creature

as symbol of Sneakypantsism. In short

some empire. Some old cold. Some

new lozenge. Every step of the way.

Winter Sonoma. Past the Mississippi

you can’t not hardly find

my probable cause. My flaws

show whole. My laws tire of Number.

Tried to escape but the gangsters here

well you know Scoresese.

Late October is my favorite.

Lead up too. Skyfire. Periwinkle

sucks limbtips but this year the snow.

White mountain ground creeps column

douse flame. Zuccotti is Canterbury.

Oakland’s Atlanta is Denver.

Tahrir & Neda. Saadhi Whitman. Same

swamps absorbs binds the universe.

Still the individual. Break out go forth

dig in undone get down

come around. Qui-Gon Jinn. My upper lip

is covered I know you have no idea

what we do here.

I’m surprised myself sometimes

when I look up

see exactly what it is.

Ranges I

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Ranges I

In the latest issue of H_NGM_N, among great work from Jackie Clark, Smarie Clay, Matt Hart, Travis Macdonald, Gina Myers, Alexis Orgera, Kiki Petrosino, Amanda Smeltz, and Aaron Tieger, & alongside chapbooks by Wendy Xu and Milan Deklava, you can find Ranges I.

Nate Pritts has published chaps by MC Hyland, Dan Magers, Ben Mirov, Amber Nelson and many other great poets, so to be numbered therein makes me want to, as Aaron Belz would point out, humblebrag.

The ranges included in this vista are “Andy’s Not Listening to Keith Jarrett on Palm Sunday,” “Wisdom and Goodness to the Vile Seem Vile,” “Scarlett Johansson on the Fourth of July,” “An Oregon Log Jam for the Fop of the Fields,” “High Noon in Maine Without Birthday Suit or Birch,” “Farrago For Henry Gould Not Henry Gould But Henry,” “Johnny & The Mothers are Playing ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ in Vermont Tonight,” and “The Notion of Equality From a Man About to Die.”

My eternal thanks to the editors of The Awl, BPM, Chocolate Submarine Review, Cold-Drill, EOAGH, H_NGM_N, The Normal School, & We Are So Happy to Know Something, where these ranges first appeared.

Exile On Main Street #3

2011-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

My final installment for the Best American Poetry blog this week. A huge thanks to Stacey for inviting me to blog again. Maybe I can do it again next year . . .

Politics

2011-10-14T23:31:00.000-04:00

I’ve posted Emerson’s essay “Politics” over at the Best American Poetry blog today.

Marquis de Concord

2011-10-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

Today I tackle the similarities between Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Marquis de Sade for Best American Poetry.

This Condensery

2011-10-12T07:43:00.002-04:00

I write about blogging, Twitter, and Lorine Niedecker today at the Best American Poetry blog.

Exile On Main Street #2

2011-10-11T18:02:00.000-04:00

Another “Exile On Main Street” installment for the Best American Poetry blog.

A Resistance to Emerson

2011-10-10T11:39:00.001-04:00

My second post this week for the Best American Poetry blog. No doubt I’ll have more to say about Emerson this week but, Emerson-like, I’m trying to stay open to the possibilities that there might (gasp!) be other things to write about.

Guest Blogger, Best American Poetry, Oct. 9-15

2011-10-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

I’m the guest blogger at the Best American Poetry blog this week. Here’s my first entry. Thanks to Stacey for inviting me back!

Drunken Boat 14

2011-09-20T15:08:00.000-04:00

January 2011

It’s an honor to appear in the latest issue of the Ravi Shankar-helmed Drunken Boat. Lots of reasons. I’m an admirer of Ravi’s work, having published him in Tight and The Equalizer. He read, with Robin Beth Schaer, in the second installment of my Ordinary Evening Reading Series in 2006 in New Haven. (I was sad to find out it recently ended its run.) He teaches at Central Connecticut State, which means that Drunken Boat is published in my home state.

But, really, why?

Issue 14 features work from Ernest Hilbert, Kathleen Rooney, Shiraz Dent, TC Tolbert, Part 2 of the /Slant/Sex folio (find Part 1 here), and a Bernadette Mayer folio featuring a single bud, “For For,” nestled amongst work from Steven Alvarez, Micah Ballard, Laynie Brown, CAConrad, Brenda Coultas, Sandra Doller, Dorothea Lasky, Kate Schapira, and so many great others, and I evidently didn’t provide an author photo.

Huge thanks to Ravi and all the editors of and contributors to Drunken Boat!

Flyover

2011-09-17T22:31:00.001-04:00

PEN Center USA

2011-08-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

PEN Center USA linked to my buds in The Awl in a recent Weekend Literary Roundup.

Two Buds in Jerry #3

2011-08-15T09:31:00.000-04:00

Two buds in the latest installment of the British journal Jerry: “New Not” and “Love Brings.” The latter does and does not make reference to Tony Hoagland at the end. Thanks to Emily Wolahan and Ethan Hon for publishing them.

Four Buds at The Awl

2011-08-05T18:05:00.000-04:00

Four buds up at The Awl: “Sweet Addition,” “Civil Love,” “Because Song,” and “& Brightness.” Thanks to Mark Bibbins for publishing me yet again. Also featured today: Jim Behrle’s “Songs That Have Made Me Bawl My Eyes Out While Doing Karaoke” and this:

“A plant has killed and ‘eaten’ a blue tit at a garden nursery in Somerset. Nurseryman Nigel Hewitt-Cooper, from West Pennard, was inspecting his tropical garden when he discovered one of his pitcher plants had trapped the bird. He said he was ‘absolutely staggered’ to find it had caught the creature. It is believed to be only the second time such a carnivorous plant has been documented eating a bird anywhere in the world.”

Boston Poetry Marathon 2011

2011-07-28T05:58:00.001-04:00

A Boston Poetry Marathon and BBQ

A Summer Poetry Marathon

featuring 88 local and visiting poets

reading for 8 minutes apiece

Admission is free but the hat will be be passed

Friday 7/29, 7 PM - 10 PM

Saturday 7/30, 1 PM - 10:30 PM

Sunday 7/31, 1 PM - 5 PM

OUTPOST 186

186 1/2 Hampshire St., Inman Square, Cambridge

Friday 7/29

7:00 John Mulrooney
7:08 Bridget Madden
7:16 Kythe Heller
7:24 Elizabeth Marie Young
7:32 Michael Carr
7:40 Danielle Georges
7:48 Jennifer Tamayo

break

8:04 Arto Vaun
8:12 Cheryl Clark Vermeulen
8:20 Lori Lubeski
8:28 Jen Hyde
8:36 Ryan Gallagher
8:44 Kevin Gallagher
8:52 Arda Collins

break

9:08 Thom Donovan
9:16 Dorothea Lasky
9:24 Amanda Nadelberg
9:32 Geoff Olsen
9:40 Mike County
9:48 Derek Fenner

Saturday 7/30

12:30 Aaron Kiely
12:38 Mike Young
12:46 Emily Pettit
12:54 Ish Klein
1:02 Greg Purcell
1:10 Joel Sloman

break

1:26 Debrah Morkun
1:34 Carlos Soto Roman
1:42 Chris Rizzo
1:50 Jonathan Skinner
1:58 Whit Griffin
2:06 Frank Montesonti

break

2:22 Richard Deming
2:30 Nancy Kuhl
2:38 Ken Walker
2:46 Patrick Lucy
2:54 Magus Magnus
3:06 Jessica Bozek

break

3:22 Anna Ross
3:30 Cory Ericson
3:38 Tony Mancus
3:46 Jean-Dany Joachim
3:54 Ted Dodson
4:02 Ryan Murphy

break

3:48 Patrick Doud
3:56 Lewis Freedman
4:04 Aaron Tieger
4:12 Suzanne Mercury
4:20 Michael Peters
4:28 Geof Huth

break

4:44 Allen Bramhall
4:56 Michael Schiavo
5:04 Seth Abramson
5:12 Ellen Kennedy
5:20 Henry Gould

break

7:00 Ruth Lepson
7:08 Martha Oatis
7:16 Brett Price
7:24 Jessica Fiorini
7:32 Tracey McTague
7:40 John Coletti
7:48 Dana Ward

break

8:04 Mairead Byrne
8:12 Jess Mynes
8:20 Andrew Hughes
8:28 Arlo Quint
8:36 Meredith Walters
8:44 Corina Copp
8:52 Macgregor Card

break

9:08 Christina Strong
9:16 Mitch Highfill
9:24 Jacqueline Waters
9:32 Edmund Berrigan
9:40 Joe Elliot
9:48 Filip Marinovich

break

10:10 Mark Lamoureux
10:18 Douglas Rothschild

Sunday 7/31

12:30 Jim Behrle
12:38 Anna Moschovakis
12:46 Ben McFall
12:54 Donald Wellman
1:02 Michelle Taransky
1:10 Meg Barboza

break

1:26 Amanda Cook
1:34 Ben Mazer
1:42 Fred Marchant
1:50 Gerrit Lansing
1:58 Jim Dunn
2:06 Michael Franco

break

2:22 Colleen Farrell
2:30 Andi Werblin
2:36 James Cook
2:44 Ken Walker
2:52 Susanna Gardner
3:00 Anne Shaw

break

3:16 Roz Zimmerman
3:24 Sean Cole
3:32 Janaka Stucky

Organized by

Jim Behrle

Michael Carr

David Kirschenbaum

John Mulrooney

Aaron Tieger

Sawmill 3

2011-07-18T06:10:00.003-04:00

I have two buds — “Large Art” and “Riot There” — in the newest issue of the Brian Ensminger-edited Sawmill. The issue is subtitled “What to Know and Do About a Nuclear Attack.” Also featured are excerpts from Matt Hart’s blank verse masterpiece Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless, to be published by Lumberyard Press (the party responsible for Sawmill) in 2012.

Other Rooms Press Presents

2011-07-15T06:45:00.002-04:00

an evening of poetry with

ORP online authors

Michael Schiavo

Joshua Baldwin

Yelizavera Golub

David Applegate

Kip Potharas

Elizabeth Dosta

Nora Almeida

& Dolan Morgan

hosted by ORP editors

Ed Go

Michael Whalen

Free, Saturday, July 16th @ 7:30pm

Shayz Lounge

130 Franklin St.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

visit Other Rooms Press online @ otherroomspress.blogspot.com

Ranges II

2011-07-04T00:00:00.019-04:00

Ranges II

I’m proud to announce the publication of Ranges II by Forklift Ink. Editor Matt Hart and design genius Eric Appleby have put together a great chapbook, one in a long line that includes Russell Dillon and Alexis Orgera, not to mention books by Dean Young, Chad Sweeney, and Abraham Smith. This is the first book bearing my name as author that I have not published myself. That it’s from Forklift makes it especially humbling.

The ranges included are “We All Operate in a Ghost World Where We Are Maharajah,” “Flight Delay From Charlotte All Thanks to My Calrissian,” “Glad in Full Moon Among Pussy Willows I Swamp,” “Carol of the Drum, Bells, Fife, Lute, Theremin, Turntable, Moog,” “In the Visionary Words of Sportscaster Warner Wolf,” “King James Devotes His Summer to the Myrmidon Pursuits,” “Do You Look Into the Keyhole Only to Find a Mirror,” and “Patton Oswalt While the Oligarchy Funk Refurbishes the Rumpus.”

Thanks to Mark Bibbins at The Awl, Evie Shockley at jubilat, and Melissa Broder and D.W. Lichtenberg of La Petite Zine where a few of these first appeared.

And, no, you didn’t miss anything: Ranges I will be published by H_NGM_N Chapbooks this fall.

Country Music #2

2011-06-26T20:34:00.004-04:00

I’ve got three buds—dub translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets—in Issue 2 of the great online journal Country Music, edited by Scott Abels. Also featuring work from Angela Veronica Wong, Nate Pritts, Andrea Henchey, Rob MacDonald, Katie Condon, Peter Jay Shippy, and many more. “My Sun,” “Star My,” and “Pure Prime” are the first of the 154 (plus) buds to appear in print, so a huge thanks to Scott for believing in them.

He also asked contributors to respond to a February op-ed in the New York Times by Scott Turow, Paul Aiken, and James Shapiro entitled “Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?” The editorial is authored by these gentlemen as representatives of the Author’s Guild. Scott asked us to reply specifically to this sentence from the piece: “As with much else, literary talent often remains underdeveloped unless markets reward it.”

Casey Thayer on The Mad Song

2011-06-17T23:59:00.013-04:00

A humbling review of The Mad Song by Casey Thayer over at Cellpoems. Thank you Mr. Thayer!

Paul Violi Memorial at St. Mark's

2011-06-13T07:04:00.020-04:00

Cino

June 13, 2011

7:00 pm

Please join us (131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY) as we remember the life and work of Paul Violi. Paul wrote eleven books of poetry, including Overnight, Fracas, The Curious Builder, and Likewise, from Hanging Loose Press, and a selection of his longer poems, Breakers, from Coffee House Press. He taught in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and in the graduate writing program at New School University. Violi was an interim Artistic Director for The Poetry Project and a frequent featured reader and contributor to the Newsletter. With Tony Towle, Charles North, Eileen Myles, Bob Hershon, Donna Brook, David Lehman, David Shapiro, Michael Quattrone, Karen Koch, George Green, Reagan Upshaw, Ed Friedman, Amy Lawless, Allison Power, Andrew McCarron, Bill Zavatsky & Mark Statman.

(Also read this excellent introduction to Paul and his work by Michael Quattrone over at Jacket.)

Other Rooms

2011-06-05T07:04:00.001-04:00

A huge thank you to Ed Go and Michael Whalen for including three ranges in the newest issue of Other Rooms. There’s also poetry from Daveo Crish, Andrea Henchey, j/j hastain, A.P. Lewis, Jacob Jacques Martin, Kip Potharas, and Nate Pritts. Check it out. Then check yourself, lest you wreck yourself.

Vouched Books Reading Series

2011-05-15T07:42:00.005-04:00

Our final stop! Please join us this evening for a fantastic evening of literature to help benefit SecondStoryIndy.

Sunday, May 15, 6:00 PM

Jill Christman, Peter Davis, Michael Schiavo, Kyle Winkler

Vouched Books Reading Series

Big Car Gallery

1043 Virginia Avenue

Indianapolis, IN 46203

Western Michigan University Poetry Reading

2011-05-14T07:38:00.000-04:00

Tonight we’re reading on the campus of Western Michigan University. Which did not win the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship this year like my alma mater did. Nevertheless.

Saturday, May 14, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis & Michael Schiavo

Western Michigan University

Brown Hall

Room 3025

Kalamazoo, MI 49908

Poetry Reading at Sugar Maple Bar

2011-05-13T07:34:00.005-04:00

This evening brings us to Milwaukee. From Cincinnati. Let us, as they say, do this thing.

Friday, May 13, 8:00 PM

Peter Davis, Kari Freitag, Michael Schiavo

Hosted by Mike Hauser
Sugar Maple Bar
441 East Lincoln Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53207

Bon/Motley Reading Series

2011-05-12T07:28:00.003-04:00

Tonight we’re in Cincinnati, reading the poetry, getting our funk on. You should be here. Why aren’t you?

Thursday, May 12, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis, David Harrity, Michael Schiavo

Bon/Motley Reading Series
Clifton Cultural Arts Center
3711 Clifton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45220

The Derby Recovery Act of 2011 Reading

2011-05-11T07:23:00.004-04:00

Just a friendly reminder about the reading tonight! Great poetry, great music, & books to buy so you can always remember our time together.

Wednesday, May 11, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis, Matt Hart, Michael Schiavo

Music from Kirby Gann

The Derby Recovery Act of 2011 Reading

Quills Coffee

930 Baxter Avenue

Louisville, KY 40204

Beautiful School & 275 Ocean Avenue

2011-05-10T07:39:00.002-04:00

Beautiful School
Scene
Fucking Always Sunday
Song

Introducing Gondola Chapbooks Nos. 1 & 2. They’ll be on sale exclusively at my Midwest Poetry Tour readings with Peter Davis. Beautiful School features the title poem, “Scene,” “Fucking Always Sunday,” and “Song,” while 275 Ocean Avenue contains “Fragment Fragment” (for Paul Violi), “Orange Walls,” “The Workers,” and “Spring Revel.”

The first stop is tomorrow night in Louisville, the Derby Recovery Act of 2011 Reading, organized by the good people of Typecast Publishing. We’ll be reading with the supercollider known as Matt Hart, then the poets will sit back & watch fiction writer (& musician) Kirby Gann do his thing. A Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting if ever there was one.

Join us at 7:00 p.m. at Quill’s Coffee on Baxter Avenue—or regret it for the rest of your life.

Fragment Fragment
Orange Walls
The Workers
Spring Revel

Two New Gondola Chapbooks

2011-05-08T13:49:00.001-04:00

But will they be ready for the big Midwest Poetry Tour 2011?!?

Beautiful School

275 Ocean Avenue

Midwest Poetry Tour 2011

2011-05-07T07:28:00.006-04:00

Wednesday, May 11, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis, Matt Hart, Michael Schiavo

Music from Kirby Gann

The Derby Recovery Act of 2011 Reading
Quills Coffee
930 Baxter Avenue
Louisville, KY 40204

Thursday, May 12, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis, David Harrity, Michael Schiavo

Bon/Motley Reading Series
Clifton Cultural Arts Center
3711 Clifton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45220

Friday, May 13, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis, Kari Freitag, Michael Schiavo

Hosted by Mike Hauser
Sugar Maple Bar
441 East Lincoln Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53207

Saturday, May 14, 7:00 PM

Peter Davis & Michael Schiavo

Western Michigan University
Brown Hall
Room 3025
Kalamazoo, MI 49908

Sunday, May 15, 6:00 PM

Jill Christman, Peter Davis, Michael Schiavo, Kyle Winkler

This reading is a free fundraiser for SecondStoryIndy

Vouched Books Reading Series
Big Car Gallery
1043 Virginia Avenue
Indianapolis, IN 46203

Fourteen Hills Statement

2011-05-04T23:56:00.007-04:00

With the publication of my range “In the Early Morning in the Cypress Grove,” Fourteen Hills has asked me to talk a little about the piece and its composition.

So I did.

Thanks to the editors and staff of Fourteen Hills for the opportunity.

Another Response to “The Change”

2011-05-02T08:35:00.000-04:00

It’s such a gamble when you get a face

“People misread what I meant by ‘Blank Generation.’ To me, ‘blank’ is a line where you can fill in anything. It’s positive. It’s the idea that you have the option of making yourself anything you want, filling in the blank. And that’s something that provides a uniquely powerful sense to this generation. It’s saying, ‘I entirely reject your standards for judging my behavior.’ And I support that entirely. It can be used politically as powerfully as it can be used artistically or emotionally, in the sense of saying, ‘I have been classified null by the society that I live in,’ and it can be accepted as a self-description that way. They have been completely rejected. It’s like Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man—punks are niggers. If I go on the street, I can’t get a cab, I get nothin’ but abuse in restaurants, in New York City or anywhere else in the country. The treatment that you would classify as being prejudicial to minority races is precisely the same accorded to people who go around dressed like me. It’s a very rare day that I don’t get some kinda shit walking down my own block where I’ve lived for two years.”

Richard Hell

Initial Response to “The Change”

2011-05-01T21:10:00.000-04:00

How much more black could this be?

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”

Nigel Tufnel

On Paul Violi

2011-04-27T07:45:00.006-04:00

Self-Portrait with Kittens (courtesy Martin Stannard)

I knew Paul before I met him, and I don’t mean through his poems. When I decided to move back to Connecticut from Florida in 2001, I found a job at the now-shuttered Borders Books & Music in Simsbury. There I worked with Susan Coes, a woman who’d been involved in politics and PR her whole career, now retired, working with books.

Susan appreciated poetry but, like most people, well-read or otherwise, was afraid of it. As I’m wont to do everywhere I go, I started sharing some of my favorite poets with her, one of whom was Paul. Whom she happened to be acquainted with from her days as Susie Dowling, driving in from Stamford with her friends to hang out in the City. I don’t know how frequently they hung out or how well they knew each other, but later (perhaps not that much later) when I first met Paul—most likely through David Lehman, who’d introduced me to his poetry at Bennington, and most likely at the KGB Bar—I mentioned Susan’s name to Paul and his eyes sparkled with recognition.

Paul’s eyes. That glint, that squint, the examination of the world before him, not for dissection and collection, but for delight. Even when you were saying something that he completely disagreed with, he played a gentle Devil’s advocate, always implying, “Is that really what you think? Really? C’mon, you’re better than that!” And then that half-grin, the smirk, as if he knew something you didn’t, which he did.

I had the pleasure of hosting Paul at the Vermont Studio Center in 2007. Paul graciously filled in when another poet—John Haines, who also passed away this year—couldn’t attend as a Visiting Writer. I can’t remember the exact month, but I know it was at least a little warm. Why? Because when Paul and Ann arrived from Putnam Valley and got out of their car, there was a dead bird—a finch, I believe, possibly a chickadee—jammed into the roof rack, the victim of a wrong swerve. Paul and I agreed that it was an omen. And we both agreed that it was neither good nor bad.

Paul helped me with my first book, The Mad Song, while visiting Johnson. I could talk to Paul about poets like Shelley and Coleridge without receiving either a blank stare (most younger poets) or an academic discourse (some older poets). We could talk in terms of song and music, we could talk in terms of human.

At VSC, Paul gave one of the best talks on a poem I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear, in any setting. It was on Ezra Pound’s “Cino,” a poem I’m sure he’s discussed countless times with students at the New School and elsewhere. It’s one of Pound’s early poems, in the voice of Cino da Pistoia, a troubadour and friend of Dante’s. Pound took “Cino” as an early pseudonym. The poem begins:

Bah! I have sung women in three cities

But it is all the same;

And I will sing of the sun.

Paul taught me many things, through his poems and through his person. I remember one lesson especially, in which Paul’s Devil was not so gentle. At the end of my stint as Writing Coordinator at VSC, I was trying to find a job, the next place to go, and not having any luck. Paul had been kind enough to act as a reference on a few of these applications. After I failed to secure a position at some other important arts organization, I wrote to Paul, lamenting my lot, throwing ashes on my head in self-pity. He responded:

You’re feeling “utterly defeated” because a couple of jobs didn’t come through? Look, I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all, but you have to slough it off and keep sending out applications, and in the meanwhile take any job that provides an income; even something you hate doing, if only temporarily. Adversity—in the short run—can be stimulating, in terms of writing; the very aversion you have can stir things up, sharpen your focus, and—who knows how?—allow for ideas and feelings and experiences you never expected. Anyway, you’ve got to take care of business, scramble for money to maintain some kind of freedom and independence, right? You can’t avoid disappointment, no one can, but you can control how it affects you. I usually wallow in self-pity, then get angry, then make something happen or something else just comes along, perhaps a greater disappointment! Perhaps good news, that makes one quickly forget the previous one.

I’d disagree on one point: He did want to sound like a know-it-all. And he could because he was. Because he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t know nearly all of it and that it wasn’t that you have to have all the answers, but that you keep asking the question.

It’s taken me so long to write about Paul because, like so many of his friends and relatives, former students, passing acquaintances, people who only met him once, I can’t believe he’s gone. Even while writing this, I’ve had to stop for long stretches because I can’t stop weeping. Weeping. Salt flats pour out of my eyes. The sun has broken on a beautiful spring morning—there was a hell of a squall last night—and the birds are chirping and Main Street is alive, even this early.

“It’s always alive,” I hear Paul saying. That’s why, even though I weep, I’m not sad. How can I be, knowing him, and having known him? Paul was open to everything. Not that he didn’t have opinions, or likes and dislikes, but, as a poet and a person, exclusivity was anathema, to shut yourself off from considering this or that was stupid. Everything is there and everything has value. A note on an Acura Integra, a catalog of rare books, a ransom note in the form of haiku. Paul was a transcendentalist. He was what Emerson wrote of in “New England Reformers”:

It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them, that it is just as wonderful, that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.

Paul wondered at the usual. Like Michael Gizzi, whom we also recently lost, he was a real Italian kid, from the streets of Brooklyn, and the shores of Long Island and the Hudson Valley. Paul’s work may be over in one sense, but it is truly just beginning. I know that whenever I look at the world, I’ll see Paul. And I know—now more than ever—that Paul will be there, just like always.

—

“Anti-Elegy”

“And I will sing of the sun.”

autumn

hangs

spring

falling

rain

damn

how

“now”

here

th’ band

veers

imagining

tragedy

a comedy

’snot

you gave

brave

death

still &

all

my Cino—

Paul

4/4/11

N7ostradamus Reviewed Again

2011-04-25T19:47:00.001-04:00

Travis Macdonald’s N7ostradamus gets a great review in J2 from Tight 4 contributor Matt Reeck. Nice to see worlds collide. Check out a long excerpt in The Equalizer 1.12 by downloading it from HTMLGiant or Equalizer contributor Maureen Thorson (whose own book, Applies to Oranges, is also getting some pretty good press).

Sixth Finch Spring Issue

2011-04-24T21:46:00.000-04:00

The Spring ’11 issue of Sixth Finch is live, featuring poetry from Eric Anderson, Molly Brodak, Mark Leidner, Sawaka Nakayasu, Julia Story, and Elizabeth Clark Wessel, alongside artwork from Cristopher Cichocki, Terry Evans, Christopher Gray, Beth Hoeckel, and Yumiko Kayukawa. Just to name a few.

H_NGM_N 12

2011-04-20T08:16:00.002-04:00

Three ranges from the Green Mountains appear in H_NGM_N 12, alongside work from Scott Abels, Adam Clay, Liz Countryman, Russ Dillon, Whit Griffin, Matt Hart, Andrea Henchey, Rob MacDonald, Kate Schapira, Angela Veronica Wong, and many other great poets. Thanks to Nate Pritts for publishing the work. He’s the designated tweeter today for the Academy of American Poets’ National Poetry Month celebration. Follow him at @POETSorg.

Congratulations Maurice Manning

2011-04-18T16:07:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Tight contributor Maurice Manning, whose collection, The Common Man, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Maurice’s “The Simple Woman” appeared in Tight 3.

Vouched Books Reading

2011-04-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

I’ll be reading with Peter Davis, Jill Christman, and Kyle Winkler in Indianapolis on May 15. Check out this link for more details about Vouched Books and their efforts to promote small presses and authors in Indianapolis.

This will be the last stop on a Midwest Tour I’m doing with Peter. Other stops in the days preceding include Louisville, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Kalamazoo. More details soon.

Paul Violi Poetry Prize

2011-04-12T21:10:00.010-04:00

The New School Writing Program is establishing a Paul Violi Poetry Prize to be awarded annually to a poetry student in our program. Details — who will judge, what criteria will be used etc. — will be worked out soon. This project has the blessing of Ann Violi, Paul’s widow.

To fund the prize, we encourage people to contribute what they can. This is what donors need to do:

— Make out checks to “New School Writing Program,” with the words “in honor of Paul Violi” in the memo line.

— Checks should be sent to Office of Development, The New School, 79 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, New York 10003, attention Mr. Francisco Tezén, Senior Director.

— Contributors may wish to enclose a letter of intent, an example of which is attached. (The attachment also includes these instructions for donors.)

— If donors prefer to make a gift by credit card, The New School has a credit card form (which can be found on the university’s Web site www.newschool.edu/giving/ under “Ways of Giving”). There is a space to indicate a specific “Allocation of Gift.”

Paul loved teaching at the New School. “Simply walking in the door made me a happy man,” he said more than once.

Please spread the word. Thank you.

Remembering Paul Violi

2011-04-05T08:07:00.001-04:00

The Best American Poetry blog has created a tribute page for friends to post their memories of Paul. Please take a moment to visit and share your thoughts. I plan on writing something that I will post both here and there in the next few days but the news is still sinking in.

Paul Violi (1944-2011)

2011-04-03T21:39:00.004-04:00

Cino

I received an email from Charles North this evening:

“I have some very sad news. Paul died last night at Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt Manor. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January and chose to tell only a few.”

Paul was a good friend, a great mentor, a champion of the small press, and one of the great poets of his generation. It is a terrible loss for all of us.

“Appeal to the Grammarians”

Paul Violi

We, the naturally hopeful,

Need a simple sign

For the myriad ways we’re capsized.

We who love precise language

Need a finer way to convey

Disappointment and perplexity.

For speechlessness and all its inflections,

For up-ended expectations,

For every time we’re ambushed

By trivial or stupefying irony,

For pure incredulity, we need

The inverted exclamation point.

For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,

For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift

Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,

Or felt love or pond ice

Give way underfoot, we deserve it.

We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,

The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,

The flat tire at journey’s outset,

The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.

But mainly because I need it—here and now

As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio

Staring at my espresso and cannoli

After this middle-aged couple

Came strolling by and he suddenly

Veered and sneezed all over my table

And she said to him, “See, that’s why

I don’t like to eat outside.”

Oprah Winfrey: Friend To the Unknown Artist

2011-03-25T05:14:00.000-04:00

Kate Durbin, a Los Angeles poet and performance artist, makes a pretty strong case that Oprah and her O Magazine people ripped off her ideas for their poets & fashion spread in their April issue, after asking her to participate. Please click this link to read her story and spread the news.

Verse Daily

2011-03-23T12:32:00.000-04:00

A range of mine—“In the Early Morning in the Cypress Grove”—is now up on Verse Daily. For real. The title was misprinted in Fourteen Hills—tho I probably made a typo when I sent it. They stepped up when The Paris Review decided they didn’t want the poem, and I will be forever grateful to the editors and staff for their courage and commitment.

AMERICAN POETRY DOT BIZ: Shop at Party City this St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-09T18:27:00.001-05:00

Sixth Finch Winter Issue

2011-01-22T06:58:00.000-05:00

The winter issue of Sixth Finch is out now with poems from Jensen Beach, Dorothea Lasky, Zachary Schomburg, Sampson Starkweather, and more, plus some excellent artwork from your contemporaries!

Emerson On Critics

2011-01-05T05:19:00.000-05:00

Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers.

Poets For Living Waters

2010-12-28T11:13:00.003-05:00

Two poems—one previously published in CUE and one unpublished from 2003—are up at the Poets for Living Waters site. These poems were not “occasional” poems I composed for the project but rather poems that already existed. Thanks to Amy King & Heidi Lynn Staples for including them. I’d been trying since this summer to format them for HTML, but never did figure it out. Chalked it up to “Oh well” until this great surprise. I also never got around to writing an official statement but this passage from Emerson will suffice:

Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What we call nature, is a certain self-regulated motion, or change; and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to baptise her, but baptises herself; and this through the metamorphosis again.

Fourteen Hills 17.1

2010-12-21T11:55:00.002-05:00

The latest issue of Fourteen Hills is out with one of the purged Paris Review ranges from yours truly, as well as poems from Lisa Badner, Jason Bayani, Karina Borowicz, Maxine Chernoff, Renee Emerson, Noah Gerhsman, Jenny Hanning, Peter Harris, Jane Hilberry, Myron Michael, Charlotte Pence, Alice Pero, Jennifer Reimer, Ann Robinson, Elizabeth Robinson, and Dawn Tefft. Eternal thanks to Poetry Editor Stephen Rosenshein and the entire staff of Fourteen Hills for giving my work a home.

Best Poetry 2010

2010-12-20T13:12:00.000-05:00

Reb Livingston has posted my Top 10 poetry books over at the No Tell Motel blog, & the list includes books by Sam Amadon, Jim Behrle, Aaron Belz, John Coletti, Peter Davis, Buck Downs, Matt Hart, Andy Hughes, Whit Griffin, & Ryan Murphy.

Forklift, Ohio #22

2010-12-14T11:57:00.001-05:00

The newest issue of Forklift, Ohio has been released and I've got three ranges inside. Another phenomenal design from Eric Appleby and amazing work by Dean Young, Whit Griffin, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, Noah Falck, and many, many more. Deep thanks to Matt Hart for including me for a third time in what is one of the most exciting literary journals in the country.

Letter From Uncle Dean

2010-12-10T12:18:00.002-05:00

Dean Young's nephew, Seth Pollins, has posted a wonderful letter from his uncle at his blog, The New Savagery. He also provides a mailing address for Dean, for those of you who want to send well-wishes or anything else:

Dean Young

2809 French Place

Austin, TX 78722-2235

Dean Young Needs a Heart Transplant

2010-12-09T09:32:00.003-05:00

Tony Hoagland and I disagree on, well, pretty much everything. Except when it comes to our love for Dean Young. Not the poetry, I mean, but the man. Please read Tony's open letter on Dean's behalf and donate.

Pushcart Nominees

2010-11-30T14:15:00.000-05:00

I’ve nominated poems by Mark Bibbins, Buck Downs, Matt Hart, Mike Hauser, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Douglas Kearney for Pushcart Prizes. With well over 100 poems in The Equalizer: First Series, it was incredibly difficult to choose six. If I could’ve nominated more, I would’ve. Thanks to all the contributors for making the decision so difficult. I wouldn’t’ve had it any other way.

The Equalizer: First Series

2010-11-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

Thanks to contributor Alexis Orgera for posting The Equalizer: First Series (click to download) at HTMLGiant. Not offering a discount on subscriptions. Because it's free.

Victory / St. Paul, MN / Jun 3, 2008

2010-11-10T10:56:00.001-05:00

Movin Like Berney

2010-11-06T12:19:00.002-04:00

Purge Revisited

2010-11-05T12:57:00.003-04:00

Luke Hankins, who started the Conditional Boycott of The Paris Review Facebook group, has an excellent article in the October/November 2010 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, which you can read on his blog by clicking here. Perhaps the most interesting revelation is that Robyn Creswell had a poem returned to him in 2005 during the Richard Howard purge. Luke’s also posted links to poems by Michael Snediker and Allan Peterson, two of the “Purgerati” that opted for publication on The Paris Review Daily.

N7ostradamus Reviewed

2010-11-04T11:22:00.001-04:00

Travis Macdonald’s N7ostradamus gets not one but two glowing reviews from Tarpaulin Sky. Check out a long excerpt in The Equalizer 1.12 by downloading it from HTMLGiant or Maureen Thorson.

The Fine Line

2010-11-03T16:22:00.000-04:00

Between stalking and poetry, as explored by Matthew Dickman. I wonder what D.J. Dolack will make of this:

Dickman opened the floor for questions in the final minutes of the reading, and informed the audience that he was working on a new manuscript for another book sometime next year.

Before leaving, he told the audience one last important lesson for anyone who was single.

His careful instructions were to get the poem “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara, then buy two cans of Coke and place them and the poem on the doorstep of the one admired. After knocking on the door, run away and hide, but still be nearby once the person reads the poem.

Read the rest of Krystal Spencer’s account here.

This Is the Day

2010-11-02T11:47:00.001-04:00

The Equalizer: First Series

2010-11-01T23:59:00.006-04:00

Emily Anderson, Stephanie Anderson, Nathan Austin, Owen Barker, Jim Behrle, Aaron Belz, Mark Bibbins, Summer Block, Amick Boone, Samantha Caan, CAConrad, Macgregor Card, Laura Carter, Adam Clay, Shanna Compton, Joshua Corey, John Cotter, Matt Cozart, Cynthia Cruz, Barbara Cully, Alana Dagen, Peter Davis, Richard Deming, Buck Downs, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Katherine Factor, Noah Falck, Lucas Farrell, Carol Fink, Corrine Fitzpatrick, John Gallaher, Allison Gauss, Henry Gould, Whit Griffin, Shafer Hall, Matt Hart, Mike Hauser, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Matthew Henriksen, Brian Henry, Ernest Hilbert, Mark Horosky, Andrew Hughes, Curtis Jensen, Douglas Kearney, Evan Kennedy, Amy King, Mark Lamoureux, Katy Lederer, Ada Limón, Reb Livingston, Travis Macdonald, Chris Martin, Kristi Maxwell, James Meetze, Jason Myers, Alexis Orgera, Cate Peebles, Craig Santos Perez, Christopher Rizzo, Christopher Salerno, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Ravi Shankar, Don Share, Kevin Shea, Evie Shockley, Carmen Giménez Smith, Lytton Smith, Cosmo Spinosa, Janaka Stucky, Maureen Thorson, Tony Tost, Jo Turner, Eric Unger, Cody Walker

Email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com for your copy of the complete First Series, or any of the sections, or to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive updates and information, including news about the Second Series. You can also follow @Michael_Schiavo on Twitter where I’ll be tweeting the various sections for the rest of 2010.

I’ll be posting a FAQ in the next week or so, but to answer one of the most pressing questions that many have asked . . .

From its inception, I intended The Equalizer to be an “occasional” series, i.e. every few years. While extremely gratifying, it is an enormous undertaking. I can’t imagine soliciting or putting a call out for submissions until 2012 at the earliest, with a possible date of 2014 for the second series' appearance.

In the interim, there are hundreds of “Equalizers” out there that will welcome your poems, hundreds of great little magazines and series and one-offs and blogs and websites that are publishing interesting, diverse poetry and writing from every corner of every corner. Some have been around a long time, some have just started, and some have yet to be imagined.

The best way to ensure a second series’ appearance is to spread the word about The Equalizer any way you can. It’s like anything: if I know you had a good time, I’m more likely to do it again, and sooner. You don’t have to post the PDFs on your blog or website like Alexis Orgera, Maureen Thorson, and so many others were kind enough to do, but if you’ve enjoyed The Equalizer, please mention it on your blog, please email the PDFs to interested readers, please tweet, please cable, please talk about it and pass it around.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.12 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.13 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.14 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.15 available via HTML Giant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer: First Series available via HTMLGiant.

Stain Digest

2010-11-01T09:50:00.000-04:00

Steven Karl's brief synopsis of Friday's Stain reading. Thanks to everyone who came out to hear some great poems!

Night of the Lepus

2010-10-31T20:00:00.001-04:00

We Who Are About to Die intern Teresa Farrell guides me down memory lane this Halloween night.

Around the Horn 11

2010-10-30T22:40:00.000-04:00

Thank you to contributor Amy King for posting about The Equalizer on her blog. The complete series will be released some time on Monday and will be readily available to all.

Stain of Poetry

2010-10-29T12:00:00.001-04:00

If you happen to be in the Bushwick metropolitan area tonight, come on down to Goodbye Blue Monday at 7:00 to hear myself, Carla Drysdale, Ruth Lepson, Rick Reid, Solmaz Sharif, and Ken L. Walker read some poems in the Stain of Poetry series.

The Equalizer 1.15

2010-10-29T07:23:00.006-04:00

Mark Horosky's Fabulous Beasts

If you would like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they are released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.12 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.13 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.14 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.15 available via Maureen Thorson.

Nov. 1: The Equalizer: First Series

Sixth Finch Fall Issue

2010-10-28T13:12:00.002-04:00

The fall issue of Sixth Finch is out now featuring poetry from Elaine Kahn, Alexis Orgera, Dan Rosenberg, and Mathias Svalina, and many more excellent poets. And, as always, there is fantastic visual art from some of the leading young American artists!

Around the Horn 10

2010-10-28T13:09:00.000-04:00

Big ups to Janaka Stucky for posting about The Equalizer over at the Black Ocean blog. The serialization is almost over and I want to thank everyone involved in this endeavor for getting the word out. A FAQ will be provided in the next few days, including information about The Equalizer: Second Series, submissions, etc.

The Equalizer 1.14

2010-10-27T08:58:00.026-04:00

Tony Tost, Maureen Thorson, Lytton Smith, Richard Deming, Cosmo Spinosa, James Meetze, Matt Cozart, Eric Unger, Janaka Stucky, Cody Walker, Katherine Factor, Matt Hart, Buck Downs, and Jim Behrle.

If you would like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they are released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.12 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.13 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.14 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 29: The Equalizer 1.15 featuring Mark Horosky’s Fabulous Beasts

Around the Horn 9

2010-10-26T01:31:00.002-04:00

Henry Gould gets the word out about Henry Gould in The Equalizer 1.13. Thank you to Henry for trumpeting The Equalizer and for allowing me to publish Lanthanum 4. It’s a beautiful song.

The Equalizer 1.13

2010-10-25T12:29:00.003-04:00

Henry Gould’s Lanthanum 4

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.12 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.13 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 27: The Equalizer 1.14 featuring Tony Tost, Maureen Thorson, Lytton Smith, Richard Deming, Cosmo Spinosa, James Meetze, Matt Cozart, Eric Unger, Janaka Stucky, Cody Walker, Katherine Factor, Matt Hart, Buck Downs, and Jim Behrle.

Words Are Also Actions

2010-10-24T23:31:00.004-04:00

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Equalizer 1.12

2010-10-23T09:19:00.006-04:00

Andrew Hughes, Chris Martin, Stephanie Anderson, Buck Downs, Jason Myers, Richard Deming, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Carmen Giménez Smith, Cody Walker, Christopher Rizzo, Travis Macdonald, Matt Hart, Ravi Shankar, and James Meetze.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.12 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 25: The Equalizer 1.13 featuring Henry Gould’s Lanthanum 4.

Big Thanks

2010-10-22T11:43:00.002-04:00

A big thanks once again to all the contributors and readers of The Equalizer. We still have a few more sections to go, and so far I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about not just the form, design, and distribution method, but most importantly, the work. Poets and readers have told me they’re reading poets for the first time, or poets they weren’t really familiar with more in depth. That’s the best news I could receive. If you read a poem in The Equalizer that you really love, please let the poet know. One of the reasons I eschewed traditional bios and included contact information was to facilitate the meeting of minds. Please meet.

Use Me

2010-10-22T08:01:00.002-04:00

The Equalizer 1.11

2010-10-21T07:49:00.001-04:00

Evie Shockley’s “the cold”

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.11 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 23: The Equalizer 1.12 featuring Andrew Hughes, Chris Martin, Stephanie Anderson, Buck Downs, Jason Myers, Richard Deming, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Carmen Giménez Smith, Cody Walker, Christopher Rizzo, Travis Macdonald, Matt Hart, Ravi Shankar, and James Meetze.

The Universe Holds Thee Dear

2010-10-20T23:43:00.002-04:00

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. So many things are unsettled which it is of the first importance to settle,—and, pending their settlement, we will do as we do. Whilst the debate goes forward on the equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a century or two, New and Old England may keep shop. Law of copyright and international copyright is to be discussed, and, in the interim, we will sell our books for the most we can. Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. Right to hold land, right of property, is disputed, and the conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in your garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they will,—but thou, God's darling! heed thy private dream: thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism: there are enough of them: stay there in thy closet, and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Boogie Funk

2010-10-20T11:43:00.001-04:00

The Equalizer 1.10

2010-10-19T10:00:00.006-04:00

Mike Hauser, Buck Downs, Stephanie Anderson, Katherine Factor, Maureen Thorson, James Meetze, Mark Lamoureux, Katy Lederer, Alexis Orgera, Ada Limón, Kristi Maxwell, Cate Peebles, Richard Deming, Carmen Giménez Smith, Matt Hart, and Cody Walker.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.10 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 21: The Equalizer 1.11 featuring Evie Shockley’s “the cold.”

Around the Horn 8

2010-10-18T13:15:00.009-04:00

Asian Cha has linked to The Equalizer 1.3 featuring Craig Santos Perez. Please follow the link to download.

Payback

2010-10-18T09:38:00.002-04:00

The Equalizer 1.9

2010-10-17T07:00:00.002-04:00

Mike Hauser’s Samples.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.8 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.9 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 19: The Equalizer 1.10 featuring Mike Hauser, Buck Downs, Stephanie Anderson, Katherine Factor, Maureen Thorson, James Meetze, Mark Lamoureux, Katy Lederer, Alexis Orgera, Ada Limón, Kristi Maxwell, Cate Peebles, Richard Deming, Carmen Giménez Smith, Matt Hart, and Cody Walker.

Around the Horn 7

2010-10-16T18:55:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Spencer for listing The Equalizer on Selby’s List and thanks again to Morgan Lucas Schuldt for shouting out.

The Equalizer 1.8

2010-10-15T10:48:00.001-04:00

Sonnets & sonnots from Nathan Austin, Jo Turner, Ernest Hilbert, Kevin Shea, Samantha Caan, Matt Hart, and Curtis Jensen.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 17: The Equalizer 1.9 featuring Mike Hauser’s Samples.

Nocturnal Existence

2010-10-14T07:26:00.001-04:00

I have two ranges in the new La Petite Zine (Issue 25).

Great work by Mark Yakich, Miranda Field, Ben Mirov, Lauren Ireland, Nin Andrews, Jared White, and many, many more.

“San Diego 70 Connecticut 69” is about empire and “Glad in Full Moon Among Pussy Willows I Swamp” echoes The Odyssey.

Thanks to Melissa Broder and D.W. Lichtenberg for giving me a home.

The Equalizer 1.7

2010-10-13T15:04:00.004-04:00

Whit Griffin, Shafer Hall, Stephanie Anderson, Brian Henry, Amy King, Richard Deming, Chris Martin, Buck Downs, Christopher Salerno, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Matthew Henriksen, Evan Kennedy, James Meetze, Matt Hart, Cody Walker, and Douglas Kearney.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.7 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 15: The Equalizer 1.8 featuring sonnets & sonnots from Nathan Austin, Jo Turner, Ernest Hilbert, Kevin Shea, Samantha Caan, Matt Hart, and Curtis Jensen.

Around the Horn 6

2010-10-12T21:41:00.000-04:00

Thanks once more to Equalizer contributor Alexis Orgera for posting & hosting sections on HTMLGiant.

Kid A & Coldfront

2010-10-12T06:39:00.000-04:00

Coldfront has an excellent feature on the 10-year anniversary of Radiohead’s Kid A. Yours truly has a piece, as do Stan Apps, Jackie Clarke, Brooklyn Copeland, Steven Karl, Amy Lawless, Ken L. Walker, and many others.

The Equalizer 1.6

2010-10-11T07:26:00.004-04:00

Lucas Farrell’s “The Dual-Shade of Six-Prong.”

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.6 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 13: The Equalizer 1.7 featuring Whit Griffin, Shafer Hall, Stephanie Anderson, Brian Henry, Amy King, Richard Deming, Chris Martin, Buck Downs, Christopher Salerno, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Matthew Henriksen, Evan Kennedy, James Meetze, Matt Hart, Cody Walker, and Douglas Kearney.

The Underdog

2010-10-10T09:19:00.007-04:00

Around the Horn 5

2010-10-09T19:13:00.000-04:00

Don Share posts a screen shot of his Equalizer poem and Peter Davis does some carnival barking. Thanks to Don, Peter, and all the contributors for spreading the word.

The Equalizer 1.5

2010-10-09T07:44:00.021-04:00

Cynthia Cruz, Reb Livingston, Allison Gauss, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Cody Walker, Buck Downs, Barbara Cully, Peter Davis, Lucas Farrell, Stephanie Anderson, Noah Falck, Carol Fink, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Matt Hart, Maureen Thorson, Amy King, and Chris Martin.

If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Equalizer 1.1 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.3 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.4 available via Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.5 available via Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 11: The Equalizer 1.6 featuring Lucas Farrell’s “The Dual-Shade of Six-Prong.”

Around the Horn 4

2010-10-08T13:41:00.000-04:00

Buck Downs lets people know about The Equalizer. Circulation expected to jump.

The Cost of Poetry in the Digital Age

2010-10-08T11:20:00.002-04:00

I guess Jonathan Farmer hasn’t heard about The Equalizer. Yet.