As/Is







1.31.2017


Aphorisms: 2009-2017

Textual bodies need orifices; text with no flesh is anorexic.

Poetry needs Bodies; know who your Bodies are.

Horizontal leads to Lateral, text-wise.

Poetry needs a new materialism.

The Academy left Deconstruction behind years ago; so should poetry. For once, we need to catch up to the Academy.

Be material but not crass.

Impersonal forces are stronger than personal ones. How is poetry created from this? By the skin of our teeth.

Rule of thumb: nothing Big without Narrative. Great poets address great themes directly. Great poems are felt philosophy.

From Freud, paraphrased: new contexts create conditions for textual orgasms. Thus, the Internet.

Tremble before poetry, not poets.

Moral relativity: the only moral concern that matters. Morality is Ethics for Dummies.

There is no lens to see a text through that isn't tinted. Where text is concerned, idiosyncrasy is always preponderant. And material.

Try a little tenderness. But not too much.

Enough money is enough.

Perversity from one angle is generosity from another. It depends where you stand.

I know how you look to me. I can imagine how I look to you. Health consists of making composites.

Loving and hating America is the beginning of a great affair.

Life is arbitrary and contingent. Providence is a department store mannequin.

Sex is the dominant arena in which things change but do not change. Thus, season tickets are mandatory for serious artists. Sit in the bleachers if you have to.

Sex only becomes distasteful if it is represented in one dimension.

Most Americans do not know most of America. The vastness of America is its bane and its glory.










1.23.2017


New Sonnets in Otoliths


I have five new sonnets out in Mark Young's Otoliths. Thanks, Mark, and NLA (Trove).

And here is the new issue of Otoliths in its entirety.

You can purchase Otoliths 44 here.








1.12.2017


To Abby Heller-Burnham


The Schuylkill flows cleanly, despite
all the murk, as the Expressway looms
on the other side of it; the trees, as
usual, are Heaven, rooted much too
deeply for us to fathom, cocked at
a solid angle into a receptive Universe;
I am waiting, writing on the edge of
wars, chopping through the cesspool
of centuries old shit, stunned by an
awareness of your painting-brain's torques;
and when I imagine you it's with a sense
that we're both standing at the river's
edge (we are, of course), and as long as
we see the trees into the sky we blend in.

Sun glistens on the Schuylkill's surface—
over-presences fill the space between
the river and my third-story window.
The grass, the shrubs are sanctified,
even the concrete walkways look
as though touched by the reality of
deep water, its boundlessness, heft.
Over-presences, untouched by the
sickliness of human reality, subsist,
exist simultaneously, there, not there,
self, no-self, and if I get there myself,
occasionally, it is because I see your
reflection there, your individual life.
Time takes the halves, makes them whole.