GREAT! or Some Blogs of Note

The other day I was searching to see if anyone in the Wide World had posted Ted Berrigan's Sonnet XVII and found Robert Frost's Banjo. I've since been enjoying John Hayes's Banjo very much. It has great bloggy fare like today's Moose Tales, but what hooked me first was the Weekly Poem series, a great selection of poetry by many of favorite poets (Berrigan, Kenneth Patchen, Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara, Tom Clark).

Speaking of Tom Clark, he's been posting a lot of great work—poems old, poems new, some original translations—over at his Beyond The Pale blog. If anyone is a master of the lyric, it's him. Here's one of my all-time favorite poems by anybody from anyplace writing at anytime.

Even though I have submitted relatively little work to literary magazines since 1999 (a handful per year at most, excepting 2001 and, I think, 2003 which were a bit heavier than that) and had taken to posting blogbooks of old poems (mostly old, Sappho Does Hay(na)ku had been new[er] work), I hadn't taken the next step of foregoing magazine publication altogether (or virtually altogether, we'll see) and using Nobody here as as a place to post new poems as I write them. Two blogs in particular helped lead me to this leap, both regularly feature great poems by poets who are the real deal, whose works often enough make me envious, you know in a kind of calm resigned way, of their abilities: W.B. Keckler's Joe Brainard's Pyjamas and Todd Colby's Glee Farm.

Last but not least, Sephyrus by Rachel Andrews (it does sound like a sophisticated perfume or designer clothing line doesn't it?) has been a hotbed of words and images, with the same great art that's been there from the start and poetry painted with a minimalist style all her own.

Skywriting

Min(d)ing the gaps and reading between the lines for sure: An alphabet formed of buildings and sky: Type the Sky.

Coolest Blog in the World

This week's Coolest Blog in the World is Shimmy's Blog. The wonderfully intense Shimmy, see profile photo, gets the nod primarily on the strength of the three-part series "The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein." Here's to more where that came from—cheers!

Point

A.L. Nielsen on Jerome Rothenberg and Christine A Meilicke's Jerome Rothenberg’s Experimental Poetry and Jewish Tradition.

Here's an early Rothenberg poem I've always liked ("always" meaning since 1994 when I first came across the piece in Clayton Eshelman's great little intro for poets volume Novices):

A LITTLE BOY LOST
by Jerome Rothenberg

They took me from the white sun and they
left me in the black sun, left
me to sleep among long rows of overcoats:
I was a city boy lost in the country, a
wound in my hand was all I knew about willows
Can you understand, do you hear the wide
sound of the wind against the cow's
side, and the crickets that run down my
sleeve, crickets full of the night, with
bodies like little black suns? try as I will
there is only this cry in my heart, this cry:
They took me from the white sun, and they
left me in the black sun, and I
have no way of turning now, no door

Equanimity Today

A sign of the times with multiple prongs of irony.

If I Had a Blog

Reorganized the sidebar, adding a section for webzines, such as Robert Kelly's Matter. For some reason, maybe because I'm a sucker for self-imposed constraints, I decided (way back when I started Nobody) that I would keep the blog roll and such lists maxed out at ten links. Besides, Spencer Selby's list of experimental poetry magazines and Ron Silliman's blog roll cover most of the bases.

*    *    *

Bad news of the day: Armed Robbers Steal Munch's "The Scream" in Oslo, as well as his hauntingly seductive "Madonna".

*    *    *

Top three jealousies of the week:

3. Eden Prairie Couple Claims Powerball Jackpot. I rarely ever play Powerball, or any lottery, but I always talk about winning it. Especially come Monday morning.

2. Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker. First he gets balls-out lucky at the 2003 WSP—okay, more power to him—but now, voilà, he's an author. God bless America.

(What's with all this money talk? Am I really that superficial? Um, apparently.)

1. Lisablog. The shout-outs, the world leaders of the day, the fall curriculum preview, the attitude, and hocking of hats and "asses of evil" T-shirts. If I had a blog, I would want it to be this funky and cool and free of bitterness.

*    *    *

Hey, score a point for democracy (sort of)! Nothing's a "gimme" these days. Federal Court Rules That Commission on Presidential Debates is a Partisan Organization.

*    *    *

For good measure, here's another poem by Robert Kelly, "Mapping". "I know where I am in the world by loudness alone."