notes on 'the difficult farm' by heather christle

Here, lie down
on top of the armoire.  It is

a big one.

heather christie’s the difficult farm was out from octopus books in 2009.  it is numbered to page 77, broken into 4 sections.  i didn’t notice any obvious differences between the sections

topics in the book include farms, nonhuman animals, death, and a lot of other things

If a farmer wants something
to do with me there is a way for him to get it.

the poems change topic a lot; sometimes the lines seem to only connect intuitively, or maybe by implication by being in the same poem

the vocabulary was sometimes a little bit intellectual, including some words i hadn’t heard before, but not to extreme degrees

the voice felt ‘clever’ or ‘cute’ to me at times

Magnificence comes
in a small car, but we all fit.

sometimes there is a storytelling voice that reminds me a little of matthea harvey in modern life.  there are characters, like a scientist and a nurse, for example, and their actions are described in the past tense

sometimes the events in the book are quirky; other times the description of a pretty normal event is quirky

At four a.m. the pharmacy was like a theme park
whose theme was Being Very Quiet.

i like the cover of the book


here is heather christle’s blog, including links to a lot of poems online

here is the poem 'acorn duly crushed,' from the book

buy the book from octopus books here, buy the book from spd here. you can also get it from amazon and other places

the content of this blog from november 2009 to april 2010

i recently deleted most of the archives of this blog, but i wanted to preserve some of the writing so i made the following lists

posts from november 2009 to april 2010 that i have preserved, chronological order

visual poem: 'express / the / birds / if you can'

notes on ‘home alone 2: lost in new york’

i read ron silliman’s poem 'BART'

aesthetics and identity

robert grenier makes me feel nostalgic about everything

an orca whale killed a human

right now she opened // this veganism airport

mother fucker, i rented a movie and recorded over it with two hours of myself

all the poems i published in 2009

music that i mentioned between november 2009 and april 2010, alphabetical order

acacia strain, 'the dead walk'

animal collective, 'merriweather post pavillion'

animal collective, 'strawberry jam'

arsonists get all the girls, 'hits from the bow'

arsonists get all the girls, 'the game of life'

björk

boards of canada

bright eyes, 'letting off the happiness'

john cage, 'caged/uncaged'

the chariot, 'and then came then'

chiodos

comeback kid, 'wake the dead'

the contortionist, from the myspace

converge, 'petitioning the empty sky'

emmure, 'goodbye to the gallows'

fear before the march of flames, 'art damage'

fear before the march of flames, 'odd how people shake'

i killed the prom queen

jackson mac low, 'doings'

m83

meshuggah, 'nothing'

meshuggah, 'obzen'

mia, ‘paper planes'

mogwai

mono (japan)

norma jean, 'robots 3 humans 0'

origin

owl city, 'ocean eyes'

parkway drive

saosin

scary kids scaring kids

sigur rós

soulja boy, ‘rubber bands’

sufjan stevens, 'chicago'

vanna
venetian snares, 'frictional nevada'

venetian snares, 'hospitality'

films that i mentioned between november 2009 and april 2010, alphabetical order

american beauty

american psycho

the box

brüno

the curious case of benjamin button

donnie darko

the front

garden state

little miss sunshine

southland tales

waking life

weekend at bernie’s

welcome to the dollhouse

publications that i announced between november 2009 and april 2010, chronological order

3 poems at temenos

3 poems at cricket online review [2] [3]

2 poems at nthposition

4 poems at hot metal bridge

1 poem at elimae

3 visual poems at moria

1 poem at right hand pointing

2 poems at alba

2 visual poems at word for/ word

4 poems at the red ceilings

3 poems at blazevox

other links i posted between november 2009 and april 2010, chronological order

theme song from 'eyewitness'

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'toward vegan language'

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'in defense of veganism'

jack horkheimer full moon howling contest

k-mart realism

'anthropocentrism' wikipedia page

the vegan ideal

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'political correctness, political expedience, and veganism'

l.o.v.e. myspace page

tao lin’s blog

paul siegell concrete poems

andrew topel concrete poems

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'vegan activism is respectful activism'

chess tutorials

barrett watten discussing my blog post

chess gambits

'i heart huckabees' trailer

j. joseph kane poem at elimae

smell chess

my review of 'home alone 2' in altered form

yale open courses: theory of literature

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'building a local, anti-oppression collective'

l.o.v.e. vegan blog: 'emptying cages: from animal abolition to prison abolition'

no sweat apparel

jean-paul sartre wikipedia

books that i mentioned between november 2009 and april 2010, alphabetical order

mIEKAL aND, 'zerzerex'

charles bernstein and bruce andrews, 'the l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e book'

john cage, 'silence'

raymond carver, 'what we talk about when we talk about love'

brandon downing, 'lake antiquity'

drew gardner, 'petroleum hat'

lyn hejinian, 'my life'

hannah higgins, 'fluxus experience'

jen hofer, 'slide rule'

bell hooks, 'feminist theory: from margin to center'

incite!, 'the revolution will not be funded'

kenneth koch, 'collected poems'

tao lin, 'bed'

tao lin, 'shoplifting from american apparel'

a.g. marquis, 'marcel duchamp: the bachelor stripped bare'

sharon mesmer, 'annoying diabetic bitch'

k. silem mohammad, 'the front'

friedrich nietzsche, 'the nietzsche reader'

frank o'hara, 'selected poems'

bob perelman, 'face value'

gertrude stein, 'everybody's autobiography'

gertrude stein, 'how to write'

shunryu suzuki, 'not always so'

rodrigo toscano, 'to leveling swerve'

anne waldman, 'the beat book'

hannah weiner, 'hannah weiner's open house'

quotations that i posted between november 2009 and april 2010, chronological order

'why is that man walking down the middle of the freeway?' - ron silliman

'where do you think i’ve / got to? the spectacle of a grown man / decorating / a christmas tree disgusts me that’s / where' - frank o’hara

'human beings include freud' - peter seaton

'the poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. the poet knows it sooner than the people do. the people usually know it after the poet is dead; but, that's all right. the point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.' - james baldwin

'a sentence is not emotional a paragraph is' - gertrude stein

'trade curses everything it touches' - henry d. thoreau

‘the true dadas are against dada’ - tristan tzara

‘i am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement’ - e.e. cummings

‘GET ALREADY SCARED’ - hannah weiner

‘i was promised / to him just a little bit everyone’ - hannah weiner

‘i still / drink coffee lover I WANT MY LOVER’ - hannah weiner

‘work your ass off to change the language & don't ever get famous’ - bernadette mayer

‘the social revolution . . . cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future’ - karl marx qtd. in silliman

'who’s dunkin’ who’s donut in who’s chalice.' - rodrigo toscano

'put the mcdonalds into it.' - rodrigo toscano

'why not dance 24-7 everyone' - rodrigo toscano

things that people have googled to arrive at my blog that i mentioned between november 2009 and april 2010, chronological order

'mcallister house home alone'

'home alone 2 objects used to hurt bad guys'

'is there going to be a snowstorm tonight?'

'my grandma googled my name'

'i know being alive is not the same as having a life'

'i dont care to become grandiloquent in expressing my lovelife'

'i don't like being alive anymore'

'what is it called when you dont like being alive'

notes on 'during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present' by brandon scott gorrell

‘why don’t you touch my penis some time’


brandon scott gorrell’s dmnbiwthabp is a poetry collection out from muumuu house in 2009.  it is 88 pages, not broken into any sections. it has very short poems in it and also very long poems and medium length poems

subjects in the book are email, boredom, alienation, aliens, thesaurus.com, social injustice, and apocalypse

i shoot aliens in their heads and their heads explode

the tone in the book seems kind of minimalist based on the abrupt transitions and direct sentences

some poems also seem ‘maximalist’ based on being multiple pages and having a kind of ‘rambling’ tone

i got two emails today
i was disappointed by both of them
this happens on a daily basis
what does my life mean

also

hunger is the body’s response to lack of nutrients and stuff

why am i typing this

a lot of the book is written to a ‘you.’  the poem ‘butterfly apocalypse’ ‘recounts’ an online conversation between ‘you’ and ‘i’

i said i’m smoking

i said do you find smoking attractive or unattractive, what should i do

you said i find everything you do attractive

i said you are nice

i said i’m sending you a song and we will feel closer

you said can this song play when we meet

in a poem that begins ‘i was frozen in amber for 53 million years,’ the speaker says ‘i crush people with the time i’ve spent in amber’

one poem in the book included a lot of facts about oppression and social injustice

phamaceutical corportations have convinced a large number of people that they think incorrectly; that they must take pills to change the way they think, otherwise they will fail at work, school, and personal relationships
there is a target audience for talk shows and infomercials
a very small number of white men control what billions of people see and hear, which indirectly means that they control what billions of people think and feel
there are around 2.5 gallons of water in every toilet in america while in africa the water is poisoned or there are massive shortages

this list of facts felt surprisingly compatible, to me, with the ironic/maybe 'deadpan' voice in most of the book

in my opinion the main feeling of the book is expressed in the poem ‘some inconceivable crisis thing’

has anyone else ever felt incredibly sarcastic about feeling incredibly depressed but at the same time felt incredibly depressed

the book feels like a sarcastic version of 'the yellow wallpaper' but not completely sarcastic

also there is a lot of imagery of apocalypse and battles between aliens/robots and humans, which seems to metaphorically reinforce the feeling of 'breakdown' mentioned in the title and in the book

after reading this book, i feel pretty interested in reading the brandon book crisis


here is brandon scott gorrell’s blog

here is brandon scott gorrell’s formspring

here are 3 poems from the book

here are 4 poems from the book in different versions

here are a lot of online writings by brandon scott gorrell; some of them are in the book, some aren’t

buy this book here, here, or here

minimalist / ironic 'computer' computer wallpaper

i made this computer wallpaper that says 'computer'


below is the wallpaper in various sizes and colors.  if you want a different size or color let me know.  it is pretty easy to make more




black on white
800x600
1024x768
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blue on white
800x600
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white on grey
800x600
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blue on grey
800x600 
1024x768
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green/teal on near-black
800x600
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notes on 'angle of yaw' by ben lerner

‘I am wearing a Mikhail Gorbachev Halloween mask.’


most of the poems in angle of yaw are small prose poems with a title (?) running into the paragraph (example poems, example poem, example poem)

the other poems in the book vary depending on the section, but the forms are usually longer. the middle section, ‘didactic elegy,’ felt like an essay in verse kind of like charles bernstein’s “artifice of absorption”

the content in the poems changes without a lot of transition, which allows for a lot of possible readings based on what the reader connects with what

A highly accurate weapon housed in a silo.
I can’t stop crying.

the content of the poems often approaches the politics of representation, i think, the effect of images on how people understand themselves and the structures they live in. the middle section, ‘didactic elegy’ most directly addressed this

Refusing to assign meaning to an event is to interpret it lovingly

some of the poems remind me of ron silliman’s chinese notebook in how they extend theoretical ideas about literature, maybe post-structuralist ideas, to discussing things like how the color of a pen affects what can be written with it

I believe there is a question in the back. Yes, thank you. Do you own Hitler’s upper teeth? If you do own Hitler’s upper teeth, and it seems that you do, would you be able to resist the temptation to try them on? If you’re wearing Hitler’s upper teeth right now, and it seems that you are, how does that effect the validity of your answer?

a lot of the poems seemed vaguely critical/satirical of mainstream u.s. culture, war, politicians, maybe popular sports

We are pleased to offer a lamp that turns on and off when you clap

in an interview in 2005, ben lerner was asked about 'the role of the poet,' and he said 'I think that the poet, whether she likes it or not, always has to struggle against what Chuck D has called the "dumbassification" of American culture, against the deadening of intellects upon which our empire depends.' i feel like this shows in angle of yaw, that ben lerner is struggling against this

the tone of the poems felt kind of intellectual but also at times clever and/or funny. i wrote down a lot of lines that i thought were funny

It was when I tried to eat a straw through a straw that I learned my first important lesson about form

/

As an artist I’m interested in filling things with blood, especially clocks, but as a mom I demand the illusion of continuous motion

this book was out on copper canyon press in 2006; it is 125 pages


more on ben lerner here, here, and here

buy angle of yaw here, here, or here