dbqp: visualizing poetics: February 2012

3 Readers, 3 Voices, 3 Words

On the night of Friday, February 24th, 2012, I attended dinner at Matthew Klane's house in Albany, and I knew how to drive there because I had become lost in his neighborhood only a few days before, which had made me late for a meeting. So one piece of bad luck turned fortuitous in the end.

The reason I was at his house (for a spectacular vegetarian meal—oh, those latkes...) was to have a small celebration prior to the second of the year's readings in the Yes! Reading and Performance Series, run by James Belflower and Matthew in Albany, New York. Afterwards, I drove to the Social Justice Center, with my friend Anne Gorrick following, and I thought to myself, "Maybe this road will go through to Madison Avenue." But it didn't. It went into a McDonald's parking lot.

Feb

Fire, Water, Blood, and Death

They have

no hunger but they

want to kill

What blood is

there in it

for any of

them? and why

do they want

what they

want? Don't

drink the

water

even if you are

thirsty

From the water

it comes

into

you

and then

your life is

killing

You will burn

your

wife and your son

You will

set them ablaze

just to watch

You will hunt

through piles of

dead bodies

for the living one

to kill

Or you will

be

the one running

the one running

away

Attacked with

bone saw

with

gun

Feb

Mnemnory and Vission

Although Anne Gorrick and I sat at her kitchen table this morning and spoke of the fact that our poetry is never specifically about anything

Anne Gorrick: I don't think I could write something that was so much about something.

Geof Huth: That was one of its drawbacks, you know.

Anne Gorrick: I know.

Feb

Poetry is Everywhere

Just in case you thought poetry was passé, here's evidence that poetry is everywhere, even accompanying packaged rubber duckies dressed up for wedding showers. And what perfect control of meter. And that last line is not creepy at all.

These are good days to be alive.

ecr. l'inf.

Feb

Shooting Photographs with a Poem

I begin this tonight the way I begin a poem. With no idea of a destination. Because life can sometimes be ambiguous and sweet. Like a poem. Discovery—even if only a possibility, and not even a likelihood—our greatest joy.

When I take a photograph, and I take hundreds a month, I know how it is framed, how the colors work within it, how I've chosen some contrasting feature to demonstrate the invalidity of the homogenous world. But I don't know quite what the photograph will be.

Feb

Where I Live

From one of the three front windows of my apartment, I can see right into the front door of the Governor's mansion in Albany, New York. On occasion, I can watch guests enter the gate at the bottom of a small hill and make their way up a sloping pathway to that door. Usually, however, guests park in the lot at the south end of the mansion, as I myself have done on a few occasions. If I visit the mansion for another event, I will merely have to cross the street.

Feb

Today's Day

Today, I accomplished a few things:

I created and recorded a spokepoem entitled "to, merely, be"

I worked for hours on a grant application that is the simplest application I have ever seen, and I did not finish and may not.

I put together a tentative selection of my poetry, one that included my object poem "dicta (the tongue, the voiceless).

I created another fidgetglyph on copper, which is teaching me more about writing on copper.

Feb

A Copper-Clad Birthday

Today is the birthday of my dear friend Anne Gorrick (who is also my deer friend [the number of dead deer Anne and I (well, and her husband Peter, too) and I have been around is staggering (yes, two can be a staggering number)]). She does not like the number of the age she has turned, for reasons I honestly cannot fathom. She says that the number created by adding the two numerals of her age together is huge, but the resulting sum was much larger when she was 39.

Feb

The Stamps, the Stampings, and, Finally, the Stamping Out

Rudi Rubberoid died last month (on January 15th), and I realized that I had not heard from him in almost a quarter of a century. It's hard to imagine that, once, I was a young man doing something like poetry in a few strange and obscure corners of New York State, and that now I am almost half my life from that time. And it's hard to believe that Rudi Rubberoid, who was one of the well known, productive, and humorous mailartists of the 1980s has been out of the range of my vision for so long.

Feb

In the Beautiful House of the Written Hand

What do you think about the endangered status of hand-writing in some schools' curricula? What effect do you think it has on language art, or language, or art?

(Question received from Jeremy C. Casabella, 15 February 2012)

The hand is a tool, a tooler, a talent.

We say an artist has a good eye, and certainly the eye directs the hand, but the hand must be steady, muscled as it must be, flexible yet sturdy. An artist needs a good hand, which could be either left or right. Or both.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience