Pesbo

St Mark's on 10th St. NYC has The Poetry Project which has been running over 40 years. It has public readings at least twice a week, and a few workshops series that run thru the year. The next session is run by Douglas Rothchild and a couple others.

It's a pretty healthy organization from the looks of things, with the night we went having somewhere over 70 people in attendance to hear C.S. Giscombe and Leslie Scalapino read from their works in progress, Prairie Style in the case of Giscombe.

For over 20 years Giscombe has been exploring social, geographic and identity boundaries of place and race and ending, in poetry. He has done a fair bit of exploring of different geographies physically as well. Physically he's been in north-eastern North America, and is next switching to a position at the University of California at Berkeley. A recent book entitled Into and Out of Dislocation is something of a travel memoir of exploring BC, Canada for traces and stories of a pioneer who shared his family name.

Giscombe's writing is accessible. He has some spectacular lines as he meditates on the nature of landscapes that form us as we form them through skylines and the cycles that comes out of it. From jottings of lines from his reading that struck me...

[realize] this far inland
it's only erotic from a distance
...
juxtaposition is a kind of melodrama
...
some are descendants of their own property
for others history
is one surprise after another
...

Samples of his current manuscript in progress cycle through ideas of landscape and love, what we create and how we are created. His current work is an exploration of the regional consciousness of the midwest.

It would make an interesting dialogue to pair what he is discovering with what Tom Montag is finding as he also studies the literature of midwest regional culture in his Vagabond in the Middle Project. Montag seems to be going from the specific instances of local characters saying particular things in order to generalize to the defining overall regional culture and Giscombe seems to be coming from the holistic to get to the particular word.

In Giscombe's chapbook Inland there's a piece entitled Prairie Style (2) that illustrates more of his longer flow of how one idea merges into the next in a melodic way. It reads in part,

Male, female. Black men say trim. An outline's sameness is, finally, a reference. Towns, at a distance, are content and reference both -- how they appear at first, a dim cluster, and then from five or six miles off; how they look when you're only three miles away. In between sightings is the prairie itself to get across: trek, trace, the trick of landscape. Love suffers its wishfulness -- it's an allegorical value and the speaker mimes allegory with descriptions of yearning, like the prairie's a joke on us (among us),

--
Cross posted at Humanyms with there having a photo.

half-blissing
realize warm nuzzle
surprised my nape

should be almost audible
those ploops of arm hair
up with such force
as torpedoes zooming
under their root, tenting,

marvel at the floor, spotless
without nub litter of goosebumps
blown off as confetti

only the steady smooth
step of shadow,
sliding away
chuckling


--

this is focused


hay caught in your hair
(is that so much to ask for?
city streets, not withstanding)

wobbly wishes can't make it so

I may have to pretend
there is fluff to brush away,
apart from that in my logic.


---

from
(one word prompt http://oneword.com/)

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The Ringing of the Bards poetry carnival organized by Billy. The project is a way for poets to be exposed to other poets to enjoy. Billy also runs Poets101.com as a way to promote ourselves. Check out the link to find out how and where to nominate Poets101.com as a web resource.

Below are 2 collage (cut up) poems of hyperlinked lines. The lines come from the poems sent in for the 11th edition of Ringing of the Bards. Although each line is a clipping, it was too hard to read with underlines so just a phrase from each line was made the link.

Examining Yesterday

Solid gray, dancing though
the plaid of mullions on the ceiling

in your dreams you might believe that --
replete with flattering admirations --
you've dealt democracy so many blows
to echo through each lighted rafter.

How were you to know that
then: you stopped dead in your tracks
burnished fallen blushes


---


Not You, Alone

You oft behave as if your word's the gospel.
it scrolls across the sheet.

at wee a.m. under the delusive grip
in its own climate
when despair brings you to wine in the darkness

frozen by the words that sneaked
amongst the pithy

Soon, gentle paces, muffled footstep
people really come together.


Credits:

The Ballad of Joementum Joe Lieberman is set to the tune of Danny Boy by Madeleine at MadKane

Enshrining Autumn is available from Keith at When I Wax

Fable is from Nadia's journal It's Clever but is it art?

Funeral of an Artist (One-Man Show) was posted recently by Danny at Diary of Silence

Logic circussing, surfacing was posted by Pearl at Poetry Springs Boing

Medley by Bob is at AveragePoet

Sum by Tree is hosted at Tree Riesener (Tree also has a chapbook for sale.)

What Happened is by Katy at somethingkaty

Writer's Pencil by Jo is at Jo Janoski's blog


I hope you enjoyed the journey from Canada. Next week's host will be Russell Ragsdale of Yuckelbel's Canon in Kazakhstan.

I participated in the Ringing in of the Bards, iteration, #7 and tomorrow the site moves on to the next Ringing of the Bards host.

--

come see, comme ca?
absence makes the heart go wander.

be aware of where, uh where, tupperware earrings and rings,
oh wear the wares, are U tonight, why did you leave me wary beware,
I lurched the world over.. caught a round werwolf, he snared a lover
and poof I was wrong.


--

I enter, in no cooler than out,

a steam sauna of a day
leaving myself open to chance
leave the door unlocked
it would take a godly crew
of shirtless men with a ram
(turgid, battering or sacrificial)
to part the swollen wood
from thickened jamb,
out no cooler than in

.
.
.
.wav now

I browse titles of how to manage toxic people
poetry of skill and terrible import(ance) and think
the solution in my hands,
the books read each other and self-annialiate,
leave me to cleaning the floor in peace,
with time leftover to have friends at tea.


--

O'Hara wrote http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2006/06/23/why-i-am-not-a-painter/
Why I am Not a Painter, which you can hear at pō’ĭ-trē

--

show me a bit of baudy

for all the strut, where's the magic touch proof
muscle shirt Cohen verse, kleenexed codpieces
of pity lines, the main thing is what I paid to see
offstage -- not the dance,
the full (round, monty, backle)
naked contact with greatness,
with god.
Now unbuckle the clever fripperies of syn-
tax and sense. Flash me your brilliance. Names?
This ain't no geisha sonnet foreplay. Get me?
Why keep so many good feelings separated
by arbitrary labels -- just a quick general thust,
tingle up a circulation bump, grind your goodies
til I sweat, jill off, chill out, move on. pay? (snort)
fade that to the romantic black you need.

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