Two poems by Kirby Olson are now online at luzmag

& to my delight, there have been some first, brief comments on my chapbook mindfulness

A really beautiful poem by Malachi Black is up at RealPoetik

Yesterday, Adam Fieled made an intruiging comment on Byron & Bernstein

One of the poets to be in luz soon, Alana Madison, started a blog

Big Bridge has a new, seemingly delicious, issue out.

Four poems by Eileen R. Tabios are now online at luzmag

& my own first e-(chap)book, mindfulness, is now online at moria & print copies can be bought via lulu. I want to thank the editor William Allegrezza for a beautiful design. I love that cover.

A mag that arrived in my mail shortly after Ars Interpres was another contributor's copy. This one was the sixth, & presumably last, issue of Rust Buckle (edited by Dustin Williamson, then in Milwaukee) famously known as the after issue. This is a large, skinny, stapled, outstandingly green thing of no more than 18 pages - but some pages - of poets mostly residing in & around Milwaukee, as far as I can tell as there are no bios. So what's to take note of in this lean publication? Well, the things I keep returning to are, for instance; Chuck Stebelton's A Piney Ohio is Inopportune - after Will Oldham, a beautiful fireworks of language & images, Shannon Tharp's As I Leave - after Richard Nixon, from which I draw the following:

This
office -

great
as it is -

mistakes.

Catherine Meng's poem after Berryman is a lovely merriment. Dustin Williamson's poem is a really good pastische & Mary Beth Kressin's A Pub in Milwaukee would probably stand on it's own, without knowledge of Allen Ginsberg's A Supermarket in California.
Rust Buckle is unpretentious & local. & an energizing romp through some mid-western poets having a good time

Three poems by Christopher Rizzo are now online at luzmag

Two poems by Petrus Andersen, translated by guess who, are at the RealPoetikblog

It's probably common knowledge that reading online & reading hardcopy are two entirely different things. This is amply illustrated when confronted with Ars Interpres, edited in Stockholm by Alexander Deriev. The Two Skies issue (number 4/5) arrived in my mail recently (a contributor's copy, so it would be inappropriate to read this as a review). First off, as is often the case the design differs radically between the online & print versions. Secondly most, but not all the contents of the print issue was previously published online. Thirdly, the texts, mostly poems, appear different between the two versions. Some work better online, some work better in print. The prime example of that is my reaction to the three poems by Leonard Schwartz, where the first two poems didn't seem to me to work at all online, but the third one worked really well. Reading the same three poems in print, I get the opposite reaction to them. That probably means I like all three of them fairly well. Some poems that were published online, even by authors whose work I usually enjoy, I didn't even notice until reading the print version, most notably that of the wonderful dutch (mostly) poet Hans C. ten Berge. That said, there is a variety of work in these 320 pages, some art, which I cannot really comment on, essays - one interesting one by Zhang Er, who also has some of the finest poems in the issue, reviews & interviews with Seamus Heaney & Les Murray on their relationships to Joseph Brodsky. John Kinsella is represented both on earth & in heaven (the issue is divided into the two parts The Raw Earth & Unified is Heaven) but it's his earthly poems that strike me. They are extracted from something, a future book maybe, called America or Glow. This is simultaneously an inside & outside view of contemporary US, done with a beautifully balanced mix of almost langpo & narrative stances that I have come to think may be Kinsellas main claim to fame. A poem that would stand out just about anywhere is Lars Ahlströms brilliant, & nearly perfect, translation of the poem Klondike by Petter Lindgren, a poem which when I first read the original virtually assaulted me. I must also make note of the two poems from Texture Notes by the unrelentingly imaginative Sawako Nakayasu & the beautiful mostly travel poems by Michael Speier. Ars Interpres is an almost absurdly ambitious international journal of poetry, translation & art, & this double issue is the most ambitious one so far. & yes, it's well worth getting lost in

Two poems (well, more like a sequence & a poem) by Andy Gricevich are now online at luzmag

Another blog zine really worth checking out is The Duplications.

Also, RealPoetik now has a blog extension

Three poems by Regina Derieva, translated by Frederick Smock are now online at luzmag

In the coming weeks, up until the first week in february, you may look out for new poems by Andy Gricevich, Christopher Rizzo, Eileen R. Tabios, Kirby Olson, jeroen nieuwland & Donna Kuhn

Some random notes. Mondays post on Amys blog was quite a read. Apparently she thinks the likes of yours truly & the people at PFS Post are up to something good. To her, admittedly brief, list of more "official" sites I'd like to add Dusie, edited by Susana Gardner out of Switzerland. A true delight currently reading submissions for the third issue. Also Softblow, edited by Cyril Wong in Singapore. Dusie is interesting in this context as it's editor, like myself, lives far from the majority of her readers. Hence the need for e-mail & the internet to attract submissions as well as readers &, not least importantly, to discuss poetry, politics & life with other practitioners. Yes, community. Without the internet & the possibility (fortunately growing) of electronic submissions I wouldn't have had the relative success I've had so quickly, simply because postage (although cheap here) would have been too exspensive in the long run, both in getting my own scribblings out & in attracting, & responding to, surprisingly many & enjoyable submissions. Not to mention imagining having having to mail out all these copies of paper issues, all of them overseas. Yikes.

Jim Behrle hid these 200 "sonnets" in the archives of Can We Have Our Ball Back? . Some of them are really cool. Yes, he can, when he puts his mind to it. But he takes the term sonnet back to its original meaning of "small sounds". & what's up with the new issue? Will there be no more than this?

Someone really should persuade Tom Beckett to submit these 21 poems for print chapbook publication. It seems that shouldn't be very difficult. Any takers?

Finally, thanks to Jonathan for this, & for highlighting some of the really crazy stuff. It makes me so happy to be an ocean away

Four poems by Amy King are now online at luzmag

A poem by Mark Young is now online at luzmag.

Also look out for new poems by Amy King & Regina Derieva in the next few days.

Ana Bozicevic-Bowling & yours truly will edit RealPoetik in 2006 (it's 13th year, no less). Founded by Sal Salasin in 1994 it has in recent year(s) been edited, & really well, by Kirby Olson after who we now take over. I think it will be fun. For you who don't yet know it, RealPoetik sends out one poem a week via email to subscribers. But all that is said better on the website.

Minnesota may be a truly interesting place if The Impaler is elected governor

Two poems by adam fieled are online at luzmag

First: Wolves (Reve(a)led) by Jonathan Ball is online at luzmag.

Second: I don't know if the name Jonathan Greene was familiar (as in connected with one or more poems) to me before Ron Silliman wrote about him. Now he is. & that's something that will surely make my own writing a little richer.

Third: Two more or less recently discovered magazines - Eucalyptus & the weekly email mag RealPoetik, which is running into its thirteenth year & has an archive worth diving into

A new literary mag has been born. Work is lined up for two posts. Take a look at the submission guidelines.

The law that's in effect as of today that smoking is banned from all work-places seems to be so full of holes as to be, in effect, useless. In the bar where I took my morning coffee there was no noticeable decrease in the number of cigarettes & cigars in use. Walking to Santa Catalina, a ten minute walk, I saw most bars had signs saying they allow smoking. Well, that's how it goes, I suppose, when you make laws you yourself are not so terribly interested in following. Taken to it's extreme, La Ley, as it became known here, would have banned smoking from my room as well, since most of what I do there is read, write & sleep. Hence, a "work"-place.

The beginning of this year, probably february, may also bring the continuation of the recently postponed ludicrous trial against Orhan Pamuk. A trial which is said to be the thread by which the chances for Turkey to even seriously negotiate membership in the E.U. hangs. It's true Turkey has some serious problems with human rights. No more so, but more openly, than any western country. To me there isn't even a question if Turkey should be part of the E.U. Part of it is in europe. & it's a good way to open up to the east &, in the longer run, to the south. What is outright offensive in my eyes, however, is how easily Irsael has been let into europe in, among other things, sports & official cultural events. No questions there, no negotiations. Then, of course, Israel has no problem with human rights, Israel simply pisses on them.

The life of this blog will continue. A series of personal geography started with two parts in october will continue. There will be more reviews of mags & chapbooks, mostly. Both the print & online varieties. The first two will be of Ars Interpres "Two Skies" issue & Stephen Vincents Triggers (Shearsman,2005), they will be posted shortly. Maybe also some more ambitious essays.