Bryson Literary Society

2011-02-12T17:46:00.001-06:00

On Creativity, the Muse, Whatever

2011-01-19T21:27:00.000-06:00

Ballooning

2010-11-11T20:47:00.002-06:00

This is a short story/collective narrative composed by Bryson members:

Alaina Behan, Clay Dawson, Elizabeth Stoltenberg , Megan Doyle, Lauren Anderson, Morgan Whipps, Ashley Hart, Sarah Means, Travis Freeman, Kurt Hare, Takeshi Takahashi, Kelli Trapnell, Nathan Pesina, and Chad Gallman

Each had one minute to contribute a paragraph or two, this was the final (awesome) result:

The large handed man reaches into his box of unborn balloons. Picking a blue one at random, he gives it helium life. Despite the oversized hands the balloon salesman possesses, he is able to nimbly manipulate a string securely around the neck of his product. He hands the balloon to the eagerly waiting, appropriately sized hands of a child customer who looks up to him and says…

“what is this, sir?” and there was a note of disappointment in the poor child’s voice. He had asked for a poodle, but had received a sword. “Deal with it,” the over-size handed man said sweetly.

“But what do I do with this?” the boy turned to his mother. With the practiced hand of solving similar problems, she pulled a long, thin needle out of her purse and popped the balloon. The boy and his mother walked off, hand in hand, each humming a different tune.

But this is only the beginning of things. Our balloon – deflated, flaccid, and defeated – lies prostrate upon the pavement. Marcel, fresh from work at the chewing factory, happens to have a misplaced stick stuck upon his sole. And to it, our friend the balloon joins.

Knowing that helium friends have not turned out well in the past for Marcel the Shell with shoes on, he quickly exchanges pleasantries but finds he has more in common with this new acquaintance, the bus driver taking a break on the bench along the sidewalk, bespeckled with chewed pieces of gum at least a million years old who swears that he’s seen two UFOs and met John Lennon.

The bus driver was almost reluctant in telling the shell, “Hey uh, Marcel the shell, you have a balloon stuck to your shoe.” Marcel was dumbfounded, though he certainly was not going to deny the fact. “I most certainly do.”

Marcel decided to keep the balloon on his shoe thinking that it was a cool idea to have a balloon.

Suddenly the balloon began to speak.

“I am all knowing; ask me what you wish.” Marcel considered this and wondered why this event was happening to him.

“Um, hi,” he squeaked like a small puppy whimpering for its meal. The bus stopped on Pittsburg avenue, the driver charging out chasing those “damn aliens” once more. Marcel waddled off the bus and hopped, the balloon sticking to the puke green linoleum floor of the bus.

He was immediately overtaken by a feeling of sadness. He missed his new friend terribly. When he thought about the minutes they had shared together, he nearly wept with the remembrance. He hoped for a similar intervention in the future, but his hopes were atrophied from years of loneliness. His only solace lay in the teachings of Zarathustra, which he had known since birth.

When he arrived several hours later in San Francisco, he eyed the big screen that was blaring in the middle of downtown. Severus Snape glowered at the traffic below. His nose rose hawk-like from beneath the strands of greasy, dark hair. “We must end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” he whispered silkily. A shiver ran down Marcel’s spine, yet he was strangely persuaded to go back and find the all-knowing balloon. Suddenly his mission was clear…form his alliance to this new, mysterious, greasy character. Severus Snape. His over-emphasized, British-accented words dripping dark from his lips. “We must end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”…his cloak swept over the floor with every sudden movement convincing Marcel to sneeze heartily.

A sudden change came over his tiny shell body. His one eyeball popped out and a giant purple balloon swelled out of the opening, lifting him up into the air.

“STOP! STOP!’ hissed Snape, who apparently was no longer dead like some crazy lady namexd JK said he was. “THE MUGGLES WILL SEE YOU!”

And then, as the balloon man with the misshapen hands wrapped up his story, a college student wearing a green polo and khaki pants (although it signifies bad family relations if you dream about khaki) said, “WHAT? HOW THE HECK DID IT GET THERE?”

And he got the balloon man fired. And the world was completely devoid of stories.

But somewhere, in the distance, a small shell floated from a giant purple balloon….

Once Upon a Time...a blogger could not think of a good title

2010-10-26T15:38:00.002-05:00

Hey Bryson blog followers!

Would just like to check in with a few things:

Book club is still up and running, we're next meeting Thursday, November 4th, at 6pm in the TCU Bookstore Cafe and we'll be reading the 4th essay from Sloane Crosley's "How Did You Get This Number". That essay is "It's Always Home You Miss". Hope to see you all there!

Thanks to those who submitted to the eleven40seven, this semester we received just over 120 submissions! Look for the journal to be released in early December and start preparing your submissions for Spring 2011!

The next Bryson meeting is set for November 11th. We are still planning on seeing "Howl" at the Angelika, expect a date to be set for that within the next few days!

Also please join the Bryson group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92106060552

And follow the eleven40seven on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eleven40seven

See you guys around campus!

Fall 2010-Bryson Literary Society & eleven40seven

2010-10-12T10:10:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone! Great to back from a blog-atus (that's a "blog hiatus" by the way).

We have lots of news that I'm going to try to run through in an organized, efficient way:

1. Bryson Literary Society is back and better than ever this year. We are currently sitting at 21 total members and planning a number of fun, awesome events for this semester including a trip to the Modern Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Center in Dallas. If you have any questions about joining this illustrious society please contact our President, Chad Gallman (c.gallman@tcu.edu) or our Faculty Advisor, Dr. Curt Rode (c.rode@tcu.edu).

2. ELEVEN40SEVEN!!! Yes eleven40seven season is upon us. And as we all know, submission time is the most wonderful time of the year (step off Christmas). Our deadline for submissions this year is OCTOBER 18th at 11:47 PM. Please submit and encourage your friends to submit and their friends too, even if you don't really like their friends, we want all the submissions we can get. For rules on submitting please visit: http://www.1147.tcu.edu/submit.html

3. Book club! Book club is back as well this year. We're reading Sloane Crosley's book of essays "How Did You Get This Number". Our next meeting will be Thursday, October 21st, at 6pm in the TCU Bookstore Cafe. We'll be discussing the 2nd and 3rd essay of the book. Come for stimulating conversation with your peers.

That's all for now. Look for our next blog post soon!

eleven40seven Spring 2010 Release Party!

2010-04-11T14:27:00.001-05:00

Poetry Reading – Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon

2010-03-12T10:03:00.000-06:00

Fort Worth, TX — March 16, 2010 — Alex Lemon will read from his newest book of poetry, Fancy Beasts (Milkweed Editions, $16.00) beginning at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, April 1 at the TCU Barnes & Noble Bookstore located on the corner of South University Drive and West Berry Street on the Texas Christian University campus.

Synopsis

In Fancy Beasts, the author takes on California, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism — in short, the modern American media culture, which provides obscene foil for his personal legacies of violence and violation. This pivotal book captures the turning point in a life of abuse, in which the recovering victim/perpetrator puzzles through the paradigm of son-to-husband-to-father. Frenetic, hilarious, and fearless, these poems are a workout — vigorous and raw. Yet they are also composed and controlled, pared down and sculpted, with a disarming narrative simplicity and directness. Even when dealing with toxic content, the point of view is always genuine and trustworthy. This stunning achievement marks Alex Lemon’s best work yet.

Author Biography

Alex Lemon is a poet and memoirist. He is the author of Happy (Scribner), the poetry collections Mosquito (Tin House Books), Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions), Fancy Beasts (Milkweed Editions) and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press). His writing has appeared in Esquire, Best American Poetry 2008, Satellite Convulsions, Tin House, The Bloomsbury Review, The Southern Review, AGNI and jubilat, among others. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He is co-editor of LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation and is a frequent book reviewer. He teaches at Texas Christian University and lives digitally at www.alexlemon.com.

eleven40seven Cover Artist in Newspaper

2010-02-24T21:09:00.002-06:00

eleven40seven's fall 2009 cover artist was on the front cover of the TCU Daily Skiff today. Check out the article and submit to eleven40seven by March 10!

http://media.www.tcudailyskiff.com/media/storage/paper792/news/2010/02/24/News/Stroke.Of.Genius.Sri.Lankan.Student.Grows.Into.Prolific.Artist-3877596.shtml#cp_article_tools

2010-02-23T22:39:00.001-06:00

Hash Out Your Crazies by Submitting to the Next Issue of eleven40seven

2010-02-23T17:30:00.001-06:00

eleven40seven: Submit by 3/10/10

2010-02-22T01:12:00.004-06:00

Watch eleven40seven's new video and submit any poetry, prose, or art by March 10, 2010. Spread the word!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oj9q05DG68

Lucille Clifton: We'll Miss You

2010-02-16T21:56:00.000-06:00

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2010/02/poet-lucille-clifton-dies-at-age-73.html

Submit! Deadline: March 10, 2010.

2010-02-09T09:13:00.001-06:00

Write 'Em!

2010-01-31T18:40:00.000-06:00

Haiku Poem Contest

The TCU Purple Bike Program will be attaching sponsorship signs on the bikes and will also include a different haiku on each sign. The theme of the haiku must be related to bikes, the environment, or sustainability. The winners of the contest will have their haiku and name printed on a bike sponsorship sign. Submit by email one or more haikus to:

Keith Whitworth at k.whitworth@tcu.edu (PBP Program Coordinator)

Deadline: February 12, 2009 at 5:00 p.m.

A haiku contains three lines that do not rhyme. The syllables are traditionally broken up this way: Line One: Five Syllables - Line Two: Seven Syllables - Line Three: Five Syllables. Have fun with this and if you have any questions, please contact Dr. Whitworth by email or 817-257-5941.

Live Green, Ride Purple!

maybe he was on to something

2009-11-17T16:52:00.001-06:00

JACK KEROUAC

BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
LIST OF ESSENTIALS

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
Youre a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

As ever,
Jack [Kerouac]

Jack Kerouac "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, copyright © 1958, 1977, 1983. Grey Fox Press.

http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/kerouac.html

the REAL dead poets society

2009-11-01T21:10:00.006-06:00

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_15996/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=EFebbaI0

Founder of Dead Poets Society visits bards' graves

DAVID SHARP
Published: October 31, 2009

CUNDY'S HARBOR, Maine (AP) - On the big screen, the leader of the Dead Poets Society at an all-boys prep school was an inspirational teacher played by Robin Williams.

In real life, it's a balding amateur poet who drives around in his "Poemobile," visiting and documenting the graves of dead poets and calling attention to their works.

Walter Skold, founder of the Dead Poets Society of America, just finished a three-month road trip in which he visited the graves of 150 poets in 23 states. Skold boasts that he set a literary land speed record of 1.66 gpd (graves per day) over the course of his 15,000-mile journey.

While his graveside poetry readings - and occasional cemetery sleepovers - evoke the macabre, Skold insists his intentions are honorable.

"It's not really a morbid project but rather a way to honor our literary forebearers and to historically resurrect their works," Skold said.

His reports, which sometimes include offbeat tombstone art, are posted online; he encourages others to get out and find the graves of dead poets and to post their video and photos online.

Skold, 49, of Freeport, founded Dead Poets Society of America a year ago, leaving his job as a public school technology teacher to pursue his passions of poetry and photography. For his trip, he bought a used cargo van with a rack for cameras and supplies, shelves for books and a desk that, in a pinch, doubles as a bed.

Over the course of his 90-day journey, Skold visited the gravesites of giants of the poetry world including Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as lesser-known poets like Dudley Randall, whose Broadside Press published many leading African-American writers.

He's making a film documentary called "Finding Frost: Digging Up America's Dead Poets." Next year, he hopes to scout out America's dead poets buried in Europe.

He was especially intrigued by poets who've been forgotten altogether. He calls them the "doubly dead" because they suffered a second death when their works were "slowly consigned to literary oblivion." Some of those include Madison Cawein, Eugene Fields, Virginia Boyle and Elizabeth Hollister Frost, he said.

Skold also discovered that the final resting places of many poets - dead or doubly dead - are unknown. In Maine alone, he found 29 poets whose final resting places are a mystery to the public.

"So many of these individual poets have such interesting stories and such interesting lives that I really feel it's a shame that they've been lost to our literary imagination or our literary history," he said. "I'm trying to bring back people's works and lives who have value and who have been forgotten for one reason or another."

The Library of Congress believes Skold's effort is the first such literary undertaking, said Peter Armenti, digital reference specialist whose focus is poetry.

Many of the poets' grave locations are well-documented, but only to scholars and poetry buffs, Armenti said. Skold's effort attempts to make the poets' information accessible to the general public, and in doing so generate some interest in America's poets.

"I just think it's a fascinating project," Armenti said. "I'm glad somebody's doing it."

Skold's project has the blessing of nine state poets laureate, each of whom was enlisted to participate in poetry readings during his road trip.

South Carolina's poet laureate joined Skold at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston for a reading of a poem by Henry Timrod, whose work is believed to have inspired Bob Dylan.

"It's quirky and interesting in the best way," Marjory Wentworth said from South Carolina. "My hope, long-term, is that it's going to bring people to poetry who might not otherwise be interested. Anything that increases the audience for poetry is a good thing."

In Tennessee, poet laureate Margaret Vaughn said she respects Skold's ambitious goal. She, too, has been documenting poets' graves, as well as writing original poetry for each.

"I know what it takes. I've been doing it for 10 years. He's got the passion. That's what it takes to do this, passion," she said from her studio in Bell Buckle, Tenn.

On a recent afternoon, Skold was in Cundy's Harbor at the burial site of Robert P. Tristram Coffin, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1936. The Poemobile, named for Edgar Allan Poe, was parked across the street with the bumper sticker, "I brake for old graveyards."

Wearing a T-shirt from Poe's Tavern in South Carolina, where Poe spent a year in the Army, Skold quickly set a video camera on a tripod and then used a rake from a neighbor and a copy of Coffin's poem "An Old Man Raking Leaves" to create tombstone art on a brisk autumn day.

He likes to surprise with his tombstone art.

For example, he placed a scarlet "H'' on the tombstone of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who penned "The Scarlet Letter." At Longfellow's memorial, he set fire to a portrait of the poet's second wife to underscore her fiery death, which tormented the poet and inspired "The Cross of Snow."

Skold encourages others to take up his cause on All Saint's Day by going to graveyards, preferably during the day, to document poets' graves and read their poetry.

Visiting a graveyard at night can be a dicey proposition and requires special permission. Skold learned that lesson the hard way last Halloween when he was nearly arrested in Malden, Mass., where he and his son lit torches at the tomb of the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan author of the "Day of Doom."

"Little did I know that there was a little woman who watches over the cemetery and she told the police that there were people performing satanic rituals," he said.

___

On the Net:

Dead Poets Society of America http://www.deadpoes.org/

Fiction Reading by Glen Pourciau on Oct. 20. Be there.

2009-10-18T17:21:00.006-05:00

What: Fiction Reading by Glen Pourciau and TCU students.

Where: BLUU Ballroom C

When: Tuesday, October 20th @ 7:00.

Why: It’s the National Day of Writing. You like writing and may be a writer yourself.

Need an event to attend for expanding your literary horizon? Tuesday, Oct. 20--the National Day of Writing--is just around the corner, and do we have an event for you. Glen Pourciau is a young, local writer who’s already establishing a substantial reputation by publishing in some of the nation’s best journals, including the Paris Review, Antioch Review, Barcelona Review, Mississippi Review, New England Review, and Best of the Web 2009. He will be reading from his short story collection, INVITE, following four TCU students reading their own fiction prose and poetry.

Here is a link to an interview by BookFox with Pourciau from January of this year, if you are interested. http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/2009/01/glen-pourciau-interview.html

Please join us for this fabulous reading adventure and stop by our table to pick up information about all the other fun things going on in the English department.

Submit!

2009-10-17T08:29:00.003-05:00

TCUnderground on the National Day of Writing

2009-10-16T18:40:00.005-05:00

Jason Bredle

2009-10-07T18:12:00.001-05:00

The Idiot's Guide to Faking Your Own Death and Moving to Mexico

Every few seconds I check the Bible
to see what Jesus is saying about me. The answer
is always nothing. Sometimes

he's condemning me to eternal damnation,
but usually nothing. Tonight I am alone,
wearing my sex shorts, adrift amongst

the black suburban pools of eternal damnation.
No, I have not been in love. Yes,
I have been in love. I am speaking the language

in which no and yes mean the same, in which
apricot and goodbye mean the same.
I am remembering the kudzu of the awful season,

sitting with you beside the swamp for the last
time and neither of us knowing it was the last
time but yes the glass was hello and dragonfly.

Was it a blessing? They say so in this language.
Others say this language is dying, or already
dead. I speak it, nonetheless, while eating

apricots in the evening of eternal damnation
where you yell at the map and cut your wrist
and there is a darkness here that I have only shared

with my cat, like that guy in the movie who writes
graphic erotica and goes crazy. One says
pain near the black pool of everything,

my back is covered with wax. Every few
seconds I check the Bible to see what Jesus
is saying about me. The answer is always nothing,

aside from the time he lambasted the outfit I wore
to the People's Choice Awards. A green tuxedo.
Tonight, I am adrift in the suburb of the black sky,

I am speaking the language in which love
and apricot mean the same, in which pool
and death mean the same. I said goodbye

in a suburb like this, years ago. I said
goodbye in a suburb like this, years ago.
According to Hercules, if we make an angel

out of ourselves, that is what we are; if we make
a devil out of ourselves, that too is what
we are. See, this is what I am getting at.

It is the awful season and I am speaking
the language in which violence and God mean
the same, in which blood and dragonfly mean

the same. I am in the orchard of eternity
picking the goodbyes of damnation, I am licking
your dragonfly blood and speaking the language

in which pain means hello. A black pool,
a green sky. That is to say, each moment
without you is a vacant airport, each moment

without you is a glass apricot. Every few seconds
I check the Bible to see what Jesus is saying
about me. The answer is always nothing. Except

today, it's a bunch of weird stuff about how
I'm falling into a black pool in some suburb,
maybe Palatine or something, and just like that,

I've gone forever. I know! That's what I thought
too. This is the story, but in this language, this
is not the story. I am eating red ice,

harvesting a field of knives. I am speaking
the language in which heaven and earth mean
the same, in which sky and white mean the same.

O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you. Even
if you do not listen to it, just know, this
is how I have always felt about you. And I

am possessed. And I am a fatalist. Do you see
these bruises? Do you see these bruises?
They are a sad bouquet. They are a beautiful

scrapbook. I am floating. I am in love.
I am dead. On a perfect night, my back is covered
with wax. O Violence, but I did not want this hello.

O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you.
Even if You do not listen to it, just know, I made it
only for you.

TCUnderground twitter

2009-09-21T15:02:00.001-05:00

if you follow us, we'll follow you.

http://twitter.com/eleven40seven

Rick Bass Reading

2009-09-21T11:22:00.001-05:00

Friends--

Please join me for a stellar reading! And please pass this information on to students and friends. The reading is free!

Sept 22: Rick Bass, novelist/environmentalist

Reading at UTD at 7:30 pm in the Performance Hall

Rick Bass is the author of over twenty books. His first short story
collection, The Watch, set in Texas, won the PEN/Nelson Algren Award, and
his 2002 collection, The Hermit’s Story, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book
of the Year. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and
the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short
Stories. He was a finalist for The Story Prize in 2007 for his short story
collection The Lives of Rocks. He was a finalist for the 2008 National Book
Critics Circle Award (autobiography) for Why I Came West (2008). His most
recent book, The Wild Marsh, about his life in rural Montana was published
earlier this year.

You can read an excerpt from it at:
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200904-omag-rick-bass

Read more about the event at:
http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/events/detail.html?id=1220068171

Susan Briante, MFA, PhD
Assistant Professor
Aesthetic Studies
University of Texas at Dallas
800 W. Campbell Road--JO 31
Richardson, TX 75081-3021

http://www.ah.utdallas.edu/people/sbriante.html

http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/books/briante/briante.htm

Dear Modifications by Trey Sager

2009-09-20T19:12:00.002-05:00

You are the following dangerous words: 1. heart 2. love 3. mind 4. beauty and 5. eyes
(I don't consider beauty a failure, but that's just my opinion).
I wanted to save you because you are all so hackneyed;
maybe some of the words that typically surround you, I thought,
could give you some life?
So for example, for eyes, I wrote: four eyes, private eyes, snake eyes,
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and Don't Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes.
For love I listed Hiroshima, From Russia with Love,
Love and Rockets, Love Is a Battlefield and You Can't Buy Me Love.
Maybe you were more political than I realized.
I subtracted you from these phrases, then scrambled your neighbors
into what I called a poem, but the end result was a solipsistic,
awkward definition for each of you
(I think I was trying to do something semiotic).
When I was about seven or eight, I found a blue jay with a broken wing in some nearby woods.
I ran home and told my mom, who gave me a shoe box and a pair of ski gloves
to handle him. My mom rushed us to the vet, and I felt so relieved.
But when we called later that afternoon to check on our patient, the vet had put him to sleep;
there was nothing he could do, he said.
Plato, in the Republic, says that poets must be exiled.
Shelley calls poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
I remember the blue jay's eyes, looking up at me through the foot-length ferns
like I was going to kill him.
Just the exact opposite, I thought, cradling him in ski gloves.

(emailed to me by Tyler Hall)

Collaborative Event from Spring 2009

2009-09-18T17:42:00.051-05:00

What is eleven40seven?

Last semester, we had an amazing

turnout for the first "Texas Creative Underground:Breaking" collaborative event.
The event consisted of groups containing creative writers, acoustic guitar players, percussionists, and/or photographers, most of whom had never worked together before. Their mission: to create an original collaborative piece by intersecting the different creative talents in their respective groups.

Mission accomplished.
(Above, to the left) Here are the officers present for the Spring 2009 Release Party of eleven40seven. Tina Le, Dr. Chantel Langlinais (coordinator for the event), Dr. Curt Rode (in back, our faculty advisor), Ashley Tambunga, Landry Weatherston, Taylor Yarborough and Sarah Dozier.

Here are three of the production managers for the eleven40seven magazine: Sarah Dozier, Landry Weatherston, and Taylor Yarborough.

(Right) From musicians to poets, our collaborate participants pose for us. (back row, Left to Right, includes: Tanner Trigg, Rebecca Bookman, Mike Garcia, Kelli Trapnell, Clint Church, Takeshi Takahashi, Jennifer Brown, Melissa Crutchfield

Front row, Left to Right, includes: Liz Rector, Anahita Kalianivala, Kelsey Svirsky)

(Below) Guitarists play and sing as images appear on the backdrop. Although the camera didn't allow for much recording time, the girl in front of the black band stand was reading her own poem in the midst of all this. It was a blend of visual, audible and literary bliss.

We anticipate the next Texas Creative Underground collaborative event to be held December 4th. More information to come.

BLS/TCU is Off and Running

2009-09-11T15:26:00.004-05:00

The first meeting of the BLS / Texas Creative Underground is behind us, and, damn, but it went well. We have a lot of cool things on the table for the coming year (the next issue of eleven40seven, the next Collaborative Event, more blogging, more promotion, more hostile takeovers of various creative endeavors around campus). It's gonna be sweet.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday, September 17th @ 6:30, again in the New Media Writing Studio (Rickel 38). If you came for the first meeting, come back and bring 2 friends. If you weren't able to make the first meeting, you're forgiven. Come next time (and bring 2 friends).

Questions? Hit us up at eleven40seven@gmail.com.

Something a little freaky for the new school year

2009-08-25T09:51:00.003-05:00

I have no idea where this comes from (I don't think it's from a TCU student, but who knows?). But the title of the piece is "Eleven 40 seveN." Strange coincidence? You decide. Reminds me of a Tool video I saw a long time ago on MTV. Watch at your own risk...

texas creative under:ground breaking

2009-04-21T16:05:00.006-05:00

eleven40seven will release its spring 2009 issue on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at the new issue release party & collaborative event.

This event is an opportunity for TCU students to share their creative work (poetry, prose, music, art, photography, dance) and to collaborate with other students in the exhibition. You can read a piece of poetry with a musical accompaniment, or show a series of photographs while you read a short story.

If you’re interested in performing, email us at eleven40seven@gmail.com, and be sure to come by Moudy (141n) from 8-10 pm to pick up your copy of the new issue!

cover of spring 2009 issue of eleven40seven revealed

2009-04-21T15:52:00.003-05:00

eleven40seven is pleased to reveal the cover art for the spring 2009 issue! "fountain" was painted by simone riford, a tcu undergrad from hawaii. if this whets your whistle, be sure to pick up a copy of 1147 starting may 2, 2009 at the issue release party.

Image Spark

2009-04-20T22:00:00.006-05:00

Image Spark allows you to save any image you find on the internet by simply right clicking the image and it will be saved on a database. The website is free, and you only need to create a profile to get started. Yeah I know it is nothing new or exotic, but it solves the age old problem of losing something once you save it. So make yourself a profile and go infringe on some copyrights.

Hit the link to get started:
http://www.imgspark.com/

Jon Edwards Photography

2009-04-20T15:10:00.004-05:00

Jon Edwards is an American teenager with a interesting photographic style. Follow the link to see more photos if you like the one above:
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2008/09/jon-edwards_10.html

ezra pound

2009-04-17T01:56:00.001-05:00

"good writers are those who keep the language efficient. that is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear."

-ezra pound

is he right?

Charles Wright

2009-04-09T09:48:00.000-05:00

Two new poems.

MFA Programs

2009-04-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

For any of you thinking about getting an MFA in CW.

Dear Camera

2009-04-09T08:41:00.000-05:00

Very cool new journal.

museo del prado

2009-04-07T16:54:00.003-05:00

The absolutely phenomenal Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain, has collaborated with Google Earth to create photos of some of the museum's most well-known masterpieces. The resolution on these paintings is tremendous; you can see every brushstroke and tear drop as clearly as if you were standing in front of the painting. I went to the Prado last fall, but seeing these images so closely and clearly is a completely different level of experience altogether. If you have ANY interest in art, please look at this masterpiece of 21st century technology.

Coldfront

2009-03-29T15:59:00.003-05:00

If you like reviews of new poetry collections, check this out. Mark Bibbin's piece on good music is very nice.

Paul Otremba

2009-03-23T10:57:00.001-05:00

"Haute Cuisine"

inspired

2009-03-10T17:28:00.002-05:00

"All poets' wives have

Rotten lives

Their husbands look at

Them like knives."

-Delmore Schwartz, American Poet

I've always wondered: do truly great poets (or writers or what have you) have lives full of inspirational people and events, or are they simply skilled at turning the humdrum of everyday existence into something extraordinary? I don't mean that in a manipulative, melodramatic way, but in an elevated-perception kind of way, where poets are gifted (cursed?) with experiencing their world through the extremes that most people comfortable with shades of gray can't seem to fathom. Maybe a few poets are adept at stirring up trouble/inspiration, and maybe a few more are just lucky and trouble/inspiration comes to them, but I don't really think that's the case for the majority.

I want to (and in some sense, must) believe that there is a gift. Some are born with it and some may learn it, but all poets have it. It's more than finding something quirky and lacing it with pretty words; it's uncovering other realms entirely, partially for the benefit of those who cannot see them but with help.

Last day to Submit

2009-03-06T10:41:00.003-06:00

Today is the LAST day to submit to eleven40seven for the spring 2009 edition!

All submissions need to be in by midnight (but we'll be flexible as long as it's in before saturday morning)

Please go to the How to Submit page of the current web companion.

While your there look around and enjoy!

Thanks and I can't wait to read your work!

Release day

2009-03-06T09:09:00.003-06:00

Alan Moore on Watchman, etc.

Excerpt:
"If you approach comics as a poor relation to film, you are left with a movie that does not move, has no soundtrack and lacks the benefit of having a recognizable movie star in the lead role."

Notes from the Bunker & Susan Parr

2009-03-05T17:06:00.006-06:00

Dear Readers,

Submit to eleven40seven! Do it, do it now! Also, just in time for spring break, Susan Parr's first collection of poems, PACIFIC SHOOTER, arrived in the mail. It is a great book--wickedly smart, a roller-coaster of sonics and thrills. Check it out. (Full disclosure: I did write a blurb for this book, so I'm biased)

FORMAL MANNERS

To be read in the voice of Björk

Imagine the wail a belly constructs— 

some dim yell, amped into yodel. 

Quick—it comes up in the pipe— 

it jostles the throat.

As it erupts, imagine the wail  

consumed—a bygone polyploidy,  

spiraling back into its author— 

cancelled bruit shooting downslope  

into the stacks; fading to an eerie

ciceronian babble—to a companionable 

music, written on the wet pancreas.

This is the torrent and the absorbent craft.

THIS IS NOT A LEMON

But its representation. An ephemera, 

Scoop of one, cool, supine on a plate. 

Let's say winter had its way with the lemon. 

It pipes up now and then like a sequin 

When the spoon catches light, catches 

Sugar-and lemon ice; shows 

The surprisingly green frail face.

This is not lemon: though lemonish, 

Its color is wet—yet less so in the melting 

Facets—an exasperating lemonlessness— 

Disappearing fact. Taste a bite. 

If that's lemon inside the ice— 

Why is it lime-like in this light?

submission deadline

2009-03-02T17:07:00.002-06:00

Hi all!
This Friday (March 6th. 2009 at midnight) is the FINAL deadline for submitting to eleven40seven for the spring 2009 issue.
For guidelines go to www.1147.tcu.edu/v8submit.html
We accept work by TCU undergraduates.
Poetry
Fiction
Combination of the two (no idea how that would work but it would be cool!)
Digital ART (please we need lots!)
Basically anything creative you can present in digital format (pictures, words, movies, etc)

Remember March 6th. Big day. Get your stuff in.

-Sarah

www.1147.tcu.edu/v8submit.html

An excerpt from Catia Chien:

2009-02-27T18:52:00.001-06:00

madame bovary by gustave flaubert

2009-02-26T17:55:00.002-06:00

"Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candor of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars."

1 play. 24 hours.

2009-02-24T14:34:00.001-06:00

Alpha Psi Omega Presents:

***One Day Only Play Festival***
24 hours and the shows go up!

Friday March 7th at 8p.m. – Everything starts!
The writers will have 12 hours to write a play that is about 10 minutes long!

Saturday March 7th at 8am – The writers will turn in their plays, which will turn around and be giving to the directors who will cast the shows.

During the day actors will memorize their lines and blocking.
Each play will get some time during the day to work in Moudy 141N (where the shows will be performed).

Remember that this is truly just 24 hours!

The shows will be performed Saturday March 7th at 8p.m. in Moudy 141N.

***We are going to need people to write the plays, direct the plays and act in the plays.***
A sign up sheet will be up on the Theatre callboard starting Monday March 2nd and stay up till Wednesday March 11th near the LaLonnie Lehman Lobby in Ed Landreth Hall.

You can sign up to be a writer, a director, or an actor, also, if you would like to just help out, please sign up to just help out!!

If you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact Hilary Davis @ 806-928-6212 or e-mail @ hilary.m.davis@tcu.edu.

8 Manifestos

2009-02-24T12:54:00.003-06:00

Poetry Can Be Any Damn Thing It Wants

Introduction to a collection of eight manifestos commemorating the centennial of Italian futurists.

by Mary Ann Caws

In 1909, pamphlets were dropped over the town of Milan containing Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, the centennial of which we are celebrating. Everything about this piece was exciting, its pace, its over-the-top scenery:

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits. . . .

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars.

Nothing is slow in this manifesto of speedy Futurism: “‘Let’s go!’ I said. ‘Friends, away! Let’s go!’” I love that kind of exalted certainty about a showy (manifest) endeavor. Of course, we have the right to ironize about the over-the-topness — who among us would so exaggerate the style and so magnify the substance as to make a larger-than-life-size poster, pointing at itself as a deictic genre? Look! Here! Now!

Tristan Tzara, Papa-Dada himself, lays down the rules in 1918, and not just for Dada: “To proclaim a manifesto you have to want: A.B.C., thunder against 1, 2, 3.”

Tongue-in-cheek or not: how nice not to know. There’s something about parody that’s immensely engaging. Look at a few passages from the grandly parodic manifestos written for this issue of Poetry: they are fun, funny, and somehow right on target. And, on top of that, reminiscent of other manifestos and events. Take this passage by Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr (for Hate Socialist Collective):

When we say the manifesto we mean poetry and Poetry and poets and our own pathetic selves.

And so like you, oh Poetry, we propose to reanimate the manifesto. We will first require the following things: a century of revolutions. Delight and terror. Shit on the curatorial. Shit on bankers and trusts. Shit on ourselves.

This call out for shit sends me right back to the beginning of Jarry’s Ubu Roi: “merdre” was itself revolutionary. And think how the Dada excremental emphasis decorated Mr. Antipyrine’s Manifesto of 1918: “We want to shit in different colors to ornament the zoo of art of all the consulate flags.” Imagine the time when André Breton visited Picasso’s studio, saw a small picture that fascinated him, with a spot of something indefinable in its center. What is that, he asked the painter, who replied that it was the excrement of children having eaten cherries and their pits . . . and Breton went home to dream about a mountain of gleaming brown stuff, with flies upon it. Glorious, he said. And at the Brooklyn Museum, Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary with dung, a traditional form of homage—so offensive to then-Mayor Giuliani. How super to offend someone with an homage, especially an institutional someone.

Manifestos are not only bearers of opposition to other movements and bygone days. They bear within themselves an oppositional turn, characteristic of the genre. Michael Hofmann maintains: “Poetry is delayed, instant; unending, brief; electric, tiny. Each poem is an insurrection against the world before it existed—or a desertion from it.” All the contraries meet here, just as they did in Dada, where the yes and the no met on street corners, and in surrealism, where life and death, waking and sleeping, merged in the doors swinging back and forth . . .

Manifestos can do any damned thing they want: they can run on and on, stop short, be fragmented or in order, or in an order which they themselves mock. Joshua Mehigan enumerates the now-ness:

We are here now.
Our aesthetics is empirically grounded.

And continues with an against-ness to past-ness:

History will forget you and salute us.
Here you are, and here is oblivion.
This is the final manifesto, and the only one.

Whatever a manifesto claims, it has most surely to have the consciousness of being the only one, right now, forget the past—like Marinetti’s turning his back on Venice in “Past-Loving Venice.”

But the back-turning in no way rules out the comic use of reference, often depending quite simply on the reader. Try this one, which stands—or seems to, to this reader—in immediate salute to Frank O’Hara. It is D.A. Powell’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” which begins with the small fish we have seen swimming elsewhere:

The thing about sardines when you buy them in a can: they are fairly uniform in size and in flavor; their individual identities have disappeared into the general fishiness of the soybean oil . . . and one forgets a sardine quickly after one has partaken of it. . . .

Write a manifesto. Don’t you see that it’s too small to keep? Throw it back.

How can we not think of Frank O’Hara’s poem for Michael Goldberg, about sardines and oranges?

My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

Which leads us right over to O’Hara’s delicious “Personism,” mocking the grand style and the great moment: “It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959” (See, another lunch poem). Informality wins the day and the brass ring. Here’s to the manifesto: beginning with the manus, or Latin for hand — so, handcrafted — and then a fest (from festus) for its tight-fisted grip on whatever occasion it might be. Like this one.

The Final Manifesto

First in a series of eight manifestos.

by Joshua Mehigan

We see you.
We know who you are.
Your ideas are worthless.
Your aesthetic is stupid.
Your “technique” is a welter of narcissism, superstition, and habit.
All your little tiny ideas, all your whoring attempts at creation, and you yourself are nothing, nobody wants you, we despise you, it’s in our nature.
You should be kept as a pet.
You are a Philistine, the Paul Bunyan of decadence, an acromegalic fraud.
You are a minnow, a speck, a stain.
The genre humain is sick, and you are to blame.
You are a necrophiliac.
You are a museum of irrelevance.
It will take years to make Art vital and important again.
You are from this moment forbidden.
As the Italians say, Parla quando piscia la gallina.
We are here now.
Our aesthetics is empirically grounded.
Our taste will be raised to principle.
You and your band of jays will be flushed out.
Yes, Art is resurrected today: Victory is ours!
History will forget you and salute us.
Here you are, and here is oblivion.
This is the final manifesto, and the only one.

Manifesto of the Flying Mallet

Second in a series of eight manifestos.

by Michael Hofmann

Poetry is—as the poet said, though his subject was butterflies—an army of stragglers. Contemporaries, aeons, and cultures apart slog wordlessly through the mud together, not at all pally, not at all like Virgil and Dante. There’s no uniform, no team shirt, no battle or plan of battle, no weapons, no organization, no hierarchy, no ranks or badges except for homemade ones that don’t count, enemies and detractors everywhere. Its colors you should think twice before rallying around (I don’t know what they are, perhaps sable on sable), and its only cavalry is the reader, and there’s only one of him or her, sitting at home minding his or her own business, without a horse to hand, or a thought of you. There are plenty of fellow travelers, whom you can tell from their air of confidence and impunity, and because they tend to get there faster. (Even though of course there is no “there.”)—How can I call anyone to the barricades?

What really matters in relation to poetry has probably never been said—Ezra Pound’s “logopoeia” (doing things with words) the nearest thing. All there is is confusion, pretense, contradiction, and instinct. Most of what proposes itself—or is hailed or dismissed—as poetry at any given time probably isn’t. Poetry is soluble intelligence, but it reserves to itself the right on occasion to be stupid. (And sometimes it is nothing but feeling or eyesight or glossolalia or journalism.) Poetry is subtle, but sometimes “as subtle as a flying mallet,” as the man says. Poetry isn’t about rules or about infractions, but there is something by definition rebellious in its use of speech for its own purposes. Poetry may be effective or ineffectual, but it is never overly designing. Poetry is delayed, instant; unending, brief; electric, tiny. Each poem is an insurrection against the world before it existed—or a desertion from it.

There are no plurals, only chance or temporary agglomerations. The only plural forms are what Wallace Stevens—plural himself, as you might think—referred to as “functionaries” or “hacks,” and Lou Reed as “jim-jims.” As the world shrinks and grows, there is only one thing: be singular. Ezra Pound said: be against all mortmain. Gottfried Benn said: disappoint the season-ticket holder. Say not the straggle nought availeth.

Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links

Third in a series of eight manifestos.

by Charles Bernstein

I love originality so much I keep copying it.

Immature poets borrow. Mature poets invest.

POETRY WANTS TO BE FREE. (Or, if not, available for long-term loan.)

I’m the derivative product of an originality that spawns me as it spurns me.

The work of art “itself” does not exist, only incommensurable social contexts through which it emerges and into which it vanishes.

The author dies. The author’s work is born.

Poetry is a secret society hiding in plain sight, open to ear and mind’s eye.

The shock of the new for some, the invigorating tonic of the contemporary for others.

A work of art is the overlay of a set of incommensurable possibilities, linked together around an original vanishing point.

CONCEPTUAL POETRY IS POETRY PREGNANT WITH THOUGHT.

(The absence of conception had itself to be conceived.)

THE POET IS A LIAR.

THE POET IS A LYRE.

THE POET’S TIRED.

(Poetry abhors a narrative.)

“I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like.”—J.M.W. Turner (1842)

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y: a loose affliation of unlike individuals.

Which reminds me of the story of the man who reports a wife-beating to a neighbor. “Then stop beating her,” the neighbor replies. “But it’s not my wife!” replies the good Samaritan, becoming agitated. “That’s even worse!” says his neighbor.

No parodist goes unpunished because in these times the parodist is pilloried for the views he or she parodies. In a world of moral discourse absent ethical engagement, only the self-righteous go unrebuked.

I was born yesterday . . . and’ll die tomorrow.

This is so & so is this
But neither is important.
That is theirs
& near’s not here
But neither is important.
Never twill, never twine
Nor peep nor bleat nor pipe.
Neither’s important.

CARPE DIEM: CARP AND DIE.

I am not the man I was much less the one I will be nor imagine myself as, just the person I almost am.

A bird calls but I hear only its song.

My skin is burning but inside I am as cold as the North Pole.
My shivering is metaphysical, a kind of involuntary davening.

Religion is giving religion a bad name.

Nor am I an atheist. I believe in the fallible gods of thought and in my resistance to these gods. I have faith in my aversion of faith.

Take care not to define yourself against others’ belief systems. Their God does not define the domain of my profane, their Devil does not wash away my sins.

The water colors in watercolors.

I’m an observant Jew. I look closely at the things around me, as if they were foreign.

Sandy as a sugar donut, salty as a red rose . . .

You’re either awake or asleep or will be.

I am not a secular man, but in moments of crisis I turn to agnosticism for the comfort it gives in freeing me from superstition. Once, when gravely ill and sure I would die at any minute, I embraced agnosticism, and, with Nietzsche in hand, swore I would remain an agnostic even if I recovered. But once I did recover, I lapsed again into religious belief, feeling the danger was over and it was safe to return to my old ways. Still, the fear of dying under the veil of dogma still grips my soul late in the night and I yearn for the courage to embrace reality without prophylactics.

My mind is a labyrinth with well-lit exit signs; as much as I try, I can’t ignore them. When I take leave of my mind I put myself in the care of my brain. In this way, I become again the animal to which my mind is blind.

There’s no depth to the depth.

In the world of the imagination, impossible just means the next opportunity to get real.

The ceremony of sorrow is performed with a measured, defiant acknowledgement that makes words charms, talismans of the fallen world. Poetry is a holding space, a folded grace, in which objects held most dear disappear, returning as radiant moments of memory’s forgiving home. [for Akilah Oliver]

Turner’s sheerness.

Existence needs essence the way a walking tour needs local color.

But a hole in an argument is not the same as a point of light.

Rather than an expression of love, justice is a protection against our inability to love.

We are most familiar with our estrangement; it is our home ground.

The absence of an accent is also an accent.

Yet the Dark, untouched by light, injures it all the same.

The Eighties, Glory Of

Fourth in a series of eight manifestos.

by Ange Mlinko

These days, everybody everywhere (under fifty—“younger poets”) seems to allude knowingly to Frank O’Hara’s “Personism” and deploy with gusto the chatty irony, the pop sagesse, he pioneered. Inventing a new tone is no small thing, though grander projects beset us these days: book-length “projects,” lipograms, and variations on macaronics and “hybridity.” It’s like we’re stuck in the eighties. Which is about right, I mean rite: the pendulum swings back and forth, and our momentum always seems to be driven by reaction to reaction, rather than to life. I’m paraphrasing. Frank O’Hara said, “It’s a pretty depressing day, you must admit, when you feel you relate more importantly to poetry than to life.” It would be interesting at this point, while everyone is in love with “Personism” and its author, to look (briefly) at two rather more boring manifestos he wrote.* One is “Statement for The New American Poetry” (1960) where he begins: “I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it.” And the other is “Statement for Paterson Society” which ends “this will explain why I can’t really say anything definite for the Paterson Society for the time being.” In the first manifesto, he tries to explain, seriously, what he does when he writes poetry, and comes off with at least one sentence as good as any in “Personism”: “My formal ‘stance’ is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred.” In the Paterson Society statement, he repudiates that first manifesto, writing:

It seems to me now . . . more mistaken, pompous, and quite untrue, as compared to [“Personism”]. But it is also, like [“Personism”], a diary of a particular day and the depressed mood of that day . . . and as such may perhaps have more general application to my poetry since I have been more often depressed than happy, as far as I can tally it up.

It’s “a hopeless conundrum,” he admits. He is happy and amusing; he is unhappy and serious; he tries a lot of different things; he is preoccupied with the world, with experience, with flux. No wonder then that he writes so much about weather, and not just any weather: wind and sea surfaces are his metier. Now he is clear and “accessible”; now he is fuzzy and (misused word) surreal. Instead of surreal, I think of this explanation he offered: “It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.” If I’m cheating by building my own manifesto out of the bones of another’s, I apologize: my motto might be: Lord (Apollo), grant me courage to be new, serenity when I can’t be, and the wisdom to know when I can’t be. In other words, I too want poetry to be a response to the weather: the world’s, and the author’s own. I can’t really say anything more definite for the time being . . . except that I will not be writing any “book-length projects.”

Annie Get Your Gun

Fifth in a series of eight manifestos.

by D.A. Powell

The thing about sardines when you buy them in a can: they are fairly uniform in size and in flavor; their individual identities have disappeared into the general fishiness of the soybean oil; their little bones have melted; their flesh has become a mass grave; they are fairly cheap and fairly consumable; and one forgets a sardine quickly after one has partaken of it.

But damn: don’t some people just love sardines? They’re convenient; they take no preparation time whatsoever; and, though a steady diet of them would probably be unhealthy in the long run, they are—in the short term—a pretty safe snack. They’re snacky. They aren’t lox, but they aren’t cat food. They are the middle of an ocean swimming with possibilities.

Sardines school. Yet, despite their defensive strategy of hiding behind one another, millions of them get eaten. All that schooling does them nary a whit of good. And yet, they still join, instinctually, each one believing that it’s some other poor pilchard who’ll be devoured.

I don’t know that artists and poets join schools for quite the same reason that sardines do. Sometimes there’s a true innovator in the bunch, sometimes they really do share some common misunderstandings about aesthetics, sometimes it just so happens that a bunch of really interesting people all shop at the same hat shop and they start to hang out and resemble one another and make little sandwiches. It can seem quite seductive to be associated with a school. Or to have a school from which one insistently distances oneself. Or even to found a school. But most of what makes a school truly interesting is what others say about it; not what it says about itself.

Is it the nature of beings to coalesce? I think sometimes that artists, like other lower forms of intelligence, want to “belong.” Or rather, that they want to not belong in some similar ways. They want to belong to the outside, and yet to be recognized by the inside. It’s a conundrum. Because, really, in order to belong to a school or a movement or a gang or a pod, you have to—whether you’re willing to think about it this way or not—move towards a “center.”

Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school. A monocultural fish farm. An orchestra in which everyone is trying to solo at the same time. A tin of silvery bodies falling into place. I imagine that each of those fish must have thought it was going in a new direction. But all the other fishes got there at exactly the same time, and thus the great net encompassed them all.

Look, I like sardines. I probably like them better than most. But the time will come when all we have of the mighty oceans is canned fish. That’s the doomsayer in me. Shouldn’t there at least be a chance that I am wrong? Shouldn’t there be a greater variety of life, a greater variety of art, a greater variety of poetry than what gathers in the schools trying oh so hard to appear larger and more menacing than it is? Write a manifesto. Don’t you see that it’s too small to keep? Throw it back.

The New Perform-A-Form: A Page Vs. Stage Alliance

Sixth in a series of eight manifestos.

by Thomas Sayers Ellis

The performance body, via breathing and gesture, dramatizes form. It makes it theater. It makes it action. It makes it living, alive, as in “get live,” as in “all the way live,” as in lyric. The idea body, via text and thought, flattens form. It makes it fixed. It makes it language. It makes it literature, an imagined living, as in artifice. The work of the performance body is not without craft, control, or form. It is not lowly. The work of the idea body is not without attitude, improvisation, or flow. It is not closed. A perform–a–form occurs when the idea body and the performance body, frustrated by their own segregated aesthetic boundaries, seek to crossroads with one another. This coupling, though detrimental to aspects of their individual traditions, will repair and continue the living word.

ONE
The old style of representing “likeness” is over and perform–a–formers, though appreciative of metaphor and simile, etc., no longer need either to express nuance in poetry. The matrimony of page and stage insists on eliminating the false functions between the line and the limb. All rhyme schemes reborn as gesture, all gestures as sculptural integrity.

TWO
A perform–a–form line breaks many times, verbally, before it breaks the last time visually. If written, it is written more like blood than bone. If spoken, it is spoken more like stutter than song. Perform-a-forms do not lie (on the page or on the stage), frozen in little boxes or voices, unable to interact with the reader or listener, as if on a table in a morgue.

THREE
Perform–a–formers seek a path around both academic and slam poetry; to eliminate the misconceptions between them; and to balance the professional opportunities (in publishing and employment) opened to each. The utterance, paged or memorized, is only a schema in need of diverse modes of respiration.

FOUR
Against the narrowness of linearity, a perform–a–former will subject its own composer-sition to the rigor of audience participation. You can’t workshop a perform–a–form, but you can participate in its creation and correction. Able to surrender to the collective sensibility of community, not the critic’s scalpel, the last great perform–a–former was Sekou Sundiata.

FIVE
A well-crafted perform–a–form will continue to pour after it is written or performed. This pouring, akin to echoing, should reclaim the original attributes of poetry from nature and cinema. Despite history, the perform–a–former seeks carnivorous wholeness, a gluttonous diet of the anatomy of the art–i–verse.

And while it is rare to attend a poetry festival or a conference and see poets (established and emerging, white and black, gay and straight, academic and non-academic) being treated as equals, consequently it is even rarer to discover literary editors and publishers open to “all” levels of class intelligence. The first task of activism of any perform–a–former is the removal of all one-dimensional judges of craft.

Presto Manifesto!

Seventh in a series of eight manifestos.

by A.E. Stallings

The freedom to not-rhyme must include the freedom to rhyme. Then verse will be “free.”

All rhymed poetry must be rhyme-driven. This is no longer to be considered pejorative.

Rhyme is at the wheel. No, rhyme is the engine.

Rhyme is an engine of syntax: like meter, it understands the importance of prepositions.

English is not rhyme poor. It is only uninflected. On the contrary, English has a richness in rhymes across different parts of speech; whereas in many other languages, rhyme is often merely a coincident jingle of accidence.

There are no tired rhymes. There are no forbidden rhymes. Rhymes are not predictable unless lines are. Death and breath, womb and tomb, love and of, moon, June, spoon, all still have great poems ahead of them.

Rhymes may be so far apart, you cannot hear them, but they can hear each other, as if whispering on a toy telephone made of two paper cups and a length of string.

Rhymes do not need to be hidden or disguised: they are nothing to be ashamed of.

Rhymes are not good Victorian children, to be seen but not heard. Rhyme may be feminine or masculine, but not neuter.

Some rhymes are diatonic; some are modal.

Off rhymes founded on consonants are more literary than off rhymes founded on vowels (assonance). Vowels are shifty. Assonance is in the mouth, not the ear. It is performative.

Consonance brings forth what is different, so we listen for what is the same (harmonic). Assonance brings forth likeness; we listen for dissonance. The vowel is the third of the chord.

Translators who translate poems that rhyme into poems that don’t rhyme solely because they claim keeping the rhyme is impossible without doing violence to the poem have done violence to the poem. They are also lazy.

Rhyme is an irrational, sensual link between two words. It is chemical. It is alchemical.

April, silver, orange, month.

Rhyme frees the poet from what he wants to say.

Rhyme can also free a poem from fixed line length. A rhyme lets us hear the end of the line, so lines may be of any metrical length, or even syllabic, and still be heard.

Rhyme schemes.

Rhyme annoys people, but only people who write poetry that doesn’t rhyme, and critics.

See also: chime, climb, clime, crime, dime, grime, I’m, lime, mime, paradigm, pantomime, prime, rime, slime, sublime, thyme, Time.

Leave the Manifesto Alone: A Manifesto

Eighth in a series of eight manifestos.

by Hate Socialist Collective

The manifesto is dead. Manifestos are a flashing up of the spirit in a moment of desperate jubilation when the victory of the bourgeoisie is not yet a settled thing. Manifestos are the way the bourgeoisie fights the bourgeoisie in spastic fits, armed with bludgeon, scalpel, and luck. We will not celebrate the end of that era with you. It was not a poetic era, it was a political era. It is this history you wish to seal over with pseudo-celebrations.

Is not Poetry already a manifesto? The well-considered and the well-mannered, the lovely and the liberal, craft and progress: are these not already the manifesto of the bourgeoisie, smeared across every page, every minute of every day? It’s an aesthetic thing, Poetry answers as we fall asleep, choosing its poems as if you could choose who was worthy to shit on your grave. And in our dreams we see Poetry dance on the manifesto’s grave, in the vocabulary of open-mindedness and eclecticism, that bourgeois humanism which is nothing other than the pure hatred of revolution.

The manifesto is obligated to be political at every instant.

To use the forms and worldviews on offer only for bitter mockery.

To be not an alternative to destruction but a complement.

To speak of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the former as the enemy, the latter defined as the social class which does not want to be named.

To stop wringing its hands over poetry’s lost popularity, that autocritique more stirring than any Maoist’s.

The manifesto is obligated to say There are other countries where poetry still matters! Where the war against the marketplace of capital, against the confirmation of the bourgeoisie as the end of history, endures.

When we say the manifesto we mean poetry and Poetry and poets and our own pathetic selves.

And so like you, oh Poetry, we propose to reanimate the manifesto. We will first require the following things: a century of revolutions. Delight and terror. Shit on the curatorial. Shit on bankers and trusts. Shit on ourselves. We believe in art for art’s sake the same as we believe in destruction as our Beatrice; Mallarmé said them both. Poetry must be as violent and loving as the disease called history with which we infect each other, red and black condoms with the reservoirs cut off. Those who make a manifesto by halves dig their own graves.

Joshua Clover & Juliana Spahr on behalf of Hate Socialist Collective

Wayne Miller

2009-02-21T06:13:00.001-06:00

The Tightrope Walker

walking across America
on telephone wires will be an important
symbol. Each night, on the living-room TV,

a quick shot of him stepping over
Scranton, Youngstown, Toledo, Joliet
(and a bit of the accompanying commentary).

Near the end, Justine will look out
the window and there he'll be—approaching
her roof—his balancing pole held out

before him like a broken mast. She'll phone
Clarence then—her words streaming
beneath the walker's feet. She'll say

something like: Who'll know if he falls
in Nebraska, or Wyoming—after the news
forgets him? Clarence's reply: Perhaps two lovers

—like us—talking across the country, will hear
a trembling in their voices,
as the quivering wire upsets the birds—

A Response to SRS Post

2009-02-19T23:51:00.000-06:00

I Would Like to Describe
by Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass full of water to put it another way I would give all metaphors in return for one word drawn out of my breast like a rib for one word contained within the boundaries of my skin but apparently this is not possible and just to say - I love I run around like mad picking up handfuls of birds and my tenderness which after all is not made of water asks the water for a face and anger different from fire borrows from it a loquacious tongue so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentlemen separated once and for all and said this is the subject and this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and taste the earth with their tiny roots which next morning we tear out painfully

blast

2009-02-19T17:02:00.004-06:00

in 1914, a modernist movement called "vorticism" published an avant-garde literary magazine, BLAST. although its life was cut short by WWI, it is one of the more interesting things i've come across (or at least in my 20th century english literature anthology). i think it's inspiring to see that no matter the time or culture, there are always people willing to break the rules and think not only outside the box, but without the box anywhere in sight.

an excerpt from the BLAST manifesto:

"WE ONLY WANT THE WORLD TO LIVE, and to feel it's crude energy flowing through us....The moment a man feels or realizes himself as an artist, he ceases to belong to any milieu or time. Blast is created for this timeless, fundamental Artist that exists in everybody....It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren."

norton anthology information and full manifesto

Has

2009-02-19T08:52:00.001-06:00

Anyone read Eula Biss's new book yet? I'd love to talk about how she deals with race in it if you have. It's the month, after all.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK!!

2009-02-19T08:11:00.001-06:00

What do you think of this poem?

2009-02-17T18:48:00.001-06:00

Little White Truck

Because the white truck traveling the span of the Williamsburg Bridge
could be the white fastener traveling the top of a zip-lock bag,
the East River and tugs might be contained without spilling
in today's October light, along with this new spray of trees and
picnic tables which appeared when the industrial tide of Williamsburg
went out. If these could be contained, then likewise the two cyclists,
now dismounted and steadying their bikes as they kiss, and surely
it could hold the music they heard last night eddying again
around their thoughts, and the memory of their first idea of the
future, loosed when he held her in a doorway lit by cobwebs of spring rain.

2009-02-17T15:33:00.004-06:00

Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, National Poetry Month brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

The 2009 National Poetry Month poster, designed by Paul Sahre.

poetry/valentines

2009-02-11T23:25:00.004-06:00

the poets.org website has poetry-inspired valentines that you can print and cut out to give on valentine's day! sometimes poetry says it best.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20553

2009-02-10T16:09:00.003-06:00

I can't seem to find the author of this poem. But i found it interesting.

I want these to be words that affect you.
Words that have meaning, evoke feeling.
Words that are not self-important.
I want them to have meaning for us.
I want to feel them, experience them.
I want them to be not just words.

Taking Poetry to Where People, Um, Live.

2009-02-10T08:44:00.002-06:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/7878965.stm

Poetry aims to set bog standard

New poems will be selected every three months

A competition has been launched to find poetry which will feature in the toilets of Shetland.

Calling it something new

2009-02-09T16:46:00.002-06:00

On the topic of naming (societies or collaborative performances), I nominate "hybrid". It's a little short to be the whole name on its own, but has a nice bouquet these days.

books

2009-02-09T11:41:00.003-06:00

"For books are more than books; they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."

-Amy Lowell

how do we think about books today? the irish monks of the middle ages believed that the written word was imbued with some sort of magical, otherworldly power, and they spent their lives carefully copying and illuminating manuscripts. gutenberg's printing press completely revolutionized history when it moved books from the libraries of the rich into the hands and minds of the common people.

but today, i think it seems like some of us resent them a little. we're bitter when we're forced to venture into the library stacks when we can't find a source online. we're even angrier when we have to buy them for class. but if books are really "the reason why men lived and worked and died," then maybe we're missing something.

Music and Poetry

2009-02-08T14:32:00.002-06:00

The discussion below reminded me of this essay, and it's taken me this long to find it.

Where do you draw the line?

2009-02-07T14:52:00.008-06:00

Question:

In the list below, where does the "poetic" stop and "non-poetic" start?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds... (Shakespeare)

New Year’s first snow -- ah -- (Basho)

A POOR torn heart, a tattered heart... (Dickinson)

it is at moments after i have dreamed... (e.e. cummings)

What happens to a dream deferred? (Hughes)

And so she woke up
Woke up from where she was lyin' still. (U2)

(calligraphy artists)

(Beethoven)

(Adams)

(Mondrian)

(Woodson)

(Mucha)

Eula Biss

2009-02-06T09:26:00.000-06:00

These Nerves

Read!

2009-02-06T09:05:00.000-06:00

A Wonderful Essay about Reading Contemporary Poetry

read my lips: poetry slam

2009-02-05T21:02:00.004-06:00

Ten years ago, Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" was performed as a benefit to raise money and awareness to stop violence against women and girls around the world. Since then it has been performed annually in thousands of locations across the globe. This year marks TCU's fourth to participate, with all proceeds going to SafeHaven. Leading up to the performances on Friday, February 13th, and Saturday, February 14th, are a week of events geared towards raising awareness for domestic violence.

Wednesday, February 11th, we are hosting "Read My Lips" - a poetry slam with nationally renown poet Michael Guinn - in Moudy 141N from 7:30 - 9. Students are invited to take the stage with Michael and his group to compete for over $200 worth of prizes. We feel that it would be a fantastic opportunity for students, and faculty alike, to participate in such an event. In the lobby of Moudy North, TCU's Post Secret will be on display.

The Rules for those participating are simple:

1.) Each poem must be of the poet's own construction;

2.) Each poet gets three minutes (plus a ten-second grace period) to read one poem.

3.) The poet may not use props, costumes or musical instruments;

4.) Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three are added together, giving the poet a total score of 0-30

*The poems do not have to be memorized*

spread the word

2009-02-03T16:27:00.006-06:00

Please help us get the word out about this blog by setting this as your profile picture on facebook!

Listen to Your Logic

2009-02-03T08:35:00.009-06:00

Hating poetry because of a crappy teacher is as foolish as hating football because the Cowboys had a crappy season.

If an entire sport can't be blamed for the shoddy and inconsistent performance of a handful of its athletes...

Then an ancient art form (it's been around and will be around longer than any of us) can't be blamed for the shoddy and inconsistent performance of a few overworked and/or underpaid and/or emotionally damaged teachers.

Stand Up and Apologize!

2009-02-02T16:14:00.001-06:00

Poetry needs no apologies. The Bryson Literary Society (BLS) aims to create the conditions under which people will apologize to poetry.