Draft 27: Athwart

There was an other side
a space behind, in back,
an overmuch, an
into which
where muffled voices throb without their names.


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Speculative meandering postulate: Evolutionary theorists use the laryngeal nearve to suggest that there is no intelligent designer because it follows a seemingly useless path from brain around the heart before returning up to reach the larnyx [ see wikipedia or dawkins dissecting a giraffe ].

Poetry might suggest that the laryngeal nerve is reaching downward for a brief proximal consultation with cardio-neurons (affect-check) before activating voice.


“The impact of electronic technology on our lives is now the object of intense study, but what remains obscure is the role, if any, this technology has in shaping the ostensibly private language of poetry.” Marjori Perloff. 1994. p. 2-3


… 20944 poems from 1147 poets available to read.   (03.03.2010)

” … there is a fundamental requirement which the various kinds of concrete poetry meet: concentration upon the physical material from which the poem or text is made. Emotions and ideas are not the physical materials of poetry. … Generally speaking the material of the concrete poem is language …” (Concrete Poetry — A World View. 1968.)


ZOOLOGY by Sasha West. Visuals by Ernesto Lavandera. Born Magazine

her website

Flarf was first applied in reference to poems and other creative texts produced by the Flarflist Collective, a group of writers including Maria Damon, Jordan Davis, Katie Degentesh, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Rodney Koeneke, Michael Magee, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, and Gary Sullivan. The term was coined by Sullivan in late 2000, when he submitted deliberately bad poems to Poetry.com’s poetry “contest” (actually a marketing scheme) as a way of testing Poetry.com’s supposed standards for excellence. (It should be noted that the practice of Poetry.com-baiting predates flarf itself; many other individuals, including North Carolina poet Patrick Herron and syndicated humorist Dave Barry, have engaged in similar pranks.)”


contemporary poetries, visual, verbal & visual/verbal, with especial focus on small press books, magazines, and on websites of avant poetries

PennSound: Close Listening

Recordings at ArtRadio WPS1.org and Studio 111 at the University of Pennsylvania. All conversations with Charles Bernstein unless otherwise indicated.

Poetry interests me above all as a kind of resistence. In the first place because its economy is absolutely aberrant to contemporary logic: an enormous investment (in terms of time and energy), quasi-nil effect and zero profitability. So it’s an act that could only be directed by internal necessity…


(Warm, fuzzy description)



Poetry and such.



“curve to your own mortality, see how
grasses grow through an empty hoof
and watch the migrant finch, its feathers
the blue of ocean, intensified
as a lens bends
sunlight to burning”


“You see, I need you.
I use poetry to teach people.
The world I created
Has been overrun by ignorant thinking
And I need poets to take the world back
And break the curse. “