I guess what I was trying to say about the lyric and first person — and Jenn (Sean?) really touched on this — has to do with a certain discomfort on my part in assuming the authority involved. If I am writing I then you the reader must read about I and I and I and you must be interested by I and I and I and what I have to say is I. Blogging, though, is good practice for this sort of thing. And the way that I is not always I, a sliding away of authority, or an eliding of my role in the creation. And certainly, writing about something like Oakland, brings up questions of my right to write about Oakland, something many of us struggle through. Calls into question my authority, my author-ity, my very nature as an author.

Projects are drifting along. I've set aside (for the now) the global warming project. Maybe it's completed; maybe it needs some time; maybe it's ready for others to read; I don't know. I'm continuing to write "Pythia says," my little prophesy poems (talk about taking on a persona). I need to work on my site redesign, and the concomitant drumming up of work I'd like to publish.

oh the lyric, she don't die...

Very much in accord with Jenn's comment- all the good creative answers to the "lyric question" seem to center around the question of "when is the I not the I". Two strong recent examples for me are the second part of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, with its expaned sense of both I and "yous", and Sean's "clerestory" (or at least the last draft I saw of it), where "my lover the Irish tenor" so quickly becomes a multitudinous character, "my lover the war correspondent", such that I can't help but think the speaker enjoys similar schizophrenia. Again, I wish I could wrangle Charles Legere into talking about his Oakland project here, because I think he accomplishes similar feats.

But that's enough lit-theory lite for this morning. Thinking my uncompleted chap book on dead jazz drummers is going to morph into something more global in scope, but likely still short. Want to call it Debts, as that was kind of the impetus of the dead jazz drummer poems- all the the work I'm indebted to every time I sit down to do my own. But instead of listing acknowledgments, want to harken back to the older form of elegy. One model for me is this great speech William James delivered on the centeniary (is that the right word?) of Ralph Waldo Emerson's birth. Something about that entire act of eulogizing totally gets to me. So: Oakland poems, elegies, text and music for dance piece, music and arrangements for solo album...


get crackin'

And also about the "lyric." Which I use loosely as poetry containing an "I." Authorial: Authoritative v. autobiographical. There are really two questions that come up when one makes the choice to have an I. Of course, authority, what can Dillon, white guy from Marin, say about briefly living in West Oakland? (Or about his move to swankier Lakeshore)? But also, what about when "I" isn't author? Or strictly author? Or strictly a singular person at all? That is how I've been working with it lately (where not just I, but all pronouns are conflated & it becomes impossible to map out much or attribute things to certain people or tell who those people are--). I don't know if it's the new/currently status quo way to deal with the question, or to avoid confessional, or to partially use confessional that's so buried in other personas as well that reader can't tell I from I from I from I. It seems just another rebellion, after avoiding persona for so long.

Updatey post.

Flying ahead on "End of the world porject"- Dennis and I (and Cara and Nao, other collaborator buddies) threw around the term "endoftheworldologists" for the hybrid activity of thinking about both religious and scientific thought on the big nada. Great conversations, snippets of which you can catch here http://subjectsofchange.blogspot.com/

Oakland project, both reviewing old and writing new.

Might get started today arranging music for a solo EP I want to do in February. Too bad I'm too broke to get my piano tuned, 'cus he needs it.

Stalling on submissions to Absent. Can't pick Oakland stuff, don't want to look at thesis stuff. maybe I'll just copy the whole file pathway I create searching through shit onto a simple text document and submit that- self-referential poetry submission

Need to find a studio to set up drums and play. Really tempted to do that in my apartment, but that would be really mean to the people living below me.

Finally, funneling a lot of creative energy into writing assignments for students. Kind of bad in how it drains from other work, but also feeling pretty good about it, on a purely phenomenological level- I like doing it. Is it a sin to like your job when you're trying to be "an artist"?

Oh, right, I stepped into a debate on the lyric I, didn't I. That's kind of how I felt when I got to our beloved M.F.A. "oh, I guess I just stepped into a debate". But it was even weirder, because the first round of the debate was over, and it was on to the part where the debaters, being good sports, had to switch sides, so the experimentalists were taking up the lyric I and, well the confessional poets had died of old age, and their successors aren't even having the debate. So actually, the debate was like all between "experimentalists" who all kind of agreed, but were vaguely aware that there was the possibility you could say or write something disagreeable and that would be bad because it would mean you were a fascist like Ezra Pound or Mary Oliver (the New Fascist).

That's overly glib. I take the history is out there and documented and I'll get to reading it one day. To kind of point to an answer, though, about whether I'm taking a stance on use of this pronoun/perspective in general, I don't think I am. I satisfied myself about all debates in art with the following line: "there is no A pRiori in arT"- meaning it's just dumb to make or break Rules about art, unless it's rules with a lower case 'r', like Maclow's rules, or Schoenberg's.

I may, however, need to answer the question about the pronoun/perspective with regards to writing about Oakland, because that's the project- how to find a 'good fit poetics' for writing about Oakland in a sustained way. Pretty early on, I decided it would not be in any kind of lyric first person voice, for exactly the same reason that I'm deciding otherwise now: because I'm an anamoly of a "person" to be writing in Oakland. I'm a recent transplant, a priviliged minority, etc. My subjectivity wasn't going to tell much about Oakland qua Oakland, so I thought I'd just banish it from the page. And I still like some of the writing that move produced, but then I also really liked drafts of Charles Legere's project that didn't banish himself from the page, but rather instantiated himself all over Oakland, almost identifying himself with Oakland, in the full-on Walt Whitman no-no lyric voice (though also in a way that was new) and I thought, "what a much more honest project", so I decided to try it.

My version's more boring, and doesn't try to reach as oracularly as I see Charles'. I think I need to mention the other pole of this move, which is going back now to teaching rhetoric. Inevitably, when you teach writing at the college level, you get asked "what about using 'I'- my teacher said it's bad to use 'I' in an essay". Quite suddenly this question makes you see the lunacy of the debate in the poetry world, or at least its dumbed-down form, because of course you want to say "fuck your high school teacher, use 'I' as much as you want, what a dumb fucking rule". I think that reaction is right, but it's not great writing advice, so instead I tend ot say this: "Use 'I' where it would be disingenuous to avoid doing so, as in a case where you would be hiding something that really is your own mental property. Especially use I where you're inclined to use some very convoluted case of the pronoun 'one' or 'you'."

I was realizing how I was breaking that rule by a.) not owning up to the fact that my set of observations about Oakland are, surprise, extremely observer-dependant and b.) I was using this really verb-heavy, quick-moving prosody that was losing almost anyone reading it. So, up and off goes the ban on the first person in an Oakland poem. But of course this experiment might fail too. I have to run it for a while, and with a bit more dilligence than I have been, to decide if it gets me any closer to the mark of what I've been after, what I started calling a 'topoetics of Oakland'. Of course, what I actually think will be the case is that a great many approaches, from more authors than me, combined and then dispersed to a wide enough audience, an audience way bigger than both the blogosphere and the "go to all the readings-crowd", is the real best hope for this project. But I think getting this essay back together for submission to There is a good start.

Dillon, with the lyric I (the lyric eye), you're heading into some heady and post-experimental territory. I'm curious to see how you negotiate the authority.

The whole avant-garde poetic experience seems to have been predicated on getting away from the lyric I, which was good in that it broke new poetic ground. Along the way, though, eschewing the first person became a stone commandment (Thou shalt not write with the lyric I). And, to my mind, blindly following rules isn't particularly inventive or innovative.

So where does the hesitation to put the personal in the poetic come from? Because I have a lot of reluctance there, as well. If you (read: I) cannot claim that authorial authority inherent in the first-person voice, then by what right do you (I) write? And if I am (you are) unwilling to claim that mantle, what does that say about my (your) authority?

I don't know the answers, but I am trying to question my actions and assumptions around using the first person in my own work.

I'm so excited to hear I'll be getting some more new work for the winter issue of There! Now if I can just get some time to start working on the issue...

Interestingly enough, Jeffrey has also recruited me to talk at PSD. I really don't know that I'm qualified to give any advice, other than keep writing. And if you're not writing, join a blog and write about how you're not writing.

And here's a little impromptu post-Yipes something:

The octagon or cornicepiece and plastic dance a snake a train ribonucleic acid in the wake and Cassiopeia's chair for a while our fears of religion was big business or nuclear fission and a silversmith circus dog

First, apologies for not yet sending Loretta work for There. My work of late has (surprisingly) not been very location based. I'm glad Dillon will be at PSD, since I'm always glad to see anyone. And since I don't know of any other journeymen/musicians/poets. Ever. Sean is also speaking (on a panel with Chris Stroffolino & someone else I don't know), about adjuncting. I will be sitting in the audiences of things remembering how last year Loretta and Sarah and I and others got very motivated & bubbly at lunch and decided to host house readings. And whenever we're not in the middle of semesters, they've happened. It's a start.

But, alas, my semester has begun. Laurel and I are semester buddies. That is, we have all the same classes. I've had a semester buddy every time at Mills, first Jen Nellis & Jacob, then Jen again, then Keith, and now Laurel. I don't know what this means, but it's grand to have someone with all the same deadlines and stresses as you. But I have text due for by first book on Monday and I wrote and designed it last night. It will need modification because I want to print larger than will fit on the bed of the press, so that needs tweaking, or at least some scissors and glue. But it means that I wrote, new words. I'm getting used to them, settling, and I'll try them out at Wrecks in Progress on Tuesday, but it's much more suited for the layout of the book than for aural listening. I'll be using much more image than I normally do, some acetone transfers and carving a few lino blocks. And some hand stuff on the paper (I'm only making 15).

But, tonight, of course, Sean is reading at New Yipes, so if you check this today, come on out. Also, I'm likely going to Laura Moriarty & Jocelyn Saidenberg's reading on Thursday @ Modern Times.

Rock on.

Sarah getting reviewed on Rhubarb is Susan endemnifies her to join this blog, so says me (e-mail me if you need an invite, Ms. Trott). Equally endemnified is Jeffrey Schrader, because I agreed to do PSD at Mills this year (check your inbox, J-bones).

Blog promise, will submit to 'there' three new oakland poems, packaged perhaps with a few older ones, as I'm taking up the mantle on that project again. here's a preview (hot off the press, as in I actually got some writing done today):

I am driving around the lake
and it is sunset

and NPR is telling me that 50% of Oakland youth (surveyed) think tomorrow is going to be worse
than today


Other than that, in my break from grading 39 portfolios, I practiced a little bit of drums, and did some research on Rousseau's opera Les Muses Galantes for my class tomorrow. The beginning of this quarter is kicking my motherfucking ass, but hopefully by tonight I will have closed the book son last quarter, albeit two weeks late, which should be a major boon to getting any art done.

I assigned my students a quarter-long creative project of their choosing, and vowed to do it with them. What I asked, as mentioned earlier, is "what is the problem that faces you?" My answer to that question is related to the above poem- Oakland saw 148 people murdered last year, the vast majority young and male and killed on public street corners, and yet I live in relative comfort and ease and enjoy the hell out of this city. All my previous writing on Oakland has taken a mostly impersonal tract, trying to broadly talk about its history or metaphysical character (or something, I don't know what). In part inspired by early bits of a project Charles Legere launched, in part inspired by a re-examination of just what is entailed in a personal/lyric poetics, I'm going to step into these poems in the first person, so as not to hide my subjectivity behind any smoke screen of "historical research" or "abstract poetics".

So, old project, new clothes- Oakland writing 'yal

So my effusions about Rhubarb Is Susan have already led to some small noticings: A review of our own very dear Sarah Trott's Planned.

So here's my frustration with online literary journals, including my own (and by the way, mine is looking for new work for its winter issue): all the poets published therein, unless the journal manages to achieve a fairly wide acclaim/readership (see Shampoo), are poets from a closed group.

I want to publish poets from outside the Mills gates, and I have, but it can be a difficult thing to do. I think part of the problem is that poets are reluctant to submit to unfamiliar, two-bit journals (like There). Or maybe we just don't know about them.

So here's the plan, and I hope you guys will join in. I will post links to some of these small potatoes, just starting out sites, and we will bombard them with our work, which is just the sort of innovative, new work they're already publishing, but it will give the journals the opportunity to publish poets outside their limited circle. And we'll get the chance to be read by a (slightly) larger group than our creative writing workshop, our Mom or our cat (who can be quite the critic).

So who's with me? Our first target is Absent, published by Simon DeDeo. (He also does the blog Rhubarb Is Susan, which reviews poetry.) His comments about how he selected work for the first issue are very revealing.

My latest project seems to be dealing with prophecies and dreams; I'm writing in the voice of the Pythia (the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi). I'm not really sure how it happened, but the phrase "Pythia says..." came to me, and then other phrases began accreting onto it. Now there's a series of little stream of consciousness paragraphs. Here's the latest:

Pythia says wood smoke dark blue sky the walls have blackened in a strategy for asset allocation it tastes like candy canyon cannons passing strange or what could be left the bends it starts far away and when we were young a stone dropped and each concentric ring feels farther than the last.

Started new blog on the on-going dance/collaboration/multi-media piece (I'm not sure if we have a title anymore). That project is moving, complete with rehearsal schedule. Dennis Somera is on board (yeah), along with some very talented dancers and a video artist. It's very cool to approach a large project where I don't have to conceptualize all of it- very different from doing my thesis last year (which, as I recall, started to hit panic mode about now: much sypathy going out to Laurel and Jenn).

Other than that, still struggling to get regular practice time on instruments, though I did buy a new drumset (did I mention that already? I'm so fucking stoked about it). Did sit down at the piano for one minute the other day to arrange a piece for the Gomorrans and it felt really good. Intending to get that thing tuned and start practicing the very elementary stuff I was doing many months ago.

And school started- jesus christ does that take a lot of energy. I'm moving the class towards something very much like a creative writing or creative mixed-media course, because I can and because these students have already had one quarter of this course in a more traditional vein. I'm going to try to do every assignment I give them, which all relate to an ongoing project, myself. The notion I'm starting with is that all art in this ear begins at a problem (I'm borrowing this from my piano teacher, Matthew Goodheart, he may have borrowed from somewhere too), and the working out of that problem determines both the process and the piece. Every week, they get a new assignment related to the problem, probably problematizing the problem and the process prodigiously, but the problem is of their choosing. My problem will be the one this collaboration is centered around- the end of the world.

I haven't been writing this past week or so; just working and working and working. Nothing left for writing; nothing left even for blogging. I did go to the First Fridays art walk, which was stimulating visually. And though I saw some poets there, I didn't see much in the way of poetry. Seems like something's missing there. At the very least, we ought to be able to get together a table of broadsides and chapbooks and see if we can't recoup a little on our investment.

It has often seemed to me that visual artists are much better at seeing the mercenary side of production than poets. True, it's all about price tags and wealthy donors and a certain scramble to sell their work. But poets, we'd rather just give our chapbooks away. Or pay someone else money to read our poems, as in the case of most contests.

All of which goes to explain why we spend so much time on this blog talking about how what we're doing for money gets in the way of writing poetry. Maybe I do need to get a rich patron. Or write more formally (scroll down for second story).

Looks like Jenn is lining up to beat me back to blogging. I just spent several hours, today and last night, adminning the blog for my class, so I figured it would be sort of whack to continue ignoring the Almanac any longer. It's not that the holidays were unproductive, I actually did a lot of stuff, in a sense too much to stop and blog. I'm still not writing new text with much regularity, and it's hard to get practicing instruments regularly, but, the late December recap:

created seven or so "broadsides" (I'll try to figure out how to post them in a bit) as gifts for family and friends. They aren't anything like real letter-pressing, just files on a word processor spat out by a laser printer (a really bitchin laser printer I can use on the company's dime), but they are an attempt to rethink and expand some texts, so I feel like they were useful creatively, and the recipients seemed to dig them.

Played one good gig- New Years at the Rickshaw Stop in SF. Lots of fun, good folks came out. We opened for Dengue Fever, who are a sort of lounge/pop group fronted by a Cambodian pop star on vocals. Pretty great band- they do Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now'- in Cambodian!

Started teaching again yesterday- going to take all the kids through a sustaiened creative project throughout the quarter as part of their final. Looking forward to figuring out how to convince them to do that, and how to get them through the steps it takes to create a larger creative/critical work. I think by then end they're going to wish they got the more boring teacher.