Gulf Coast organized this conversation because it seemed, to us, that a new generation of surrealist- and absurdist-influenced poetry had emerged in the U.S., written by poets ranging from their mid-twenties to mid-forties and rooted in small presses like Wave Books, Black Ocean, and Octopus Books. But what does “surrealism” even mean, in American poetry today?

“Good Warm Sad Blood Spilling Out in the Forest” a conversation with Heather Christle, Hannah Gamble, Matthew Rohrer, Zachary Schomburg, and Matthew Zapruder

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering—rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer’s words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1963/feb/01/simone-weil/

Susan Sontag on Simone Weil. I want to read Weil.

book camp

Due to the unmanageable number of books in my reading pile, which has taken over most of my bed, floor, and raised surface areas, I have no choice but to set up a camp for myself in which I actually FINISH 2 books a week until I am done. And I will not check out or buy any new books until camp is over. I haven’t been able to read well lately because whenever I try to read anything, my eyes get shifty and I think: wait, what if I want to read something else? What if I would enjoy this other book better? or, wait, maybe I should be doing work right now. Maybe blah blah blah. I haven’t finished a book of fiction in ages. Or poetry. Mostly I’ve been picking at them like scabs.

Books this week that I will finish or else die: The Master and Margarita, and Decreation. Update due next Thursday.

love,

feng

*

(via youarebonbon) (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilyyyyyyyy/4200212270/sizes/o/)

my insides are barbed / amadeus the movie

• 

I am feeling quite adolescent, as the title suggests. But I think I am attached to my loneliness and frustration, all ingrown.

Tonight is probably a fall-asleep-without-brushing-teeth night because I won’t feel like moving.

I can’t write poems quite as empty as  in that delicious, impossibly lonely way that Tao Lin can. But I tried to write a poem in the style of Tao the other day, partially spurred by multiple rejections, and even the loneliness caused by empathy, when suddenly you realize that many many feel like that everyday. Here is that poem.

__________________
AMADEUS THE MOVIE

My roommate says someone famous we both know won lots of money
Doing things we are not good at but want to be
And it’s like we are Salieri from the movie
Though everyone who has more than shit for brain know
That Salieri is the better one.
But I like that Wolfgang A.M. has a horrible laugh
Because maybe this famous person also has a flaw
That would make people hate her.

Yeah, we sort of try to make music
And one time we had a full audience which was
Maybe thirty people? It was
The best show we’ve ever had
But three days later we got an email saying
That the people who were there were pretending.

This asshole wanted to make our dreams come true
So he planned for these people to show up and look really happy.
I remember that a girl even showed us skin that was pink.

I do not think it is fair because I understand many people. I understand the people
Who spend all their free time at the mall not necessarily buying anything
And who may not necessarily like my music but who definitely want to be glamorous
And think they can be, if only the opportunity came up. I like
The old American idols. I used to watch them and I liked watching Simon
And the tears that came from their contestants, and I thought their singing
Was beautiful especially when it made the judges laugh and spit at them metaphorically.

Maybe it is because sometimes our band members eviscerate themselves on stage.
Our theme is taxidermy because we are inspired by emptying out, and also
The sandman, who is filled with sand.
What we do is we take turns pulling each other’s guts out
While one of us is doing a solo.
Then we fill up with sand, and pour sand on the audience.
I just want to make people see that we are alike. We have the same dreams.
I will accept them even though they are full of strange things
And bile and shit. I want them to hear that I love their horrible singing.
They should join in when we sing on stage.
We would love that.

________

fschen

________

image by ~guyfromczech

In the 1980s their travels became more exotic. They spent nearly a year living with Aborigines in the Australian desert and visited Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India. The stage for their final performance, in 1988, was the Great Wall of China. Starting from opposite ends of the wall, they walked toward each other for three months. Originally the meeting was to have been the occasion for their marriage; in the event it marked their break-up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/arts/design/12abromovic.html

poem: WHAT ABOUT HIM

I used to look in those holes in his head. Thought I lost my keys in there.

My razors. Dignity. And the remote.  I have to talk about it like
shopping for delicates. Bracketed. Parenthesized by the harmless.

I can open letters with keys. I can gouge out eyes.
Tear trachea with razors. I can do all that.
I can do all that to him. I could have.

I wrote him a letter asking if his eyeballs hurt sometimes because of me.
When the lights turn off and darkness pries his eyelids open with dental tools,
What does he do. Do he speak with his eyes, for example?
And if someone is in the room with him,
what does he say to them with his fleshy, colorless hands?
Also, whether he remembered the beach.

I go to the beach.
I dig in with a plastic shovel the color of wet sand the color of his eyes
plucked from the pale and stitched to mine.

__________

feng chen

__________

image by Beksinski

I think this is awesome. Not for making profit. But I’m definitely using this service for the magazine I am starting sometime vaguely in the future, associated with the micro press night vegetable, so that there is an option of obtaining a physical copy in addition to the online version.

print is not dying. it is becoming more vain.

. it is also on youtube …project in which I write about random literary things on a blog under pseudonym “Mona” also posted. http://digitalsalon2010.blogspot.com/

“ghosthuman” class video project featured in HCW Digital Salon. funny funny memories.

Beach House – 10 Mile Stereo

http://assets.tumblr.com/swf/audio_player.swf?audio_file=http://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/552124711/tumblr_l1ih6r3s6o1qbbzw4&color=FFFFFF

they make me sad-happy. which makes me think of the etymology of the word sappy. i want to marry this album. Beach House. Teen Dream.