In Honor of Burger King

A friend just told me that the Burger Kings in her area have veggie burgers. In response to this news, I want to honor Burger King's commitment to irony. Please enjoy the photo to your left. Yes, that's a defibrillator. Of course, this is a Burger King near Philadelphia. Here we are buried in cheese steak-lined coffins.

Recalling the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts

Let me tell you about a dream I had last night--no doubt inspired by this artistically-fulfilling summer I'm having. I was my seventeen-year-old self leafing through a book of poetry in a classroom at Mercyhurst college. It was a sunny afternoon sometime during my five-week enrollment in the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts. In the book I found a poem that directly spoke to the project I'm working on now--a poem that I actually only found two months ago. It was a moment of two realities coming together at a critical place in my past. All at once I was overjoyed--yet at peace. I woke up, made coffee, and recalled that the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, actually none of the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence, are in existence any more at any college in Pennsylvania. The program was terminated in 2009. I won't get into the politics of it here; I just want to note how successful it was. I can't name a single alum from PGSA not doing something amazing right now in the Arts or Sciences. The creative and problem-solving skills taught there served the students well. It's a loss to our state--to our nation--that that incubator for high school students with merit (not money) is no longer with us. As issues of money and art swirl in my head these days, I post this with the hope that a few of you PGSA alumni might post a short tale about an important/critical moment from your time there. Bittersweet nostalgia? Perhaps. Or maybe we'll have the schools back someday soon. Cheers.

Preparations Continue

The show I'm working on with Angela Colasanti (pronounced Cola-Sahntee) is going well. Saturday was a productive day. We tied-off the loose ends of design in the morning. That left us all afternoon to build.






And build we did. It's quite a wonderful change to work on something creative by using old-fashioned elbow grease rather than fingers on a keyboard.







Plus, all of the pieces in the show will have some amount of recycled product in them. Sure I use recycled paper in my printer, but there's nothing like scavenging for materials. Yes, old fence slats. I like the symbolism. More about that at the show.

Flirtation amidst Foreboding

This poem by CJ Evans, "Even the Smallest Paradise," impresses the hell out of me. I love the compression--love it. I love the way Evans focuses our attention in this narrative on the small trappings of order and decorum--and contrasts them to the larger symbols of change (and it doesn't seem like a good change) from the skies. The society that these trappings help symbolize is soon to be upset. Yes, we've all seen this scene in war films/action films dozens of times--often overwrought and often flavored with a hint of "They're about to get theirs!" But, here, we have Evans evoking something similar but more complex (do these people deserve what's coming?), in what, how long is this, 75 words? Wonderful. Thanks, Poetry Daily. And, thank you, Indiana Review.

Life on Mars

I've always been in love with space exploration. If I had possessed the discipline for overcoming the challenges I faced in the math classroom, I would have loved to work as an engineer in the aerospace industry.

I imagine that in an alternate reality, this Marshall exists. This would be a more mathematically-disciplined Marshall, who places his time and energy into an object that left the shores of Earth. Asleep, he would often have fitful dreams about the mission/about the object. Awake, he would follow the mission closely and he would often smile considering what knowledge humanity was adding to its universities, it colleges, it schools--considering how humanity was exploring for exploration's sake.

In this reality, I held onto space exploration only as a news item or long-form article that catches my attention and demands to be read over breakfast, or at lunch. I decided years ago to put my intellectual energies--small as they are--into writing. I found that I got a fair amount of pleasure in struggling to find the write words to express myself accurately. I learned to whittle long and ugly expressions, into ones short and elegant. I studied poetry. I studied how to teach writing. I used these skills to make a living. What it would have been like to work for NASA or JPL? I don't know, but I think about it.

I think about it mostly when I talk to my brother. My brother works in a lab that studies the ways in which light affects the endocrine system. The lab gets some funding, sometimes, from those organizations I mentioned. My brother even constructed a moonlight machine. It simulates, roughly he would say, the wavelength of light on the moon's surface--as though you stood there. He's not in space no, but I envy him. A moonlight machine.

All of this is to explain how excited I was to hear poet Tracy K. Smith read from her latest book, Life on Mars, last Friday on the PBS Newshour. Poetry. Space. I think I squealed. I love Smith's work for reasons that I won't go into here, and I know that's not much of a pitch, but I encourage you to buy and read her books. Jeffrey Brown interviewed her for a great segment. Here's video of the segment, and this link is web-only content of Smith reading her poems and talking about her work. As the shuttle program closes over the next few days, please re-consider the line between good art and good science. They share at least two qualities: discipline and exploration.

Spectacular Splitleaves Press

For me, one of the best things to come out of Drexel's Week of Writing during the last week in May, was the chance to meet the head of Splitleaves Press. (We got a chance to chat at Ladder 15 during Philadelphia's first Literary Death Match--organized by Painted Bride Quarterly.) Splitleaves is a new independent press in Philly. It's small, but it's doing good things and publishing cool releases. The truth is, a graphic designer that truly understands printing can take a good collection of poems and make it great. This press understands that. And, this press understands that the future of poetry isn't necessarily at chain bookstores, SP's work is carried at independent bookstores across the city. Bravo to Splitleaves Press.

A Week Since Ai Weiwei's Release, and Where Are Things?

Yesterday, the Newshour's Jeffrey Brown posted this interview with filmmaker Alison Klayman. Her upcoming documentary film on Ai has given her some access to the artist, and she has some updates on his situation.

It's better, he's out of detention, but it's still not good. According to the website of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (I found this group in an article by Human Rights Watch) this was most likely part of a larger crackdown against activists, writers, lawyers in light of fears of a jasmine-style revolution taking hold in China.

A friend of mine once asked me if individuals can suffer from paranoia, why not state entities? What would that look like?

Sorry folks, but as Independence Day approaches my mind is on liberty and human rights.

In my earliest memory of the arts, I am. . .

For those of you who know me in real life, a few of you know that I am working on a visual art project with my long-time friend, Angela Colasanti. We had our fourth (or was it fifth?) meeting yesterday and things seem to be going well. Actually, it's difficult to downplay my enthusiasm for this little endeavor of ours: things are going extremely well and our first official announcement is only a month away. The project combines my respect for words with my respect for activism, and if we pull this off, it could mean more exciting projects in the future. You'll here more about this project in the coming weeks. For now, mark your calendars for the evening of August 26th and September 9th.

And, how would you complete this sentence?

In my earliest memory of the arts, I am. . .

Lost Entry from May 23rd

From notes I scribbled down in my phone, and later, in another journal.

Longwood Gardens. My favorite room in the elaborate and palatial greenhouse is a room with enormous vaulted ceilings of glass and steel that fade away into the sky, above the true center and spirit of the room: an enormous marble pool--grey and silver--perhaps as large as an Olympic pool. Filled ever so slightly with just a coating of shimmering water, the pool nourishes clusters of ferns, orchids and small trees. That shimmer, that was what moved me. I yearned to walk down the stars into the pool and to walk on that film of shimmering water. There was a wooden bench in one tree-shaded cluster, a fern on one side, room for one to sit on the other. I could have spent an afternoon on that bench, by the fern, and under the shade of the tree, tapping my foot. Sending ripples out. All afternoon. A whole afternoon. Honestly.

Lost Entry from May 22nd

It's late Sunday night. I'm taking a break from the task of preparing for a short reading tomorrow at Drexel University. I'll be reading as part of a "marathon reading" where poets, fiction writers, and essayists read their work, one after another, all day long. There will be short breaks for the audience, and each reader will take questions from the audience. I am making a few notes about artist Ai Weiwei and poet Bei Dao so that I can bring attention to the work of writers and artists who are suffering for human rights. Ai Weiwei was arrested by the Chinese government on April 3rd for charges that only exist in paranoid and oppressive countries. Ai is an activist, trying to bring attention to social problems in China--problems that when simply spoken of often put him at odds with the government. Or, from their perspective, he is the social problem. Ai's story is a fascinating one: an artist who designed the most noted structure at the Beijing Olympics--the pride of the Chinese Government--is now under arrest. I plan to use part of my time during the marathon tomorrow to read three poems by Chinese activist and exile, Bei Dao, and a quote from Ai Weiwei's TED talk--his talk was actually delivered via a pre-recorded video that managed to make it out of China to the TED talks. Bei Dao's work is available online through a SALT / Jacket co-issue published in July of 2001. Here's Weiwei's quote.

"You need people who can act, who can give-up their opinions, who can talk to the young people, to try to find a way to encourage people to be involved. Only when you are doing that, can you have a civil society."

Orr Reviews Books from Matthew Zapruder and Rachel Wetzsteon

I don't have much to say here; Orr compliments their work and gives praise where praise is deserved. From the poetry section, April 22nd: "How Poets Achieve Their Styles"

the Lost Entry of March 18th

While spring-cleaning my phone last night, I found these notes (typed in 3/18 apparently). It was St. Patty's Day. I had taken the afternoon off to catch-up with a cousin I hadn't seen in a while. We had a few beers, traded stories, it was good. I typed parts of this into my phone while we were hanging out, and I typed the rest the next morning on the train.



Frontier Psychiatrist--
My cousin and I took an afternoon off to catch up. It's been awhile. He showed me the video for Frontier Psychiatrist (the MTV version is still floating around youtube). It brought back memories of how much fun it was to be pop-music lover during the crazy sampling days of the 90s and 00s. Pandora has a "Frontier Psychiatrist" station--not that one would ever catch that song on Pandora, but hey, the songs are fairly relevant. "You've got Maelstrom" by BlockHead on Music by Cavelight. The samples here include voice-work from a comic-book record--one of the Marvel or DC super-hero stories by a Power Records released in the 70s. I'm sure of it.

You know what, let's just do a running list of what I'm listening to. Bees on Mars now. Good stuff from TM Juke's album Forward. Then again, heroin can be good stuff too. So is a bottle of scotch. A pitcher of White Russian is good stuff too. DJ Shadow now.

There is a firm new way of being in the world now--the personal movie soundtrack. After 35 years (let's begin with the sony walk-man), it's easy now, almost expected that at certain times, all of us will want to have a clear helmet of music descend around our heads, and the sidewalks and streets turn into a backdrop--a landscape of faces only inches from us, but filtered through the soundscape of another planet.

I've been living this way for about two months now. I'm not sure there's anything wrong with this. Unless, of course, one doesn't know when to turn off the music and live more presently in the world.

Yes.

Deltron 3030.