Big Window

WIRED

Which literary journals (e- or print) have the best web sites?  One of my favorites is the Conduit site, as well as their tag line: the only magazine that risks annihilation. Extra cool. 

Rob Caspar's Jubilat has a new site that I like a lot.

It seems like many of the publications that were *big* in the 1980s and 1990s have failed to make the transition to the *wired* world.  Exceptions, anyone?  The Mississippi Review seems to be doing interesting things with its online version, as does Conjunctions.

Just Checking In

This week has been a busy one.  In the off-hours, I've been rereading lots of high-spirited poems by Lisa Jarnot and The Waves by Virginia Woolf.  I wrote a poem with a whole bunch of numbers in it.  That can be very satisfying, as you well know.

Hey Aqualung

I'm on a literary nonfiction kick lately.  Could you recommend a favorite book or two or three?  Thanks. 

kubla khan multiple choice questions

This morning a Google search for "kubla khan multiple choice questions" led some poor soul to this humble blog, Big Window.  In honor of this sparkly instance of waywardness, this happy accident, please provide a multiple choice question about the great Khan below. 

Love acc. to Hoa Nguyen

I love this poem by Hoa Nguyen that I swiped (shamelessly!) from Chris Murray's valentines day post over at the Tex Files. 

Love calls for Hades cold cream'
Love talks in picture code
          and Valentines

Let's eat red for fun
                eat tragicomedies

Epic red-love
washes all Valentines
          and gets my shoes wet

Like worn addled Valentines saying
"Sorry about Janice"

Wording is important

(waver         to sway         quaver           wave)

Love descends for literal "Hell & back" theatrics

Sleepless Nights

I wrote a poem called that years ago.  The subtitle (I rarely use those) is "Reading Nijinski's Diaries."  I first read them when I was at Iowa.  It's been many years since I've revisited them though.

Tonight I couldn't sleep and the baby is only responsible for the first hour.  The rest, I must take ownership for them myself.  Apparently I left the cat outside overnight, which I never ever do.  She's fifteen and diabetic.  Maybe I was hearing her cry too.

Is there a connection between poetry and insomnia?  Who writes the poetry of insomnia?  Is there a kind of creativity that is only possible at 4 a.m.?

I like to think about the sculpture by Alberto Giacometti called "The Palace at 4 a.m."  I read about it years before I actually saw it, and when I saw it finally it was so much smaller than I had imagined.  It makes me wonder, where's the pterodactyl when I look out my window?

oPen 14

Here's an exercise out of the Oulipo tradition.  Write a short poem using the letters from only half of your keyboard.  Which half of the keyboard?  That profound choice is up to you, my friend.

Eyes of Laura

Like a detective, Laura watches as she works at the Vancouver Art Museum.  Here's a description of her project from rhizome.org:

NET ART NEWS February 11, 2005 -- The conceit is half Blair Witch Project, half Paul Auster; 'Laura,' an artist working as guard at the Vancouver Art Gallery, makes art out of allowing visitors to her website to take charge of the museum's cameras and see what she sees. 'Sometimes I wonder whether more happens because I'm watching or whether events line themselves up for my benefit or something,' she reflects in her first diary entry on the site, dated September 1, 2004. Every few days, something new is posted, including video clips from the day's observations. These have slowly coalesced into a mystery of sorts, as the narrator obsesses over the interactions of the milieu's recurring characters--a detective, a skateboarder, an odd woman. True to that initial entry's promise, as you watch the narrator piece together the clues, you can never be sure whether something is 'really' going on, or whether it's in her head. Nevertheless, all the references to Blow-up, The Conversation and other fictions in which the observer becomes the observed make one guess that Laura's job is about to become even more interesting. . . . - Ben Davis

Strangeness

What's the strangest place you've ever given a poetry reading?

Once I agreed to do 2 readings at a women's festival.  The setting was a place that used to be a lodge or club.  The space where I was to read used to be a restaurant.  About 100 people attended the afternoon reading, and it was held in the large open space of the ex-restaurant.  But that night a smaller group attended (because there were rock concerts by then) and apparently another event was scheduled for that space.  So we did the reading in what I think had once been the area behind the bar.  Hurry up please it's time!

oPen 13

Here's a text I lifted from eHow, a web site that provides clear instructions for how to do anything.  Your mission:  erase all but eleven words to make a poem.

Check the Fluid for a Hydraulic Clutch in Your Car Cars with manual transmissions (stick shift) use either hydraulics (which uses fluid) or a cable to connect your clutch pedal to the transmission. If your car has a hydraulic clutch, the fluid must be checked monthly to ensure that it's full and there aren't any leaks. Steps: 1. Determine whether your car has a hydraulic clutch. 2. Turn the engine off and open the hood. 3. Look for a small plastic container about 1 inch in diameter located close to the back of the engine, usually near the brake fluid reservoir. It looks a lot like the brake fluid reservoir but it's smaller. Imagine that the clutch pedal went straight through into the engine compartment: this is where you'll find the clutch master cylinder and clutch reservoir. 4. Check the fluid level. The reservoir is usually clear with a small round rubber cap on the top; it should be filled to the top. 5. Add brake fluid if it's low. 6. Replace the cap. Warnings: Take care not to spill brake fluid on yourself or the car's paint - it's highly corrosive. Wash your hands and wipe any spills with a rag. If the clutch reservoir is consistently low you probably have a leak. The reservoir is very small so even a little leak can empty it out quickly. Without fluid, your clutch pedal is useless so you won't be able to shift, or to drive. See your mechanic if you suspect a leak.

If you want to, you can leave us your poem in the comment section.

Art Shanties on Ice

The "Art Shanty Project" is a collection of ice houses created with art in mind.  My friend Meredith sent me this story from Minnesota Public Radio. 

Jonas Lindberg's ice shack has a white roof, pale blue transparent plastic walls, and simple wooden benches. The frozen lake serves as the floor - he's swept it clean so that you can peer down through the black ice several feet, watching cracks zigzag downward into darkness. He's got a hole drilled for fishing, and he plans to send a camera down with some light to shoot an underwater video.

Lindberg was one of several artists who responded to a call by the Soap Factory gallery in Minneapolis to come up with their own unique designs for ice houses.

A few yards away, Mike Hoyt is creating an ice painting. He paints figures onto sheets of translucent plastic, secures them in a box frame and covers them in lake water until they've frozen into large ice panels. Then he stands them up and the sunlight plays with the colors.

"Mostly I've been working with just a series of people that have caught fish. Sort of like trophy fish, but removing the image of the fish and adding something else, another found object or image," says Hoyt. "I'm sort of playing with the idea of the magic and mystery of what you might pull out of the lake."

Photographer Xavier Tavera explores negative space with his sculptural interpretation of an ice shack. Rather than a house with walls, he has erected a number of ladders indicating where walls might have been.  Visitors to the Art Shanty Project feel compelled to climb the ladders embedded in ice and check out the view.

I'm not sure what was so compelling about this story to me.  Maybe the possiblity of art happening anywhere?  To read the full story by Marianne Combs, click here.

This Time

This time of year is always the hardest for me.  Even though we don't have a true winter in Houston, there's the seasonal ebb that draws memory, mind, and body along with it.  I go through phases in which I stop reading and try not to think so much.  Maybe it's a human version of hibernation.  It affects the passage of time.  My perceptions go syrupy.

However: last month I started leading a weekly poetry workshop, and that experience has been uplifting for me.  I find myself looking forward to Wednesday nights.  Some of you asked that I post the agenda and exercises, and I'm going to make that happen one of these days.  Soon.

Škart, Art Meets the Everyday

Škart’s project Sadness took the form of a weekly book of poems created for the residents of Belgrade during the war-torn early ’90s. The books were designed to mimic the look of lost-and-found tags, and Škart distributed them in various public places like railway stations and food markets as small healing gestures in a devastated and ravaged country. Poems were mailed to various Belgrade residents, distributed on the streets, and read by Škart on the radio.

Started in the 1990s by two architects/graphic designers, Dragan Protic and Djordje Balmazovic, Škart has done creative projects that confront serious issues in the Balkans. These event take place out in the world, rather than in the confines of museums or galleries or books. I like the way they integrate art into the everyday. 

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg by Richard Hugo

You might come here Sunday on a whim. Say your life broke down. The last good kiss you had was years ago. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives. Only churches are kept up. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he's done. The principal supporting business now is rage. Hatred of the various grays the mountain sends, hatred of the mill, The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls who leave each year for Butte. One good restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out. The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines, a dance floor built on springs-- all memory resolves itself in gaze, in panoramic green you know the cattle eat or two stacks high above the town, two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse for fifty years that won't fall finally down. Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium and scorn sufficient to support a town, not just Philipsburg, but towns of towering blondes, good jazz and booze the world will never let you have until the town you came from dies inside? Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty when the jail was built, still laughs although his lips collapse. Someday soon, he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up. You tell him no. You're talking to yourself. The car that brought you here still runs. The money you buy lunch with, no matter where it's mined, is silver and the girl who serves your food is slender and her red hair lights the wall. Richard Hugo