Big Window

Open 32: Writing Like a Kerouac

Here's a new writing exercise.  Let me know how it works for you.  Feel free to post your results in the comment section below.

Here's a passage by Jack Kerouac about how to get your writing mojo on.  I'm lifting it from the Language is a Virus website.  Let it be your guide as you write using the photograph posted below as your springboard.

List of Essentials


• Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
• Submissive to everything, open, listening
• Try never get drunk outside yr own house
• Be in love with yr life
• Something that you feel will find its own form
• Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
• Blow as deep as you want to blow
• Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
• The unspeakable visions of the individual
• No time for poetry but exactly what is
• Visionary tics shivering in the chest
• In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
• Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
• Like Proust be an old teahead of time
• Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
• The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
• Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
• Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
• Accept loss forever
• Believe in the holy contour of life
• Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
• Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
• Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
• No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
• Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
• Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
• In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
• Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
• You're a Genius all the time
• Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
  
  As ever,
  Jack

Jack Kerouac "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, copyright © 1958, 1977, 1983. Grey Fox Press.

Photograph by Richard Misrach.

To see more writing projects posted on Big Window, click here.

The Octonauts and the Sea of Shade

I read a positive review of this picture book on Art MoCo.  The Octonauts and the Sea of Shade is the second book by Meomi, a dynamic duo also known as Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy.  Based on the title and cover alone, this one's going onto my wish list. 

Like Lips

lipstick lady, originally uploaded by hans solcer.

Here's a photograph by the Dutch photographer Hans Solcer. You can see more of his work on flickr.

Owl Street

This Seattle mural was done by a group of street artists who never planned, never met.  It came to life secretly and organically.  Read more about it here. 

(via Wooster Collective)

The New EOAGH

You can check out the latest edition of EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts online now.  The journal is edited by Tim Peterson. One of my poems is published in this issue.

The table of contents includes:

Language Poetry and The Body: A Panel by Maria Damon, Steve Benson, Leslie Scalapino, and Bruce Andrews

ORDERED FRAGMENTS (        ) OF A DISORDERED DEVOTION
by Charles Alexander

OFF THE TOP OF MY RADIO HEAD
by Stephen Paul Miller

Inbetweeness
by Veronica Wong

Lydia Davis' Proust reviewed by Michael Gottlieb

And poems by Gilbert Adair, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Cara Benson, Charles Borkhuis, Allen
Bramhall, Laynie Brown, Marie Buck, Laura Carter, Christopher Casamassima, Joel Chace, James Cook, Lisa Cooper, Clayton Couch, Bruce Covey, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Jonathan Doherty, Thom Donovan, Jim Dunn, kari edwards and Chris Martin, Thomas Fink, Skip Fox, Joanna Fuhrman,  Rebecca Gopoian, Andy Gricevich,  Arielle Guy,  Barbara Henning, Mitch Highfill,  Dan Hoy, Thomas Hummel,  Paolo Javier,  Paul Foster Johnson, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Lin Kelsey, Brendan Kreitler, Ruth Lepson, Hillary Lyon, Jami Macarty, Nicholas Manning, Sara Marcus, Bonnie Jean Michalski, Joe Moffet, Rich Murphy, Sheila Murphy and Scott Glassman, Chris Murray, Shin Yu Pai, Dawn Pendergast, Patricia Peterson, Simon Pettet, Nick Piombino, Laurie Price,  Karen Randall, Robin Reagler, Marthe Reed, Evelyn Reilly, Edwin Rodriguez, Linda Russo, Frank Sherlock, James Sherry, Ron Silliman, Gregory Vincent St Thomasino, Rob Stanton, Jordan Stempleman, Ray Succre, Shelly Taylor, Adam Tobin, Andrew Topel, Rodrigo Toscano, and Lynn Xu.

Next: REX

Painting on resin panel by the wonderful artist Rex Ray.  See his website for more, more , more.

Dusting for Prints

The subject is distant from and dark.
The subject is seen through glass.
The subject reflects, or has a luminous body.

If you feel you can no longer pray, care less, don't be selfish.

Was he an artist?
I remember him cutting a sword out of wood, and painting it gold.
"Arms" seems wrong. It's their nearness.

Sometimes it's you and I'm calling to you but I say the wrong name.

Several glass ashtrays, the panther lamp. The light  bent toward the map.
I spent a long time under the table, learning to recognize wires. How we would change        
her. How the bullet is scraped as it moves through the barrel.

The subject is distant, and dark.
Each instance has its rewards. Sex can't explain it.
Their goal is to empty themselves."

If you feel you can no longer pray, personally, I like trees, birds.

Personal & unintelligible, my addiction bores me.        
We still need spoons, plates, and knives. Bowls. Your star sign.
Those weeks with you?       

I remember driving you somewhere. Driving, and it was snowy.
Nothing was figured out.
You said redemption looked like a painting of fire, after a fire.

by Kate Greenstreet

published in Diagram

 

 

 

 

(photography of California wildfires by Richard D S via flickr)

Suchu Dance

I got to see Babka performed by Suchu Dance this past weekend at Barnevelder in Houston.  It was  very amazing.  I wish I had better photography to share with  you, but here's a link to a slide show from Suchu.  The word "slide show" sounds so antique, but this one actually does a good job of recreating the feel for the odd reality created by the work.  Congrats to Jennifer Wood, the troupe, and the staff at Suchu Dance.

La Plage

Photography by Loan Nguyen

Art Made of Earth

Jim Denevan transforms the beaches of northern California using a rake as  his paintbrush.  These sculptings of the earth last only as long as the tide allows.  Check out the work of Jim Denevan on his website to see more of his work.

(via swissmiss)

Just Like Poor Tom's Hair

Here's another poem from a brand new journal that I mentioned last month called Mrs. Maybe.  This poem is one of my favorites. It's by co-editor  Jared Stanley.

Just Like Poor Tom's Hair

Arcadia,
you have a moon
that you are made of,

moon grey
and copse-color,
a far gauze,        
                lunaire, lunaire,
motley with skin gleams,
mere in its shitfulness

like Poor Tom's hair,
a bric-a-brac attempt,
a glint,

to hid or rest
in undergrowth.

White flag or heal-all,
you send me
kisses made of no

because I'm made of money
and don't care what the night is for
in the capacious branch shadows.

A figured owl in the teeth
of mama nature's last laugh.

Moon,
you can't win.
You're wallpaper,
a head on the ramparts,
or a compass of hinges
in a city's sky.

Free, free, free;
we are made of fire
and you are
made of cheese.

by Jared Stanley

"Angry Hair" by Pearl, age 3.5

Mrs. Maybe enthusiasts can check out their new blog here.

Blinking Tree

When fluttering down from the top of the tree-shaped installation, these leaf-shaped pieces of paper, each with on open eye on one side and a closed eye on the other, suggest an amazing autumn for surrealists.  Or perhaps it's winter?  The “Blinking Tree” is a creation of the Japanese artist Yasuhiro Suzuki.

(via Ping Mag)

We Ride It Where It Takes Us

Last week I mentioned the new issue of Shampoo.  This week, a sampling from it.  Here is a poem by Emily Kendal Frey.

We Ride It Where It Takes Us

Dear Jalapeno,
Dear Leisure Suit,
My legs are crossed.
She’s overmedicated.
He’s watching me
watch the man with the beret
draw the blonde on his
tiny pad. No one is
not jealous. Dear Ventricle,
Dear Double,
Dear Rising Temperatures—
Forget about it,
their faces chorus.
The concept of time
is tinted sunglasses.
Put that in your pipe,
Dear Wolfish.
I see a love letter
under the seat.
Dear Equal Sign,
Dear 40 oz.—
I’ve got the volume
up so high
the sky just cracked a little.

by Emily Kendal Frey

published in Shampoo

Visual--Sonic--Visceral

Visual poetry by David Baptiste Chirot.  See more of his work at his blog.

New at Rhizome: Rhizome!

Rhizome has rolled out a great redesign of its website.  This example of artwork by Nathan Selikoff is derived from mathematical formulas.