MARTHA DEED: To Cloudburst Council, May 6, 2012

Martha L. Deed combined writing with her practice as a psychologist specializing in family law issues for 30 years before retiring as a psychologist to write full time.  And then she was grabbed by a poetics unlike anything she had either studied or written before – which worried her until she discovered James Tate as well as the Buffalo poetry community, especially as it emanates from Buff State and UB. 

Her most recent book, The Last Collaboration (http://www.furtherfield.org/friendsofspork/, 2012) tells the story of her daughter Millie Niss's final hospitalization, death by medical mistake, and the investigations that followed.  The book twists the format of “book” with its use of Millie's emails, medical records, and hospital notebooks which recorded her end of every conversation (because she was intubated but alert) combined with Martha's poems of the period.  The Last Collaboration is designed as the companion book to City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) by Millie Niss (2010, Blazevox) which Martha curated and edited.  The mix of poetry with investigative journalism is also used in her chapbook, The Lost Shoe (2010, Naissance) which draws upon her observations of several trials in western New York along with related legal material.  Other chapbooks and e-books include: The November 2010 Project (Dan Waber, 2011), 65 X 65 (2006, small chapbook project),  #9 (2004, Furniture Press), Intersections: a twenty day journal of the unexpected (2006, Museum of the Essential and Beyond That), and News from Erewhon, with Millie Niss (2005, Iowa on the Web).  Poetry publications include: Gypsy, CLWN WR, Dirt, Milk, Shampoo, and many others.  Her web installations and videos have been published online and shown in galleries in the US, UK, Canada and Israel. Martha Deed's websites: www.sporkworld.org/Deed and http://sporkworld.tumblr.com.

Driving Eastbound on the NYS Thruway on a Sunday Morning

The nearsighted Red-tailed Hawk sits on a fencepost

near mile post 343.9 on the New York State Thruway.

His shadow lies atop the voles' paths warning them away

but he can't see his shadow, only the motion

of the voles who are not there. Forewarned,

they have left for church via their rear entrances

and soon the hawk is overtaken by hunger and grows lightheaded

trembling on his post like a piece of toast

tossed by an ancient toaster nearly burnt to a crisp in the winter sun.

Hungry as a starving artist, his thoughts turn to Poetry

and the quirky inventory of James Tate poems he memorized

while the voles were mating inside their nests

creating snacks for a hawk in spring. Half-blind and not as grown up

as they think they are, the babies will leave their hole

without looking both ways – or Up –

thank G-d and so it is a good time to mull the future

while the babies grow, and if a hawk's aggression for survival

is offensive to romantic Thruway travelers, surely

it is far preferable to the striking of the hawk

at a passing Nissan Cube colored red for Cardinal.

New York State Thruway between Rochester and Syracuse

Revised for John Roche, May 5, 2012

CRAIG CZURY: FROM HIS MARCELLUS JOURNAL

Craig Czury is the 2012 recipient of the F. Lammot Belin Scholarship for Artists, which will allow him to continue his “Thumb Notes” interviews while hitchhiking around the Northeast/North Central Pennsylvania natural gas drilling region. Craig lives outside Dimock and Reading, Pa.

Marcellus Journal 8.21.11 Springville, Pa.

To get cell phone reception I have to walk the hill up back

to the little league field and perch to the southwest

on the rain-soaked bleachers the same direction Mexico

is taking Japan in extra innings hills away in Williamsport

Christmassy and alien a new drill rig juts up above the trees

on the hill beyond the schoolhouse where I sleep on a mattress

on the floor in a high school classroom my table lamp glares

through the window perfectly aligned with the towering lights

This gas drilling would be good work for the kids who graduated

from this high school instead of going into the Army to make good

but they all probably got farm deferments it’s the same difference

each of these well pads takes the place of how many farm boys

coming home from the Arab oil wars in body bags you do the math

times what we left over there at least we got water

DOOR THREE CLOUDBURST POEM

BEHIND DOOR THREE
                        for Brian Richards


the Magic Citadel
        all imagine its structure
                 with minds free,

                        one image impossible

collection/collective
architecture by committee

          action ignited by magic
           force sparks the fire
           returns unseen

Strong Hold
  some  protected
       walls held together by imaginary intent

             I knew I was alone
             from the day I was born.
             a day when the sun rose

             must I guard my soul
             from the engine of desire

reading patterns
morning rain, little puddle

                            Alan Casline
                            May 4, 2012
                            Elsmere, New York

MICHAEL CZARNECKI ON THE POETIC ROAD TO CLOUDBURST

Michael Czarnecki is a poet, small press publisher, oral memoirist and encourager. He founded FootHills Publishing in 1986 and since then FootHills has published over 400 chapbooks and books of poetry. When FootHills was formed Michael committed to never using grant money to publish books. 26 plus years later he still holds onto that commitment. Nearly 18 years ago he gave up working a regular job and has since made his and his family's living entirely though creative work. Though poor in dollars, he is rich in life's experiences.

Michael lives on his 50 acre homestead, Wheeler Hill, in the northwest corner of the Susquehanna watershed, with his wife, Carolyn, and sons, Grayson, 21 and Chapin, 17  ( turning that on May 11, the start of Cloudburst.) They all are involved with the business of FootHills and the publishing would not be what it is without their contributions.

When not on Wheeler Hill, Michael is often out on the poetic road. Over the years he's traveled tens of thousands of miles across America on poetic tours. Twenty Days on Route 20 is a haibun account of a journey from Boston to Newport, OR on America's longest US Route. His recent books include Wheeler Hill (Benevolent Bird Press), Never Stop Asking for Poems and just released, In the Spirit of T'ao Ch'ien, American recluse poetry, also featuring Sam Hamill, David Budbill, Antler and Charlie Rossiter.

From Wheeler Hill

Observing Monarch                        

Monarch
wings by
lands on
goldenrod blossom
flutters off
a little farther south
while another
takes its place
lands on same stalk
a few seconds of rest
then it too flies off
while I stand
marveling at frail creatures
this last generation
born here, now turning
south, heading far, far
away to southern grounds
to continue this life journey
while I stand, contemplating
my life’s path for these
remaining years ahead
wondering how I’ll pass on
my life’s experience
to some watching bystander

From In the Spirit of T'ao Ch'ien

2

Hilltop covered in thick fog
nearby trees barely in view.

No sunrise over eastern ridge
only slow lightening of sky.

Cat meows, wanting food in his dish
homemade bread toasting on wood stove.

Would you understand if I said
right here, the center of the world

BRIAN RICHARDS: 3 POEMS

Brian Richards lives in a small cabin, sans electricity or phone, on a ridge overlooking the Ohio River Valley. He is the sole proprietor of Bloody Twin Press, a letterpress operation which has published books by Tom Clark, Ted Enslin, Skip Fox, Howard McCord, Christy Sanford, Anne Waldman and many others. He has published a number of books of poetry, most recently Enridged from the University of New Orleans Press.

She is free-

                     climbing a monolith thirty feet or so above a brushy slope

            its angle of ascent maybe thirty feet the wrong side of vertical

Sunny day behind and below but just her hair

            the anterior surface of her upper left arm

            her left thigh muscle, the outside of her left knee

            the top of her left calf are splashed with light

 The toes of her left foot are lost in a divot

            heel in space, left calf almost horizontal against the rock face

            sinews strained to hold the weight striated with light

            as are the leaders above the knee

            thigh angled down almost forty-five degrees off plumb

Her right thigh a sliver of light along its top locked to the curve of the rock

            knee almost out of sight, lower leg in space

            triangle between her thighs and the rock close to equilateral

            but for the bulge of her pubes shading into the dark crack between her cheeks

            their compression spring holding her lower body in place

Her torso is parallel to the face a foot away

            her left arm horizontal shoulder to elbow

            forearm vertical to the knuckles lifting her small breast

            erect nipple almost in touch, fingers in a crack

            face-to-the-face profile utterly focused

Her long loose light hair provides a plumbline that preserves the thirty-degree angle to her back

            just her right forearm visible above her head

            hand a foot higher than the left clamping a narrow crack

            and almost to the top of the frame

How far she has to climb is impossible to say

            but she is apparently unconcerned with ceilings

Wergild

                  'With you

my value is immense without you

I'm worth about' a crewcut buck in chemicals

though with bottled water above

a dollar a pint any body might be swapped for

a six-pack of budlite

                                     The inwards offer

the best chance to move if marketed by

the piece designated choice considering precedent

there is little to be made from selling organs used

to abuse as they have been made more

the leaky dehumidifier left behind

the Goodwill

                         The voice cannot be

transferred regardless of price only the eye

holds undevalued over a half century since

his orchids dropped the same

feral glee while in her

release a plea for succor

final offer to close the cry

the chance to ride him home for keeps

Chipmunk a peripheral imposition

afterimage headed into the den beneath

one of the treated six-by-six sills that found

the outhouse

                       the eye never catches

up but plots a path to satisfy

that indiscrete stroke traversing

the tangential kiss of what I can say I saw

BUNDLE FROM ANDRE SPEARS

Greetings,

I’m attaching the short text “Friendship,” written by Maurice Blanchot on the occasion of George Bataille’s death (1962), as a sort of “ancillary bundle” to accompany leek soup.

In a nutshell, what I think I’ve gleaned from my recent reading, in retracing the bond that links Bataille to friend Blanchot to friend Derrida to friend J-L Nancy—across the intertextual field delimited by Bataille’s Friendship (first half of Guilty), Blanchot’s “Friendship” and The Unavowable Community, Nancy’s The Inoperative Community and Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship—goes something like this: the “plasma of friendship” is Death, in the same way that the “plasma of community” is the Death of my Friend.

This line of inquiry into issues of friendship and community begins with Bataille and, like much of Bataille’s major work, emerges from the very heart of Nazi-occupied France (not to say Europe).

So, I guess the question for me is whether we can take Olson’s notion of “polis”  as another word for “community.”

See you round the campfire.

a’

ALBERT GLOVER: CLOUDBURST BUNDLE ITEM: THREE

Cloudburst Bundle:  Item 3

…for most of its several centuries’ run, modernism’s taproot in romantic ideology drew heavily on the notion of opposition and critique.  Whether flaunting disregard for bourgeois conventions, or upending the tables of polite discourse, or slapping the face of public taste, the artistic attachment to posing a critique has been one of the hallmarks of the long legacy of romanticism up through the avant-garde and beyond. Attachment to some notion of politics as a task for poetics, rooted in the notion of critique, is premised on the idea that artistic identity had a privileged role in the culture. Artists were other, somehow apart, the watchdogs, the agents provocateurs, the self-styled shamans, outsiders, whistleblowers, or keepers of the flame of moral conscience in a fallen world. Metaphors of salvation and redemption aside (and with them, all whiff of theology), the sense that the artist’s role was linked to critique has come to be a feature of the contemporary scene. We can read the writings of the modern philosophers, aestheticians, the passionate advocates of social change, radical epistemological defamiliarizers and imaginative visionaries. All are premised on the same principle of utopian reform.

But as the theoretical precepts of complex systems begin to come online (in literal as well as metaphoric senses), the status of critique changes. If authorship and its myths of agency dissolve in a situation where writing is aggregated, made, constructed, processed so that poetics emerge out of the mass of discourse rather than being other from it, then the grounds of distinction on which the figure of the author gained purchase fall away as well.  We become authorettes, components of an authorial stream, bits of the larger code tide. Critique was dependent on apart-ness and distinction, relied on the configured condition of identity to sustain its premises—the outside otherness, a contrived stance at best, but a much-cherished one, was the requirement for such a practice, rooted in what look now like very mechanical distinctions of self and other, subject and object, self and world, perceiving consciousness and a priori phenomena.

From “Beyond Conceptualisms: Poetics after Critique and the End of the Individual Voice” by Johanna Drucker published in The Poetry Project Newsletter, April/May 2012.