My Work Is Published in WORK 9!

Ten of my poems from the Haunting of Ninjatown are in the new issue of WORK.

Work is one of my favorite journals of poetry. They publish poets I really like, and I can't wait for all of you to check it out.

The Haunting of Ninjatown is a book of poetry by Jack Morgan. Someday it will be published in its entirety by someone who likes poetry that isn't like everyone else's, and people will call it avant-garde, and general existential despair will be lowered considerably. You can read a small portion of the book and feel a little better about life and poetry by purchasing or trading for a copy of WORK now! Why wait? Operators are not standing by, but David Harrison Horton will be waiting at his mailbox with trembling anticipation.

Marigold Keeps the Flies from Your Lashes

Women like horses at midnight
waterless breezes
carry their flowers much longer.

There was a Great Dane
named Pony last night;
she was the sweetest cur.

Heels on stones and light
clip back old pains
soft shoulders slight fur.

Did You Make the Who's Who of Poetry Cut? Christoper Cox Got Fired.

The geniuses at ForGodot.com google-bombed the poetic community yesterday. They posted a list of anyone in poetry they thought was important enough to include, which was almost everyone who has ever written a poem. "Geniuses" in that first sentence should not be read with any tinge of sarcasm. I laughed pretty hard and spent too much time on their blog/site/artistic showcase.

I never liked Christopher Cox. I lived in his district for a while, and I wrote him probably a dozen emails when he and the FCC were trying to sell the internet to Disney. He probably deserved firing way back then, but I don't know if he needed firing this time. Does firing the SEC guy help me get health care? I sure would like some health care. This is the first time I have ever been without health care, and I wonder if I should even bother. Surely, I will. I have not had to worry about health care. In Europe, you kind of just have it, and since I have been in the United States, I have been taken care of by the university. If I trip and fall and crack my crown, like off of a hill or something, I will be left for dead by doctors. I mostly hate doctors because they are even scummier than most lawyers. At least lawyers don't get all self-righteous about fleecing you. A doctor is a glorified mechanic of the biological machine. I trust the ex-con at Jiffy-lube more than I trust the average physician.

I trust Milani Rose more than I trust the average physician standing in the way of 45 million Americans and and the right to medicine if they are sick. I found out about her by googling something with "sexy" and "poetry" in the search line. Milani Rose is curvy. She wants us to vote for her because "from my poetry to my sexy pics." Her favorite color is "Rainbow." I hope that everyone who hated me for posting pictures of lingerie models who were "too skinny" or "too close to the ideal of beauty perpetrated by misogynistic piggish men" and Suze Stein will stop hating me now. Suze Stein did not make the ForGodot.com list. Neither did Milani Rose. I think that Milani Rose's poetry is better than Suze Stein's.

Best picture of Jack Morgan ever taken

Crappy Movies I've Seen Lately.

I have seen some crappy movies lately.

One of the crappiest was the latest Pacino/DeNiro vehicle., Righteous Kill
Who knew these guys could make the most boring serial killer movie ever? These guys just love the camera too much. The tired script lags every place it can, and where it should be charged, you get long boring monologues about nothing. I think they need a director with balls enough to tell them what's what. A good director gives direction, and a good actor takes it. I think a lot of directors are afraid to tell these gents what they need because Pacino/DeNiro "know what they're doing." Seriously, this movie should have been great. 1 simple cop story + 2 super stars ≠ great movie I guess, but it should!




Death Race was pretty crappy. It's about an innocent man in jail, which is tired and lame. There are many needless homo jokes, like it's a Disney movie or something. There are also a couple stupid stabs at Asians for some reason, like the last Die Hard movie. I guess focus groups say Asians and gays are OK to make fun of in action movies. I wish movies about cars and explosions could just be about cars and explosions. The extra stuff you should get is nude women and lots of F-bombs––no racist homophobic shit that isn't funny. When do we get to go back to making guy movies? Straight men between 16 and 60 is a pretty huge demographic. What they want is another Robocop or maybe something by Segal before he got lame. How the hell are you going to make a car/explosion movie boring? Ugh.


Thank God for Larry Bishop.
Here's what he had to say about Hell Ride. Hell Ride, BTW, is the best guy movie of 2008 by far. I think it might be the only guy movie of 2008.

Tarantino.info: There’s a character credited as “oil wrestling mud devil”, can you here and now promise that it will be as great as it sounds?
Larry Bishop: I swear on Michael Madsen’s life.

The crappiest movies of 2008 are probably X-Files and Mummy 3. They're so bad I don't want to even talk about them. They even made the Parkway Speakeasy look bad. The Parkway is the best movie theater in the world.

Jack Morgan's Girlfriend

This is a picture of Jack Morgan's girlfriend. Many of you have been wondering what she looks like. Now you know.

She is from the south, but she doesn't talk like a redneck.

She owns a tea shop.

She makes me laugh.

She has a black eye in this picture.

I met her on a Shakespeare adventure.

Jack Morgan: Piscean Age

Trainwreckunion.tv

AGENT G4

Sooooooo Avantgarde!

Normally when I post something for Agent G4, I just put a work of classical art up and then write sooooo avantgarde, which I have always thought is funny for some reason. But I have to say that now, after two random searches, this is the second time Jessica Rabbit has made it onto my blog, and I think that is a little weird.

Jessica Rabbit has only appeared in three short cartoons following the hugely successful "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" movie, but she is an icon. The internet is filled with fanboys who love her. And I don't think it's because they get off on gawking at big-boobed toons, though with the weirdly popular hentai phenomenon there must be a few. And I think that she has just one catch phrase, which does not an icon make. My theory is that Jessica Rabbit is a pie in the face of the establishment that Disney wears as its own. It shows what will happen when you give artists and writers a long enough leashe.

Jessica is unique among cartoon women and almost never included when the princesses come out dancing on lunch boxes and rucksacks. She's the woman we want to keep away from our little girls because behind all the glam and absurd proportions, she's the realest one. She's kind of a thorn in the side of studios because they would love to create another icon without letting an artist do it. Artists can undoubtedly create icons, but let's face it, who in the mainstream admitedly wants another Mrs. Rabbit? The truth is that people have no idea what they really want and they would never predict that they would love the characters they do.

Another one of these is this guy.

In the early 70's, movie studios were freaking out. No one wanted to see their crap Frankie and Annette wannabe movies or another Dr. Doolittle. They made lots of crap back then, just as they are now. So they let their most promising directors, the ones who had done things they didn't understand but audiences liked for some reason despite all of their focus groups and test marketing.

The 70's gave us movies like "Easy Rider," "Taxi Driver," and "God Father I & II." Young directors who still saw their craft as an art and were still self-conscious and unsure of their talent but had something. . . SOMETHING! That something made them no good at garbage like "Earthquake" or any of the crap the studios actually wanted to be successful.

They were the 1% of film makers. The ones who created and became icons for better or worse.

Today the film industry is facing another lull. They want us to watch crap. They want to make it more spectacular with 3D effects and CGI characters and digital miracles. But at this point, a lot of that stuff is rather underwhelming. Rather than pay a writer to do what he's good at, they want to blow the dust off a crowd pleaser of days gone by á la "Herbie the Love Bug." This will not work. And people will grow more and more bored of the standard video gaming stories. too. Some day studios will realize that effects and stars, although useful, are nothing compared to writers.

The only place they seem to understand this is a few select cable television stations. Who would think that the Sci-fi channel would be successful selling well-written shows whose effects are secondary? Who thought HBO was going to be a power house of smart entertainment? What the hell is going on over at Showtime? And FX? These stations provide several examples of how writers end up giving people what they want even if they don't know it. Damn your focus groups.

I like going to movies, and I look forward to the day when studios are so broke they have no choice but to try something totally new, totally old, to tell a story we want to hear. I am sick of stories about "good" and "bad." Can't we just trust an audience will enjoy time with interesting characters without pandering to some bull shit sense of what we think they want?

Think Hamlet or Macbeth or any of Shakespeare's leads. They are never so easy to understand. They're icons. Think of any of the things people really love; they seem complicated because they're realistic. Even Jessica Rabbit, a lounge singer who seems like a philandering temptress, is something much more than all of that. DeNiro in "Taxi Dirver" is just a guy who wants to impress a girl because he's crazy, but there's a lot more, no? Or how about Bloom in "Ulysses"?

When was the last time you met a character in a movie that you found interesting regardless of his political leanings or motivations?


Here are more pictures of Cartoons in Classical Art situations.

PBS Poll-Scam for Pole Cats

PBS is doing one of those instant online polls to ask " America " if they think Sarah Palin is fit to be Vice President.

The GOP has launched a successful all out blitz to get Republicans to go on the site and click "Yes". As a result right now it looks like 62% of " America " thinks Palin is qualified. The Republicans are going to be milking this for all its worth in their press efforts.
We need to drive more Democrats and those opposed to Palin to the site to click "NO". Let's not give the GOP another easy weapon to put in their PR arsenal!

Here's the link: http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

You don't have to enter your email address or anything, just click "NO".

Red State Update

There are people out there who will vote for McCain/Palin, and that makes me sad and angry. It's just so hard to believe that such people exist. This video makes fun of them, "Red State Update," but I have this feeling that they aren't that far from the truth. I used to at least respect republicans' point of view. I used to think they were a necessary part of a nation like this one. But now I think they must all have downs. Actually that's too harsh on people with downs. Republicans must be hydrocephalic.

She thinks dinosaurs were around 4000 years ago and would ban any book that says otherwise!
People like her only want us reading one book. We'll all be reading one book, even all those ivy elites.

A Poem Closes the Yankee Stadium

I didn't know that Bob Sheppard was a poet. And even though I have never seen a game in Yankee Stadium, and although I am not a huge fan of baseball, it was touched to read in the NY Times this morning that a poem closed the park.

I hope a poem opens the new stadium across the street in April.

And though it is not what 99% of poetry people would call "good" poetry, I think it is the best kind of poetry in that it captures and calcifies in memory the sentiments of a huge group of people.

Farewell old Yankee Stadium, farewell
What a wonderful story you can tell
DiMaggio, Mantle, Gehrig and Ruth
A baseball cathedral in truth
Farewell

I really love how the person hearing the story changes from line 2 to 3. At first it's we who would hear the stadium's story, but then it's baseball's brightest stars in the afterlife. Thus, the spirit of the thing tells stories instead of the stadium itself, making Yankee Stadium one of the stars of baseball, whose passing is mourned and whose spirit is praised. And where do we praise spirits? Cathedrals. So the poem says farewell to all of them and an era that, no matter how little interest you have in baseball, is quaintly nostalgic and seemingly more virtuous and innocent. It's a very elegant little poem, really. Bob Sheppard, who has been the voice of the baseball cathedral for 57 of his 97 years, deserves an equally elegant eulogy when he joins his fellow icons of a better age.

Heart Beats Down on the Irgnorant Scourge that Is the Republican Party

The funniest thing that has happened so far in this election!
The band, Heart, writes a scathing letter to John McCain about his using their song, Barracuda, whenever whatsername, that hocky pitbull lipstic whatever running mate, takes the stage.

The picture is a little small, but if you squint your eyes, you can read where it says, "we would need a Demrol epidural to live through five minutes of [Cindy's] conjugal duties--you sloshing your saggy ass between her legs, chomping her breasts with your little yellow teeth."

I love this kind of stone throwing. Will the Democrats finally get their party members to do some muck-raking for them? I wish more 70's musicians spoke out to their generation about how terrified they are about someone like John McCain representing them. What else are they doing? There's a huge section of the voting population who still love and feel a connection to the music of the late 70's. Those people have to get more vocal about how the Republican party has ignored and misrepresented them and played them for their patriotism and their fear; how thye've been disrespected.

The Republicans obviously don't have any respect for anyone at all. Remember when Kanye West said "George Bush does not care about black people"? Republicans don't care about anyone or anything outside money. Palin has no respect for the law or ethics. She refuses to cooperate with a state agency investigating her questionable conduct as governer, and she and her overlord just ignore the pleas of artists asking them nicely to stop using their work. Thumbing their noses at the millioins of voices crying out for their country back, begging for peace, aching for the right to see a doctor when they're sick, yearning for the access to education and upward mobility. Sure, sometimes they take a moment to pander to the worst parts of all of us, but when they've managed to trick the nation into electing them, they roll their eyes and go back to fleecing the country and turning our children into UGG Boots.

That's what I'm going to do from now on. I'm just going to walk around doing whatever the hell I want, and when people ask me to stop I will tell them no or ignore them and go about throwing army men out of the school bus window tied to a string——Gosh! A world in which everyone behaved that way would be unlivable.

I am going to write an open letter to someone soon, I think. More people should write more open letters.

I found this out here, Gawker.com.

Jack Morgan; One Percenter

99% of poets are sycophants who see poetry not as a way of life, but as a hobby or a trade. They have no passion for the craft or for an existence founded on beauty and honesty and adventure. They have neither loyalty nor honor nor courage.

1% of poets adhere to a sense of justice and truth like masked vigilantes from comic books, leading an ostensibly normal life while chasing something more elusive and noble through words and experiences. They believe in the intensity and importance of a raindrop and the way people walk in pairs down sidewalks. They struggle with the power and inadequacy of words. They adore the smell of ink and the movements lips make when they whisper. They don't write because they want to. They don't need deadlines or assignments. They write because it's who they are.

I don't hate the 99 percenters. I've had many friends who are 99ers. Sometimes I even wish I were one of them, but it's always been clear that I'm not.

LHC will take 2 months to repair. No black hole for you!
Sent from my iPhone

A Word about Honesty

The greatest thing about being honest is that it's easy to spot the liars, who scatter like roaches from the light of truth.

Sorry about this.
Be Somebody!

Watching people watch sea lions

Wild Hogs is like a movie that wants to be better than a piece of shit but can't help the fact that Disney executives are breathing down its neck

I have been into motorcycle movies lately. They're hard to find, the ones I want to see, so I decided to give Disney's latest disaster a try. Wild Hogs is tragic because it could have been really good. It seems like the writer, Brad Copeland (Arrested Development and My Name is Earl) wanted to make it a realistic tale about the frustration men feel when they are trapped by the people they love and the inherent humor and self-conscious doubt that comes along with "mid-life." There are touching moments and hilarious ones throughout. And the movie wants to be corny, which is OK, but something else happens in this flick that ruins it and pisses me off.

I just can't believe that Brad Copeland wrote all the gay jokes into "Wild Hogs." I cannot fathom that someone whose mind is so comically ingenious would sink to pander to the lowest of possible audience. The gay jokes are homophobic and disgusting and ubiquitous. What are they doing in this movie? My problem' s not that they are off color or not PC, but that they aren't funny. There is a gay highway patrol man who chases them because he wants to do them or something, and the heroes run away as if they're afraid he is going to give them cooties. Is prison not scary enough? A lawman in a uniform represents "the man," not man-on-man action, in a motorcycle comedy. Such gags turn the movie to such shit that you almost don't notice Ray Liota giving the performance of his life as the head of the bad ass motorcycle gang. It also leaves no time to explore the characters. And it would be nice to get to know these characters a little better.

Tim Allen is a dentist, John Travolta is a rich guy, Martin Lawrence is a plumber, and William H. Macy is a techie. Each profession comes with a degree of crap they have to deal with, and they're breaking under it. Just the fact that these characters know each other through a motorcycle club (99%) is funny and presents numerous comic possibilities. And I actually liked Tim Allen in this, whom I usually hate. And I was happy to see John Travolta playing a rich guy going broke, a situation he was just about in when Trantino saved his career. There is just so much potential here. And Disney screwed the pooch on it; I'm sure they had some kind of focus group to figure out what "Nascar dads and hockey moms" thought would be funny. . . homophobia! I wish Brad Copeland had just made a low-budget mtorcycle comedy with his friends in the industry.
Why wasn't David Cross in this flick? He's too smart.
Is it too soon to do a remake?

I Got Somethin Published Your Mother Can Read. If she could read.

PlayShakespeare.com has published my review of Much Ado About Nothing.

My editor over there, Denise Battista, is pretty awesome.

Some Links and a Super Short Review of Transsiberian

I wrote a blog post at my green blog about the treesitters, and there's a picture I took there.

I found an interview with Larry Bishop. I wish I could meet him. What he says about successful motorcycle movies is how I feel about poetry.

Follow up on the Hadron Collider can be found here: hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com
Mary Diaz gave me that link.

Transsiberian is the most frustratingly claustrophobic film ever made, and it seems to be about woman's inability to adhere to any sense of loyalty or honesty. It takes place on a train in Russia, which is visually interesting and frightening. Everyone in it does an amazing job, all the peoplpe are realistic. It's written well, but I don't like the ending and I don't like any of the characters. Everyone in it's bad, and the one good guy is a schmuck and a sucker. So it is all right to call something good without actually liking it? Everyone else is.

Lary Bishop Was not Afraid that the World Might End

But Larry Bishop has never been afraid of anything ever, so why would he care about a mini black hole being formed on the planet's surface somewhere in Switzerland? Can you get to Switzerland on a motorcycle? It might as well not even exist.

I watched "Easy Rider" tonight. It made me afraid of Southerners. It makes me wonder how much has changed. I don't think enough. It depressed me a great deal, but today was a very depressing day.

I woke up to helicopters. My iPhone and Associated Press told me that the police were going to get rid of the tree sitters once and for all. So I went to the stadium to see it. All the trees but one were gone. Oaks and redwoods mostly. After two years it came to this: a sad spectacle. Someone yelled at the supporters "you lost" and "go bears," cried another. There were many stupid people there who had not yet learned that it is always sad to watch a big thing die or see an ideal defeated. The police arrested something like ten people by the time I left. I didn't stay to watch once the tree sitters had all been taken.

And UC Berkeley did it all for a new gym. UCPD is a police force that has no way of supporting or representing a community. It insteads serves the will of investors, donors, and the powers that be. The UC system should be ashamed of itself. It was just last year that that kid got tazered by UCPD in LA., and how many people died in dorms and sorr/frat houses? UCPD is a gang that might or might not be on your side if you're near a UC campus. They are a gang who does the bidding of special interests. It is incredible how easy it is to buy and sell someone's sense of right and wrong. I hope the cops at UCPD are making a lot of money for doing that job; you can't sell your conscience too dearly.

Makes me want to get a motorcycle and ride to Mardi Gras. Maybe southerners aren't all that bad.

If You're Reading This It Means the Hadron Collider has not Caused a Black Hole On Earth. Whew!

If you are reading this, the world has not ended.

Today, at 12:00 AM PST, CERN researchers fired up their massive Hadron Collider. The "L" in LHC stands for "Large," but it is much bigger than large. Some people think that it can cause a black hole right here on earth. If that happened, we would all be dead right now.

Maybe they haven't turned it on yet, though. Find out here.
If they haven't turned it on yet, please cross your fingers. I hope the scientists cross their fingers too.

William Moor and Luis VI

Trainwreckunion.tv

Always Try to Make Things Easier for Others

Some people resent that others want to achieve the same goals with less effort and turmoil. I, who had never had it very easy, wish that, if you would like the same things I have, that they come to you more easily than they have to me.

Just because it has been hard for me to catch my breath does not mean I want you to struggle through the horrors of asthma.

Although my father was rough, you needn't face familial failure.

And when I found myself alone, I wished someone would love you.

I will vote for free education and health care for all because I had neither.

I will fight for anyone's freedom to forge her own destiny.

I haven't had the hardest life, but I hope that yours is softer.

Call Yer Mama and Tell Her Yer at the Library

Get to the nearest phone booth and call yo mama. Whatever you do, don't tell her you're going to a poetry reading. Definitely don't tell her that you're going to Studio One to see William Moor and Daphne Gottlieb with Jack Morgan as MC. She will be afraid for your welfare and cry if she found out the truth.

Dancin in the street!

You can't tell they're dancng in this pic, but I'm dancing the mambo
in Oakland right nowz!

Podington Bear

Sometimes I think that I am the least knowledgeable of my friends when it comes to music because I lack the encyclopedic memory necessary to call up facts about drummers from obscure hipster bands, but I have to say that, as surprising as it may seem, I am way ahead of a lot of people I know on Podington Bear.

Podington Bear is a guy named Chad who lives in Portland. That's about as much as anyone knows, and even that is pretty newsworthy, as he has kept his identity shielded for a very long time. He publishes music he writes and arranges via a weekly podcast (iTunes) and his website PodingtonBear.com. I have been a subscriber for a while now, and his music, sometimes reminding me of Richard James's best moments and sometimes of my favorite viedeo game victories, is always fresh and interesting. And free! Plus, he has done amazing midi work with Beatles songs. All of it is worth a butcher's, mate.

When I talk about music, I always excpect everyone to be like "oh yeah, Jack Morgan, I already knew about that." I am sure I will get a couple emails this time like that. But if you haven't already heard of Podington, you should really check him out.

Jack Morgan's Podlist Featured by Seeqpod! Reading Tomorrow!

Join the millions of others who have listened to the Jack Morgan's Murdercycle podlist on Seeqpod! It's featured on the main page today! Seriously, a million people have already listened to it!

Soooo famous.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()_((
Did you know that William Moor and Daphne Gottlieb are reading at Studio One tomorrow night? You should come! The one and only Jack Morgan is going to MC the whole thing.

Oakland Sunrise

No rest for the wicked.

sent from my iPhone

Speaking of Being Über famous on the Internet...

This show mentions my green blog. Whoo-hoo!

Jack Morgan Spins Out: the Interview

It might be bad form, but I have already gotten about 15 emails and chats asking me how my interview at Spin went, so I will write what I can about it without giving away too much.

Spin Magazine is looking for me. They might not know it yet, but that's who they are looking for.

They need someone who hangs out with writers, artists, and musicians all over the world.
That's Me!

They need someone who speaks a bunch of languages.
C'est moi! Das bin ich! ¡Lo soy! Boku wa so desu!

They need someone who is internet savvy as a Mu'tafikah.¹
Th4tz |\/|€! 1 m l337! ƒ34r m3! º..º

The meeting went well, but sometimes it's hard for me to articulate what it is that I do. I will try to do so now.
I want to create online communities of writers and artists through the universal research tool. I know so many amazing people, some of them über famous and others who are unknowns, and I want them all to know each other because it's hard to meet people who are cool sometimes. I've wasted a great deal of time trying to find out who's worth my time and who isn't that I don't want others to have to go through that. I will go through it for them. Then the "community" works like a cross-marketing model where everyone helps everyone rise together. Companies looking for a pool of talent or looking to attract a large group of people who are passionate about a particular thing could come to any one of us eventually, and the true nature of viral memes would take over the rest. It's kind of like, if you hang out with cool people online or in person, you end up finding out about cool things. This doesn't exist at a central hub, contrary to popular belief, but at many places at once.

Having worked in advertising and having met so many different people in different professions, I think that I could target any market that happens to have an internet presence (sorry Amish folk). So let's say a law services company wants people to know about them. I know enough lawyers through the arts, that I'm already off to a great start. All my friends know lawyers, and all my friends' friends do, too. This is getting too long now. Basically, if you have a product, I could make you famous with the right peeps on the web. Maybe Spin got that from me, but maybe not. Maybe they will just hire the pretty woman they interviewed right after me. Who knows?

After the interview, I ate lunch in the Mission and hung out with artist, writer, and musician friends in Dolores Park until I felt guilty for not working and left. When I got back to HQ, I called up a friend in Germany and asked her to give me some skinny on what's changed in the German music scene since I was in it. I used to publish a D&B and Ragga zine in Hannover called "Down Magazine." I always snuck (sic) poetry in fer lulz. I miss those days now and then.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I've got other fish in the kettle, so worry not, dear friends. This gig would be one sweet fish, though, weisst du?

¹Ishmael Reed

Apex Predator

This is for Brooklyn Copeland in Minnesota and all the Thylacines we lost in the fires of 1906. It wasn't fit for man or beast. The smell of burning rubber on Australia's loneliest highways filled my nostrils, and it hit me: I Am the Last Marsupial Wolf. So I wrote this poem. It's been many years since I was in Australia, but I'll never forget what I never saw.

Jack Morgan invented the skull emoticon

I invented the most bad ass emoticon. It's a skull because I don't have a skull ring anymore, and Tony Creed won't give me one for free even though I totally put him in the first Murdercycle. I think poor celebrities should get more free things.

Anyway, I invented the skull ring for the digital age. Someday Google will call me and ask me if they can incorporate it into their smileys on their Google Talk, and I will say, "yes of course, Google, I love you so much that you can have my skull ring for free."

Mike Young and Sara Mumolo, two poets who are very upstanding citizens and members of their respective communities have already declared in signed and notarized documents that I, Jack Morgan, invented the digital skull ring/emoticon/smiley, so don't try and take the credit with your friends.

And now, without further ado, I present to you my newest contribution to the free world:

º..º

Free Book: Judith Goldman's Vocoder

Judith Goldman's book is one of my favorite books of poetry because of a poem in it called "Procedures" and because Judith Goldman has always been nice to me. "Procedures" is a hard poem to describe. A lot of the words in it are crossed out and there are slashes. It fits in with its counterparts in the section, "Dark Horse"; it comes out of nowhere, and it sort of comes on you like your own thoughts like some kind of new stream of consciousness. "Procedures" exposes the jutting and jolting false starts and restarts of artistic process and the static through which the artist peers with squinting eyes, the smokey casino where everything is on the line, the house, the cars, the motorcycles; the artist can lose it all, so she looks to see who's looking, and you, the reader, with all the whites around your eyes exposed to the acrid gray, stare back in astonishment. And it hurts, this book; there's something that hurts about it.

The copy I am giving away is signed. It is addressed to me, Jack Morgan, and has a little, one-word, inside joke that she wrote on it. The first person who emails me their address will get it.