I won Buygreen.com's Prize for Being Green or Something!

Check this out! I am a winner!
I am also using exclamation points more often!
All of my poems will have exclamation points at the end of every line today!

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Jack Morgan: Googlewhacked

Yesterday, I Googlewhacked myself. I am lucky that way, and it feels good. It's hard enough to googlewhack period, but to do it to yourself is pretty awesome. Apparently, if you search "pantagruelianly Jack" without the quotes, you only get one result: me. That's nice. It's also nice to think that I am the only person alive who has used his own adverbial form of pantagruelian, a word spell check says is wrong even though it isn't. The real adverbial form is "pantagruelically," but I think that mine is much better and will call it my own and will use it until all of the people I know cry out and are silenced at once.

A couple days ago I brought Amanda Nadelberg's book to my German poetry seminar and forced them all to stay after and listen to me read "Feivel," and everyone loved it and was happy I made them stay.

I also finished Joseph Massey's book. It's pretty good. I can't think much about it critically right now, though, because I have to think about William Shakeshaft right now.

Thesis-writing is not the hardest thing I have done. All you whiners. Come on.

I started a blog about the environment and veganism and stuff like that over at Viropop so that my peeps who like this blog and want to hear more Jack Morgan adventures and poetry ramblings and less environment and veg stuff won't be bothered, and the person who started Viropop liked my blog and gave me kudos and a prize. Pretty awesome.

I have also been reading the Colorado Review, which I only got a little bit ago. I like it.
I can't read Tao Lin's book yet. I really want to, but there just isn't time yet. I won't be able to read any just-for-pleasure stuff until I am finished with one more thesis. Then I will be all graduated and ready for more readin' . . . word!

Disco Lies from moby on Vimeo.
I like Moby's new video.

Translation Station

So, a lot of you don't know this, but I am very much very into translation. It is extremely interesting to me. I have been studying translation theory for some time now, and I like it. German is the language I translate most. My German honors thesis is translation of Brecht using visual illustration techniques. It's pretty great.

Last night I went to a reading of other people who like to translate. They were all in a Robert Hass translation workshop, and it was a pretty good reading. It was a little longer than I had bargained for, but that happens sometimes.

Cameron Jackson read from his French translations of Baudelaire, which were quite good. A young woman who wore a tail read Russian translations, which were fantastic. I don't know everyone's name. Sorry. But there was a guy there, whose name I really wish I had written down, who translated poems into songs, and they were pantagruelianly good.

Rules

Someone said this to me yesterday:

"As an artist, if I know that someone doesn't know the rules, I just can't respect their work."

There are no rules. There is only theory. If you choose to apply that theory, that's up to you. In any art, the theory is only there as something to consider if you want to. Theory is fun sometimes. But it is not a rule. People who say "wow, that guy breaks all the rules" are not really saying anything. They are making sounds with their mouths that don't make any sense.

People who have studied theory like to talk about rules. But people who study theory come dangerously close to being critics only. It's hard to be a critic and an artist at the same time. If you believe in rules in art, you probably are not an artist. If you start sentences with "as an artist" with any degree of seriousness, you probably aren't an artist.

Sometimes the application of theory can help hide artifice and sometimes it calls attention to itself. The application of theory is standing on the shoulders of critics. Sometimes that's useful. Much of theory is bull shit. It might be why much of art is bull shit.

But fuck your rules.

What a Wonderful World

Epiphany is an iron woman so hot her heart lights her on fire when it beats at the sky.

I missed Art Murmur on Friday because my friend Gillian Hamel was in a dance revue on campus at UCB.  She was great, and we all were very proud of little Gillian.  About midway through the show, an act came on called "At Least I spelled Your Name Right (Ballet 2), which was a ballet choreographed to The Postal Service's "Natural Anthem."  When the lights went out I leaned over to my friend Casey and said "that was fucking genius."  I could not believe how good it was.  I thought, we must have an amazingly talented instructor in the department.  Who knew UCB could be so good at dance?  I mean, I am not the biggest fan of ballet, and I don't know the terms or anything about it really, but this act was touching and exciting and elegant and beautiful.  It was also the biggest number with the greatest number of people.  When the show was all over, I grabbed a program to see what was what.  And the choreographer for the Postal Service number was none other than Pam Krayenbuhl.  Pam is a poet, too, and I count her as one of my friends.  She was one of the founding members of the Trainwreck Union, and I always knew she was talented, but I didn't know that her talent was so far-reaching and multi-faceted.  I was and am thoroughly and utterly impressed.

Then we saw Iron Man, which is a fantastic movie.  I am hyper-critical when it comes to film adaptations of comic books, but this one was perfect. Yesterday I tried to think of something to hate about Iron Man, and I just don't like a teeny tiny continuity problem and one place where they used CGI when it wasn't necessary.  But all in all, I give it an A.  And the cast was incredible and the dialog was well-written.  Another lovely surprise.

On Saturday, I got Tao Lin's new book in the mail, and then we all went to the Maker Faire.  I just stared at the screen trying to think of how to describe the Maker Faire.  I will just say that I think that it might be one of the coolest things I have been to all year.  There is so much to see and do there, and there are so many things to learn about and touch and play with and scream at and listen to and eat.  At night the fires keep you warm, and the steam punk band keeps you moving.  R2 D2 says hello during the day and robots perform tricks for you.  Boats have battles and bicycles power everything from buses to carnival rides.  Unbelievable.  I will be there next year, no doubt! I can't wait to read Tao's book.

I Like Waifs

I think that people are beautiful. It's rare that I would consider someone ugly. But the women who catch my eye are very thin. Most men I know don't think that thin women are attractive, but I think they are, and I am sick of being made to feel guilty about it by the women I know. Women are always judging each other on their appearance. I don't understand it.

I don't criticize women's taste. It's weird to me that there are webites dedicated to trash-talking male celebrities for liking certain "types." I have never heard or seen criticism regarding the "type" a female celebrity goes for.

Just because I like waifs does not mean I don't like other "types" or am subscribing to some kind of ideal image perpetrated by the worldwide media conspiracy to oppress women. So stop oppressing me for having certain preferences.

I also like tattoos.

What Happened May 1

I am operating a few days slow at the moment.
On May 1, Jack Morgan read at Lunch Poems, curated by Robert Hass. It was a pretty wonderful reading. I think the best were Jack Morgan and Cameron Jackson, but I am a little biased. There were some other good readers/poets, but mostly the ones I liked I had heard before, and there were so many of them, that I can't list them all on this blog. I talked a little about my problems with the Dean of Students, Poulard, which happened almost precisely a year ago. The whole thing will be on Youtube soon, and I will link it here when it does.

That night, Lytle Shaw gave one of the best readings I have ever been to. It was certainly one of the best Holloways, if not the best, that I have been to. I bought two of his books, which I never, never, never do. I don't want to talk about why it was so wonderful because I don't think it would do his performance work any justice, but I was so thoroughly pleased that I was giddy. Many academics looked at each other wondering how someone interesting got into the room. I have no idea how he got past them and their henchmen. An utter delight. And the academics didn't get it or something. While everyone was having fun for the first time ever at a reading, they were freaking out because it wasn't serious enough for them. Someone I gave directions to before the reading found me and asked me if it was always so fun. I had to answer no. I have no idea how they let this happen. Lytle Shaw is a genius. He makes being a genius look easy. And I hear through the rumor mill that many faculty members hate him and will be happy to see him go, but how wrong they are! I wish there were more Lytle Shaws around, and I am embarrassed to have let my prejudice get the better of me. I thought that there was no way he could be good because he was the Holloway lecturer, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

My friend Casey had a birthday party after that; that was fun. I wrote after that.

Anyway, that was Thursday. And I am running behind schedule. Thursday was incredible. I couldn't believe how many people I met who hated me. Also, I would like to say that Geoffrey G. O'Brien, no matter what I say about him, is a class act. He is admirable in many ways, and I don't want to get too into it, but even though we are diametrically opposed on some key issues, he never gives me the snub or acts like a dick around me. I have a great deal of respect for him for that.

I saw some people who I like, too. David Larsen was around for the first time in a long time. And others, too. Anyway, that's the long and short of the poetry stuff that's been gong on with me lately. I hope that all of you have also been going to some kick ass readings and give each other high fives when you see each other. I love high fives at poetry readings.

If Mrs. Rabbit Were Real

This guy makes cartoons real pictures.

A Fig for Thee, Oh! Dean

A Fig for Thee, Oh! Dean
By Jack Morgan

I don’t write poems
about the Harlem Renaissance.
Because everyone knows,
that the renaissance,
like the word itself,
was French.
And the French,
like the world itself,
hate me for my freedom.

The shackles of oppression,
are applied,
like asps to the breasts,
of Egypt and her maids,
by those beneath the boot
of Italian kings,
to themselves.

You, who study pickled pigs
in pickled jars
and call yourselves poets,
curtail my fair proportion
from here to Tennessee,
and my freedom,
like a bell in a box,

children cry every night in Bethlehem,
sweeter than the letters
from twenty-six soldiers,
because everyone knows,
that race,
like the word itself,
is a lie,
because everyone knows
that every race poem
is a hate poem,

Political poets,
most of all
‘weep, ‘weep, ‘weep, ‘weep!
until I finally sleep,
monsters telling me what poems mean,
and I’ll only be born once.

who killed your passion
and your sense of dark adventure,
those places we go when we’re still awake
and we’re still alone
and the stars look like gutters in the rain.

You who lurk in daytime hours
unaware of the garish sun
who love Apollo but not the night,
that place I have to be to know I live
and that I have no will
to be poetic.
I envy you.
I hate you,
like poetry itself,
for my oppression.

New Bethlehem
looks more and more
like old Berlin,
with its wall in its center,
every day,
whose apple core boils,
but things fall apart.