E-Verse Radio

“Throwing away the alarm clock my father always said, ‘early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ It was lights out at 8PM in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon, and scrambled eggs. My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise. Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise. Now, I’m not saying I’ve conquered the world but I’ve avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls, and have met some strange, wonderful people, one of whom was myself, someone my father never knew.”

 

 - Charles Bukowski

 

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Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

 

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

 

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1. Reepicheep (from C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Last Battle)
2. Stuart Little
3. Algernon
4. Mickey
5. City Mouse (Aesops’ Fables)

 

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Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This at Home (2003)

 

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“Let’s not forget, while we’re on the theme, Anthony Hecht’s ’The Seven Deadly Sins’ series — accompanied by Leonard Baskin engravings — in The Hard Hours (1967). My notes indicate the series was initially published by The Gehenna Press.”

 

[Baskin also did woodcuts to accompany the Hecht book Flight Among the Tombs, 1998. - E]

 

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The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s; it now stands at 2,349 square feet.

 

 

 

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And it wouldn’t be a house issue without Falling Water:

 

 

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Bonus midterm election fact:

 

The new senator from Rhode Island is named Sheldon Whitehouse.

 

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Fruityland, California

 

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Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.

 

Sex is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.

 

Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.

 

Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

 

All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers’ lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.

 

Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their façade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.

 

Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a king ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.

 

Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-notish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.

 

(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St. Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)

 

Mind and Body run on
Different timetables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.

 

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www.photo.net/bboard/nw-fetch-msg?msg_id=008rBn&tag=

 

 

 

 

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 David Yezzi asks on the New Criterion blog:

 

“What’s the collective noun for a group of poets? Would one say a buffet of poets? An echo? A pride of poets? Hmm, yes, that’s getting pretty close.”

 

[How about an Annoyance of Poets? A Pretentious of Poets? A Poverty of Good Poets? - E]

 

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“From the book Sir Benjamin Stone’s Pictures: Records of National Life and History, 1906: ‘Many years ago somebody now unknown left to the then vicar a piece of land under novel conditions. ‘Every Easter Monday,’ he stipulated, ‘the vicar and his successors shall provide two hare pies, a quantity of ale, and two dozen penny loaves to be scrambled for on the rising ground called Hare Pie Bank.” Really, I don’t think I can add anything to that. At some point, they hurl the pies at each other until they are covered in grease: ‘Immediately a native secures a piece, he hurls it at someone else; the whole crowd, in fact, pelt one another until they are covered with grease from head to foot.’ Another quote from the book: ’Broken ribs and cracked heads are common, while minor casualties may be counted by scores.’ Another title for this section could be ‘just how batshit crazy are the English?’”

 

 

 

 

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November National Geographic, 2006. Worlds top beer consumers:

 

1. Czech Republic                                                
2. Ireland                                                                            
3. Germany                                                                            
4. Austria                                                                            
5. Belgium                                                                            
6. UK
7. Denmark                                                                            
8. Slovakia                                                                            
9. Australia                                                       
10. Venezuela
11. USA
12. Spain
13. Finland
14. Hungary
15. New Zealand

 

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A house of senators.

 

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“In today’s e-mail, I received the most poetic SPAM subject line I believe I have ever seen: ‘my chain in darkness O land among our ears and after the children of.’ Children of what? It’s killing me. SPAM begging to be completed . . .  It seems wrong. Do you think any ‘Versers out there with free time to kill would be willing to finish it for me?”

 

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“I am pleased to invite you to join me on November 18th, at the Elevator Repair Service benefit, 6-10pm, at M1-5, a lovely establishment just next door to the Soho Rep. (directions below). Your $50 gets you fed, liquored, and entertained – such a deal! All by the theater company that dared to read The Great Gatsby aloud onstage, from start to finish, to rave reviews from around the world. Hubris? Perhaps. Ballsy? Definitely. A rare and wonderful theater experience? Yes, yes, yes. Do come to the benefit and support art that takes real chances. And artists that know how to throw a party. Let me know if you’re planning to attend on Nov. 18th, so we can either meet up before or find each other there. If you want to give but not go, you can donate online at www.elevator.org. (If you feel like going higher than $50, I support that too.) Thanks for supporting ERS.”

 

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE 15TH BIRTHDAY PARTY BENEFIT

 

Hosted by Vin Scelsa, New York Radio Personality (WFUV, Sirius) with special appearances by ERS, Ethan Lipton, a gang of Susie Sokol’s former St. Ann’s 2nd Graders, and DJ James Hannaham. Saturday 18 November 2006. 6PM, performances at 7:30, food, wine and vodka drinks until 10 at M1-5 52 Walker St. between Church and Broadway
TICKETS $50 in advance, $60 at the door
http://www.elevator.org or 718-783-1905
mailto:info@elevator.org

 

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“On spring break 1969, camping in a palm grove near the beach in Eluthera with a lovely Sarah Lawrence girl, I came across this Camus quote in his journals and memorized it. We were living off the land, eating coconuts and mangos and 5 cent loaves of bread from a bakery a couple of miles away. Still one of my favorite experiences and quotes: ‘Under the morning sun, a great happiness hangs in space. Here I understand what is meant by glory: the right to love boundlessly. Clasping a woman’s body is also to embrace that strange joy that extends downwards from the heaven towards the sea. The wind is brisk, the sky blue; I love this life without restraint and wish to speak of it boldly, it makes me proud of being a man. Yet people have often told me there is nothing to be proud of. But there is something. The sun, the sea, the sky; my body tasting of salt, my heart pulsing of youth in this vast arena in which tenderness and glory meet in yellow and in blue.’”

 

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FRANK O’HARA FESTIVAL
Cosponsored by Poets House, the Poetry Project and MoMA

 

Tuesday, November 28, 7:00pm
PASSWORDS: Bill Berkson on Frank O’Hara

 

Poet Bill Berkson will explore the life and work of O’Hara through the lens of the pivotal year of 1956, when O’Hara was preparing his first major collection, Meditations in an Emergency.

 

Poets House
72 Spring Street, 2nd Floor
$7, Free to Poets House & Poetry Project Members

 

 

Wednesday, November 29, 8:00pm
Frank O’Hara Reading

 

Bill Berkson, Ned Rorem, Maureen O’Hara, Tony Towle, Eileen Myles, Patricia Spears Jones, Anne Waldman, Taylor Mead, Olivier Brossard, Bob Holman, John Yau, Kimberly Lyons, Lytle Shaw, David Shapiro, Anselm Berrigan, Greg Fuchs, John Gruen, and Scott Murphree will read the work of the beloved New York School icon.

 

The Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church
131 East 10th St .
$8, $7, Free to Poets House and Poetry Project Members

 

Thursday, November 30, 6:00pm
FRANK O’HARA AT MoMA

 

John Ashbery, Bill Berkson, Michelle Elligott, Alfred Leslie & others will share their favorite anecdotes about Frank O’Hara and his MoMA heyday. Selected archival materials including correspondence and photographs will be on view in the MoMA Library and Archives Reading Room.

 

Bartos Theater and MoMA Archives Reading Rooms
The Museum of Modern Art
4 West 54th Street
$10, $8 for MoMA,  Poets House & Poetry Project Members.
Tickets available at the MoMA Lobby information desk, the Film & Media desk, or at www.moma.org/thinkmodern

 

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