Bewilderment Inc.

LIGHT-HEADED IN COLDFRONT'S TOP 30 POETRY BOOKS OF 2011 and ONandOnScreen WINTER 2012

2012-01-28T10:41:00.000-06:00

Just a note to say that I'm so grateful that Coldfront Magazine placed LIGHT-HEADED at #19 on their list of the best poetry books of 2011. You can see what they had to say about it and the other 29 amazing titles here: http://coldfrontmag.com/news/top-30-poetry-books-of-2011

Additionally, I have a new poem up in the Winter 2012 issue of ONandOnScreen. The poem is juxtaposed with a video by poet and visual artist Matilda Gertrude Paulin. To be clear, this wasn't a collaboration, but rather an attempt at making my poem and her video have a conversation with each other about things common and foreign to them both. The issue also contains poetry/video pairings by the likes of Brendan Lorber, Catherine Wagner, Kevin Killian, Wayne Koestenbaum, david Lehman, and many others.

Please check these out!

LIGHT-HEADED REVIEW + AN INTERVIEW AT THE KENYON REVIEW BLOG

2012-01-04T07:20:00.000-06:00

Just a quick post to point out an interview that the amazing Weston Cutter did with me for the Kenyon Review blog. Find it here.

Also big thanks to Jeff Simpson at The Fiddleback for this new and very kind review of LIGHT-HEADED.

Happy New Year!

MORE SERMONS AND LECTURES NEWS + NEW VIDEO FROM TRAVEL

2011-12-09T06:39:00.001-06:00

Friends, this is the first single from the new album, Blank Sermons...Relentless Lectures, by my Band Travel. It will accompany my 2012 Typecast Publishing book Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless and uses cut-up versions of the poems from the book as lyrics. The video for the track is by my Art Academy colleague and friend Ken Henson. You can download the track, or pre-order the book here: http://www.typecastpublishing.com/announcements/logic-in-the-trenches/ . Hope you enjoy it! Matt

SERMONS AND LECTURES BOTH BLANK AND RELENTLESS

2011-12-06T13:50:00.001-06:00

Typecast Publishing is now taking pre-orders for my new book Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless, which will be out in March of 2012. You can order the book at the link above. You can also read blurbs about it from Jordan Dreyer of the post-hardcore band La Dispute and from poets by Mary Ruefle and Nate Pritts as well. I hope some of you will take a second a pre-order the book.

THE POWER IS RIGHT

2011-09-04T19:01:00.002-05:00

Hey Friends, The amazing Nick Sturm posted a video of me reading a new poem called "The Power Is Wrong" in the BIG BIG MESS READING SERIES on Friday. Hope you enjoy it. Matt

LIGHT-HEADED REVIEW IN A CAPPELLA ZOO

2011-08-31T09:16:00.002-05:00

Jeffrey Allen has written a really terrific review of my book LIGHT-HEADED in A Cappella Zoo. Please check it out.

Big thanks to Jeffrey for the really generous and thoughtful read of the book.

ANTHONY MCCANN REVIEW + STOKED VOL. II + ACCULORBER

2011-08-21T09:23:00.004-05:00

I'm a little behind the curve here, but my review of Anthony McCann's I ♥ Your Fate went up at Coldfront Magazine this week, and STOKED Vol. II also appeared, including contributions from Daniela Olszewska, Carol Guess, Nate Pritts, Mike Young, Christopher Newgent and many others. There even a couple of my poems from Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless in the mix.

Also, if you aren't keeping up with poet and editor (of LUNGFULL!) Brendan Lorber's ACCULORBER Weather Forecast, then you're not keeping up. It's a lot more than weather. I've put a link to it under my In Awe links to the right, but you should subscribe. Here are some of the details from this week's report:

Hello from the acculorber team. Helping you plan the days and nights ahead according to what those days and nights are secretly planning for you. And man, do they have plans.

You know what the weather is going to be like?
Who cares. You think the weather cares what you're like?

The latest Acculorber Weekend Weather Forecast
is now available for you to brace yourself with...

www.acculorber.com

Highlights for this weekend:

• Escapism through foreclosed home-made ice-cream.
• I like to eat ice cream in the privacy of my home where I won't be judged.
• Out of chocolate chips for your ice cream? Use Xanax.
• Out of Xanax, use Promazine. Good for skittish livestock, great for ice cream.
• Replacing flood-damaged carpets with beautiful self-maintaining moss
• Spoiler Alert: muggy this weekend with chancy thunderstorms

From the episode: "I like how the stock market goes down because they're afraid the economy will tank and the economy tanks because the stock market goes down. Or that the economy falls apart because everyone’s laid off and the response is to lay everyone off. It's like drinking a lot of coffee to really get to the bottom of your anxiety disorder. You will get some answers — very very accurate answers — but they are not going to be the answers you were hoping for."

bonus: a new comment section on the site so you can chime in.

Coming this fall, if we make it that far: exciting poetry news.

Don't forget to set your clocks back this weekend,
Brendan Lorber

acculorber.com

FORKLIFT, OHIO & THE CINCINNATI REVIEW + LIGHT-HEADED KINDLE

2011-08-04T09:45:00.004-05:00

1) Forklift, Ohio and The Cincinnati Review were featured this week in a Soapbox Cincinnati article on the Cinci Lit/Small Press Publishing Scene. Please check it out: Hungry Eyes: City's Lit Journals Feed World of Readers.

2) The fine folks at BlazeVOX have published a Kindle version of my book LIGHT-HEADED, which you can purchase for only 99 cents! This version of the book works not only with the Kindle, but with iPad and iPhone as well.

NEW SERMONS AND LECTURES IN THE SAWMILL + REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE OF BOTH WOLF FACE AND LIGHT-HEADED

2011-07-17T16:43:00.003-05:00

Hey Everybody,

Just a note that I have some more of the "Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless" out in the new issue of Sawmill. You can READ THEM HERE.

Also, just wanted to mention that I have some REVIEW COPIES of both WOLF FACE and LIGHT-HEADED. If anyone out there would like to write a review, send me a note at my regular email (mhartATartacademyDOTedu), and I'll send you whichever book you want.

All best,

Matt

NEW SERMONS AND LECTURES + A REVIEW OF WOLF FACE AT STORYSOUTH

2011-07-02T11:33:00.005-05:00

Hi Everybody,

Thanks to the amazing Mark Bibbins I have some new sections from SERMONS AND LECTURES BOTH BLANK AND RELENTLESS up at THE AWL. Please check 'em out if you can.

Additionally, Tony Aarts has written kind review of WOLF FACE on the StorySouth website. You can see the review here, and you can still get the book directly from H_NGM_N BKS (maybe along with a copy of Alexis Orgera's HOW LIKE FOREIGN OBJECTS or Adam Fell's I AM NOT A PIONEER) at any of the links above.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

POETS OFF POETRY: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY PT. 4

2011-05-23T08:10:00.002-05:00

Here it is friends, Pt. 4 of my Poets off Poetry Essay "By Any Means Necessary". This one's one Kenneth Koch and the experimental, noise-rock trio Storm & Stress.

If you haven't seen the previous three installments here they are again:

Pt. 1: The Sex Pistols

Pt 2: Gertrude Stein and The Blood Brothers

Pt. 3: Jawbreaker

Huge thanks to Jackie Clark for the prompt to write these and also to all my friends who've commented and provided me with feedback on the installments as they've gone up. I really appreciate all of your input.

READING IN NYC ON THURSDAY 5/19 + PT. 3 OF BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

2011-05-17T10:00:00.004-05:00

1) This Thursday, 5/19, I'll be reading for the InDigest 1207 Reading Series w/ Brett Price, Evan Commander and an accordion performance by Jane Carver, Pete's Candy Store, 709 Lorimar St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211, 7PM.

2) Here's Pt. 3 of my Coldfront Poets Off Poetry essay, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. This installment's on Jawbreaker. Next week the essay wraps up with Pt. 4, featuring Storm & Stress and Kenneth Koch.

WOLF FACE & BIG BRIGHT SUN REVIEWED AT COLDFRONT + READINGS IN LOUISVILLE AND NYC + BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY PT. 2

2011-05-08T08:29:00.006-05:00

Both my book WOLF FACE and Nate Pritts' book BIG BRIGHT SUN were reviewed this week at Coldfront by Patrick Dunagan. Check it out here.

Additionally, I'll be doing several READINGS in the next week, so if you're in Louisville or NYC, I'd love to see you:

1) Wednesday 5/11: Typecast Publishing Presents The Derby Recovery Act at Quills with Peter Davis and Michael Schiavo; 930 Baxter Ave., Louisville, KY, 7 -9PM

2) Friday 5/13: The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, Friday Night Reading Series with a dance translation of Chris Martin's long poem "The Small Dance"; 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY 10003, 10PM

3) Saturday 5/14: CROWD Reading Series w/Ben Mirov, Guy Pettit, Ish Klein, and Greg Purcell, Cafe Orwell, 247 Varet St., Brooklyn , NY 11206 (L Train to Morgan Ave.), 7PM

4) Thursday 5/19: InDigest 1207 Reading Series w/ Brett Price, Evan Commander and an accordion performance by Jane Carver, Pete's Candy Store, 709 Lorimar St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211, 7PM

*****

Finally, here's Pt. 2 of my Coldfront POP essay, By Any Means Necessary, featuring Gertrude Stein and The Blood Brothers. And if you didn't see Pt. 1 on the Sex Pistols here's a link.

POETS OFF POETRY: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY PT. 1

2011-05-02T05:23:00.003-05:00

At the link below, you'll find part 1 of a 4 part essay that will be published serially by Coldfront Magazine throughout the month of May. I wrote it for their Poets off Poetry series, but I assure you/warn you it's all about poetry--poetry and some other things. This first section's all about the Sex Pistols, but future sections will look at The Blood Brothers, Gertrude Stein, Jawbreaker, Storm & Stress, and the mighty Kenneth Koch! Hope some people dig it. Onward!

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY PT. 1

H_NGM_N #12 and "TONIGHT THE SUN IS SHINING"

2011-04-23T16:13:00.003-05:00

I know I'm late to the party. Nevertheless, I do have a couple of new poems in H_NGM_N #12. There's so much great stuff in this one. I'm really honored to be in it. Check it out.

Additionally, Noah Falck was kind to post this video of me reading "Tonight the Sun Is Shining" from WOLF FACE. The video was recorded on April 14th at the Bon Mot/ley Series Reading I did in Cincinnati with Catherine Wagner.

LIGHT-HEADED

2011-04-11T07:06:00.002-05:00

Hi Friends,

I'm super pleased to announce that my new full-length collection of poems, LIGHT-HEADED, has just been published by BlazeVOX with cover art by my friend and Art Academy colleague Ken Henson.

You can read a bit about the book and order it directly from BlazeVOX (which is the preferable method, because it supports a small press) here.

Of course, it's also available from Amazon.

Thanks everyone for all of your support.

All best,

Matt

PAUL VIOLI (1944 - 2011)

2011-04-04T16:46:00.005-05:00

So sad to hear that my friend Paul Violi--a truly marvelous poet and teacher--passed away on Saturday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Buy his books. Read his work. Spread the word. He's one of the most under-appreciated GREAT poets we've ever had in America. More soon.

OPPEN AND WOLF FACE AT THE YES YES BLOG

2011-03-16T06:41:00.003-05:00

Drew Kalbach has written a really nice essay, "Vision and Window," about astonishment in poetry (poetic astonishment?) on the Yes Yes blog. In it, he talks about that sense of surprise that can result from just looking around intently, attentively, differently than normal and getting that attentiveness into one's poems in surprised and surprising ways. He uses George Oppen to illustrate his main point--and to call for the creation of more poems that are "...serious things through levity..." I'm honored that he wound up mentioning my own poem "In Darkness Light-Headed" from Wolf Face in the process.

New SERMONS AND LECTURES + Vid-Interview with me & Nate Pritts and a recording of a reading by me, Nate Pritts & Dobby Gibson from Prairie Lights

2010-12-31T12:43:00.008-06:00

New sections from my book length poem, SERMONS AND LECTURES BOTH BLANK AND RELENTLESS up at:

1) Scott Abel's awesome new online journal Country Music, which also features the amazing talents of: Clay Matthews, Lucy Biederman, Samuel Day Wharton, Peter Davis, Amber Nelson, Jim Goar and Jackie Clark and two series of Correspondences, including one with Denis Johnson.

2) Joe and Chenelle Milford's Scythe, Vol. IV, which also features: John M. Anderson, Alan Britt, Harry Calhoun, Alan Catlin, Chris Crittenden, Grace Curtis, Paul Dickey, Rachel Dixon, John Dorsey, Terri Kirby Erickson, Justin Evans, Leonard Gontarek, Howie Good, Larry Johnson, Karl Koweski, Heln Losse, Amy MacLennan, Al Maginnes, Nick McRae, Jane Mead, Phillip Mitchell, George Moore, Gregg Murray, Scott Owens, Derrick Paulson, James Robison, Rebecca Schumejda, Carolee Sherwood, Constance Stadler, Felino Soriano, and Lee Stern

Additionally,

3) here's a Vid-Interview that Nate Pritts and I did in October for the City of Literature USA after our reading at Prairie Lights in Iowa City.

And

4) here's the recording of the reading that we did with our buddy Dobby Gibson (sadly, for me, this gets cut off at the end, so my reading is missing from the festivities, but Dobby and Nate are crystal clear and AWESOME).

Hope you'll enjoy some of these things. Thanks to all the parties involved in getting this stuff out into the ether.

WOLF FACE NEWS: THREE REVIEWS

2010-12-22T11:23:00.003-06:00

1. Publishers Weekly

2. VOUCHED (single-sentence review by Tyler Gobble)

3. The Collagist: A Review of Matt Hart's WOLF FACE and Nate Pritts' BIG BRIGHT SUN (by Jeremy Benson)

BOOKSLUT INTERVIEW

2010-11-02T18:53:00.004-05:00

A new interview that Elizabeth Hildreth did with me is up at Bookslut today and covers a lot of ground NOT covered in the H_NGM_N interview that I did with Gregory Lawless. I hope some of you will get a chance to read it.

And just as a reminder, my new book, WOLF FACE, is now available from the H_NGM_N BKS site and at Amazon.

Thanks,

Matt

WOLF FACE NOW AVAILABLE and H_NGM_N #11

2010-10-25T23:42:00.002-05:00

I'm thrilled to be able to announce that my new book WOLF FACE is NOW AVAILABLE from H_NGM_N BKS. Please take a look and order it here: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/wolf-face .

I also have a couple poems and an interview conducted by Gregory Lawless in H_NGM_N #11, which fortunately also features the likes of Anthony McCann, Alexis Orgera, Liz Green, Brett Price, Erika Jo Brown, Curtis Purdue, Jennifer H. Fortin, Chad Sweeney, Jackie Clark, David Bartone and many marvelous others.

Re: my absence from everything: I'm sorry. I've been insanely busy. Forgive me.

Please pick up WOLF FACE if you can. Nate Pritts and his press deserve the support.

Matt

MY EARS ARE STILL RINGING. IT'S TERRIFIC.

2010-09-17T11:20:00.005-05:00

Please check out (below) a video review that poet/filmmaker DJ DOLACK made of Nate Pritts and I reading with three very talented MFA students--Brit Blalock, Montana Ray and Sean Kevin Campbell--in the Earshot Reading Series on 9/3/10, Rose Live Music, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The review went up at Coldfront Magazine this morning. Thanks DJ. Thanks Coldfront!

http://coldfrontmag.com/news/video-hart-pritts-at-earshot-nyc

MY NEW BOOK: WOLF FACE!

2010-09-01T21:34:00.006-05:00

I'm so happy to be able to announce that my new book WOLF FACE, which will be published by H_NGM_N BKS later this month, is now available for PRE-ORDER.

WOLF FACE is a book about the slipperiness of appearances, the ways in which the surfaces and depths of things, not only often don’t match up, but potentially contradict each other. “Aside from the wolf, things go well,” wrote Richard Hugo. And in this book I try and deal with the wolf by singing through it.

You can read what Paul Violi, Bob Hicok and Darcie Dennigan have to say about it at the link above.

3 READINGS THIS WEEK IN NYC

2010-08-29T18:45:00.003-05:00

Hi all. I've got three readings in NYC this week, and I'd love it if you'd come and bring a thousand of your friends.

1) Thursday, September 2nd, Poetry from the Rooftops, w/Dorothea Lasky and Catie Rosemurgy--The Arsenal Building, Central Park (enter 64th St and 5th Ave.), 6:30PM

2) Friday, September 3rd, Earshot Reading Series w/Nate Pritts, Brit Blalock, Montana Ray, and Sean Kevin Campbell--Rose Live Music, 345 Grand St., Brooklyn, 7:30 PM

3) Saturday, September 4th, Heliopolis, w/ Nate Pritts, Russell Dillon and Mary Donelly--Heliopolis, 154 Huron St., Greenpoint, 7:00PM

A NOTE FROM EQUALIZER EDITOR MICHAEL SCHIAVO

2010-07-19T15:16:00.003-05:00

Michael asked me to post the following today, and I'm glad to help him out:

A Call From The Equalizer

Any poet who had work accepted by The Paris Review and has received notice that their poems will no longer be published due to the editorial changes at the magazine are encouraged to submit those poems for consideration to The Equalizer, a new PDF-based journal which I’m assembling right now for a September/October 2010 launch. Please forward the email from the new PR editors informing you of their decision and a single Word document with your poems to theunrulyservant (at) gmail (dot) com. Space is unlimited. If you want in, you’re in.

INTERVIEW AT THE COLLAGIST

2010-07-17T08:07:00.002-05:00

Here's a short interview that I did about my poem "I Feel Better and So Can You," which is now part of Dzanc Books Best of the Web anthology. The piece begins with a short interview with Nate Pritts, who originally published the piece in H_NGM_N.

Matt

WE ARE THE ODYSSEY

2010-06-02T19:43:00.004-05:00

Please check out this interview that Nate Pritts and I did re: our collaborative chap, FEELINGS,Assoc. at Traci Brimhall's WE ARE HOMER blog:

http://wearehomer.blogspot.com/2010/06/nate-pritts-matt-hart.html

M

MY NEW CHAPBOOK, THE HOURS, IS NOW AVAILABLE!

2010-04-29T17:42:00.002-05:00

I'm super thrilled that Chicago's Cinematheque Press has just published my new chapbook, THE HOURS. Here's the Cinematheque Description:

All the hours we're awake or sleeping. They are illustrious. They are legendary. Dancing will get you everywhere. So will a megaphone. Matt Hart burns dear radiation in every line, every word, & The Hours is so motorcycle you might want to get naked. Beware: you may find yourself moonstomping in your sleep. Verse! Chorus! Crescendo! Read with headphones on & "Someday you should see gravity."

You can get the chap here:

http://www.cinemathequepress.com/thehours.html.

Editor/publisher, Nate Slawson, made the books look gorgeous, and I'm so grateful. It's only $8. Please support his mighty and amazing press.

Also, just a reminder my collaborative book with Dobby Gibson, Late Makeup Years and Decline (1979-1983) is available from the great new Minneapolis Press, Hell Yes! You can get it here.

Thanks for checking these out.

Matt

...1 QUOTATION MINUS... PLUS, NO RAVENS, NEW POEMS

2010-04-15T06:15:00.007-05:00

1. "...every text's about saying something, even if that something is nothing at all. This is the metamorphosis of soundlessness into silence..." - Vanessa Place from "Ventouses" in Notes on Conceptualisms

And as everyone knows thanks to John Cage and George Macuinas and Sonic Youth, among others: silence is music, so every text saying something, which is nothing at all, is a text in song, somebody singing (where somebody is a nobody/everybody/no).

2. Two poems in conversation, by myself and Nate Pritts at The Collagist.

3. Two poems I must've written with a broken foot in the new notnostrums.

Thanks to the Eds. of both these journals.

BIG THANKS, READINGS THIS WEEKEND IN MICHIGAN, AND LATE MAKEUP w/ DOBBY GIBSON

2010-03-22T06:56:00.008-05:00

1) THANKS SO MUCH to everyone who organized readings for the recent East Coast tour I did with Nate Pritts. We had a blast--not only reading, but seeing old friends and making new ones along the way. THANKS TOO to everyone who came out to for the readings. We appreciated so much the attentiveness and all the great feedback.

2) This weekend Nate and I will be doing two readings in Michigan (see info and links below), so if that's your neck of the woods, we'd love to see you.

Friday 3/26, Last Friday Series, Court Street Gallery w/Matthew Falk, 414 Court Street, Saginaw, MI // 7PM

Saturday 3/27, Old Dog Tavern, 402 East Kalamazoo Ave., Kalamazoo MI // 4PM

In addition to our other books, Nate and I will have a chapbook, FEELINGS Assoc., that we wrote and assembled for our Spring Reading Tour.

Here's a link to a profile that Gina Myers did on me for the Court Street Gallery reading in Saginaw this Friday: What a Blast Is Life.

3) I'm thrilled to announce that Hell Yes! Press has just published a collaborative book by Dobby Gibson and I called Late Makeup Years and Decline (1979-1983). It's a full-length collection that we wrote over the course of two years. It's been printed in a a limited edition of 150 copies, so please get 'em quick (details for purchasing at the link above).

Stay tuned for reading news on this one.

Also, BIG THANKS to Brad Liening and Lani Merritt of Hell Yes! for doing the book and to Evan Commander for the amazing cover art.

EAST COASTING WITH NATE PRITTS AND A NEW REVIEW OF NOELLE KOCOT'S SUNNY WEDNESDAY AT COLDFRONT

2010-03-04T14:38:00.014-06:00

I'll be on a reading tour with my pal Nate Pritts starting tomorrow, 3/5 and ending on 3/13. If you live in or near any the following places I hope you'll come and see us read.

1) Friday 3/5 - Syracuse, NY: Downtown Writer’s Center/YMCA :: w/Nate Pritts, Montgomery St. :: Syracuse, NY // 7:00PM

2) Saturday 3/6 - Albany, NY: The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza :: w/Nate Pritts, 1475 Western Ave. :: Albany, NY // 2:00PM

3) Sunday 3/7 - Providence, RI: Cousins Reading Series :: w/ Heather Christle, Claire Donato & Nate Pritts, Abe’s Bar @ 302 Wickenden St :: Providence, RI // 6:30PM

4) Monday 3/8 - Martha's Vineyard

5) Tuesday 3/9 - NYC: InDigest Reading // 1207 Reading Series :: w/ Nate Pritts, (le) poisson rouge @ 158 Bleecker St. :: NYC, NY // 6:00PM

6) Wednesday 3/10 - Baltimore, MD (TBA)

7) Thursday 3/11 - Northampton, MA: w/Nate Pritts, 104 South St., Apt #2R // 8PM

8) Friday 3/12 - Cambridge, MA (TBA)

9) Saturday 3/13 - Philadelphia, PA: Chapter & Verse Reading Series :: w/ Mairead Byrne & Nate Pritts, 620 S. 9th St. :: Philadeplhia, PA // 8:00PM

Nate and I will have a chapbook with us that we wrote just for the tour. We hope to see a lot of people out at the readings.

*****

As advertised (above) I have a new review of Noelle Kocot's book Sunny Wednesday up at Coldfront. I hope it'll make people who haven't read the book want to read it. You can read the review here.

SNOW SHOVEL

2010-02-10T07:47:00.002-06:00

1) "Poetry is a revelation in words by means of the words."--Wallace Stevens, "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

2) New Incliner blog

3)"To the man who is lost in love, what will help him? An explanation?"--Wittgenstein

4) Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless

5) How could I have known the effect the news would have, infusing my life with a need to do the opposite? A blanket of cotton. Girls on the Run. In account after account, the language was language, but the language was life and even better.

6) "We did what we had to, and we didn't survive. Only the fakes survive."--John Lydon, The Filth and the Fury

7) "Thanatos is the biggest tourist on Earth"--Roberto Bolano, 2666

8) "Stevens disliked explaining because he feared that readers would lose interest in poems they could comprehend fully. It was not a question of mystification. Rather, he understood that pure poetry succeeds when it detaches the rader from reason and reality lifts him by the most tenuous threads to another plane of existence. To explain is to make the reader overly onscious of those filaments and so to subvert their function."--Milton J. Bates, Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self

9) "Real mysteries cannot be solved, but they can be turned into better mysteries."--Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces

10) "Here I am, well-advanced in my paper, with everything of interest that I started out to say remaining to be said."--Wallace Stevens, "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

ALEXIS ORGERA: DESTROYER

2010-02-02T16:25:00.007-06:00

Couldn't let today pass without posting this link to a new essay up at HTMLGiant by Alexis Orgera called "Animal Instincts: Destroying the Cult of Reason":

Please enjoy. I certainly did. It's something I think about quite a lot--the notion that there is an ineffable something about the poems that floor us--something that can never be reduced to a list of gestures or a discussion of craft. And this is significantly why 1) poetry remains powerfully weird and 2) that teaching poetry writing is largely a matter of providing an atmosphere wherein students are excited to wander around in the dark BAM! As always, the things in a poem most worth talking about are the things that can't actually be talked out (not rationally, not methodically, not in terms of linear articulable instructions--and why on earth would anyone want to?), the unsayable said.

NOT A POEM

2009-12-27T14:23:00.004-06:00

1. Today, the first of many without crutches! So: Into the mouth of the wolf...!

2. This afternoon decaf and Kora in Hell.

3. 2666--loving this, but dreaming horribly ever after, so woke up this morning and read a bear. If it isn't clear, I'm reading and reading--writing some too with a windmill to amaze me.

4. Or Buck Owens' guitar... And now I have a blue one of my own, and silver round the sound hole, though more a ukelele than a full-throttle six-string. Played "Enoch Arden's Yard" and "Antisceptic" and the aforementioned "Windmill." And the wind swept in and the wind swept in.

5. In New York last week reading all my new poems felt great, and the people were terrific. Everywhere the snow covered everywhere, and the stillness covered everything, and all the meanness froze a little--that of the hyenas and briefcases and gunners...

6. The only question left (in poetry) (since the question of what a poem is--how we define "poem"--is no longer of interest): And given that X is a poem, why does it matter? One answer: It matters in all the ways it reminds us of not-a-poem and in the wobble between that and its poem-ness (all the ways it reminds of other poems we've read/seen/heard).

7. Have I mentioned Debacle Debacle? I am making drawings, and nobody's singing.

8. Back again to Storm & Stress.

9. The prayerfulness of Donald Revel.

10. I wish everybody everything: may the wolf die.

MEDICINE

2009-11-23T20:20:00.003-06:00

1) 2 and 1/2" titanium screw, 5th metatarsal, right foot...

2) Thanksgiving.

3) My Life, again. Dirty Projectors, The XX.

4) 40 in two weeks-ish.

5) Lots and lots and lots of medicine.

PS See 1)

TEN POST-OCCUPATIONS 11/15/09

2009-11-15T17:36:00.006-06:00

1) The difference between making a poem and writing one...

2) "the fishes of the sea speak Breton" and "as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words" -- Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

3) Every lining has its silver cloud./This be the old materials/(plural) swagger.

4) Smelling like campfire, I try to be as quiet as an inner tube.

5) "I have habituated myself to simple hallucination; I have clearly seen a mosque in the place of a gas-works" -- Arthur Rimbaud

6) "It seems to me, the characteristic of new art from a social viewpoint consists of dividing the public into two classes of men: those who understand it and those who do not" --Ortega y Gasset
Skirting the issue of "two classes of men" (no pun intended), perhaps "understanding" isn't/wasn't the point of a lot of new art. Maybe the two classes are actually (at least) three: those who understand it, those who think they understand it, and those (the vast majority) for whom "new art" is entirely irrelevant... Somehow, this is a massive problem for me as an artist, because most people's sense of contemporary art is "new art."

7) Everyone in the world speaks English AND their own thing. Americans speak nothing or else.

8) I lectured for hours and the perfume was deadly, the eyes in their sockets so raggedy and wrong.

9) Tonight: Mary Anne's roasted Brussel sprouts w/ pasta, olive oil, garlic and parmesan

10) from A Note on Rejection: As both a poet and editor, I've made huge mistakes over the years--sending work to the wrong places, sending the wrong work to the right places, accepting things I shouldn't have, passing up things that are brilliant... And speaking of brilliance--having talent--even (maybe especially) genius (yeah, the word's a problem, so what?)--is no guarantee that anyone else will be able to recognize it. Sadly, for lots of amazing artists, the stars never align, but we don't start or continue to be artists because of the alignment. We start and continue to be artists because of the stars.

InDigest 12

2009-11-08T17:07:00.003-06:00

Brand new InDigest w/ new poems from yours truly: http://www.indigestmag.com/ .

Please enjoy.

Matt

H_NGM_N #9

2009-10-31T13:34:00.001-05:00

Friends,

See a link to the new issue of the fabulous online journal H_NGM_N, wherein I have some collaborative poems writ with Dobby Gibson.

Here's the official note from H_NGM_N's editor Nate Pritts:

Citizens of the world!

H_NGM_N #9 is locked & loaded & ready to be dropped from a low flying plane on some unsuspecting country whose regime is in need of being toppled.

& if that country is CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE you can start to see how my metaphor is apt:

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/cur_ent-i_sue

Please note that we are currently open to submissions until November 30th & be sure to check out the updated info on H_NGM_N Books:

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-books/

Matt

COLERIDGE ON SPINOZA, etc.

2009-10-19T18:51:00.003-05:00

"Each thing has a life of it's own, and we are all one life."

[By the by, I recommend highly Adam Sisman's The Friendship: Wordsworth & Coleridge for anyone interested in these two poets, the Lyrical Ballads, and the underpinnings of Romanticism in general.]

ALEXIS ORGERA'S ILLUMINATRIX REVIEWED BY MARK ROCKSWOLD ON THE TARPAULIN SKY BLOG

2009-10-10T09:08:00.001-05:00

Congrats Alexis!

Here's the link: http://tsky-reviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Mark%20Rockswold

THIS IS MY LAND ESCAPING

2009-10-03T10:49:00.002-05:00

1) Poems register a particular way of paying attention. They point to/remind us of a certain kind of aesthetic interest, a way of using and engaging with language (to make a kind of sense), which is both heightened and degraded from the ordinary.

2) Form is the evidence of the parameters used to shape a poem (whether they're explicit, implicit, or considered only after the fact).

3) The highlight of the moment is my broken foot. Seriously, my broken foot. Throbbing.

4) This morning Agnes said: "Water comes out of my face, it just happens."

5) Someone else said, maybe me I can't remember, though I did write it down: In art the opposite of meaningfulness is not meaninglessness, but indifference and pointlessness.

6) How to write a poem: What would happen if...?

7) In the Udine region of Italy this summer, I actually woke up to the sound of a rooster. Then church bells clanged in the distance. Recently, reading Ann Lauterbach's Or to Begin Again, I thought of that rooster. Italy. Uncomfortably hot sun on my face.

8) "The question is no longer about what the artist is saying--in fact there is no question any longer--but only a sense of the object as a site where one's awareness is centered."--Crispin Sartwell on the Wabi-Sabi in Wolfgang Laib's "Mountains" of pollen.

9) I would like to make poems which are crash sites and/or building sites where one's (my) consciousness/awareness is centered.

10) I would like to...

STILL LIFE WITH LANDSCAPE

2009-09-20T09:04:00.006-05:00

1) Trying to find a way to write poems that say a thing (or many things) clearly in the midst of their falling apart (or after which they fall apart)--with music both subtle and bombastic, tripped up and sicke [sic]--like an orchestra going over the side of a cliff into the sea, still playing. Like Rebecca Horn's exploding piano piece. Like Sonic Youth playing George Maciunas' Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter's Piece). Like a Greg Ginn guitar solo. To make/compose this sort of racket I've been writing ten or twenty or thirty-seven lines, etc., then continuing by breaking off bits of the initial stuff and weaving them together with new things as they come. The difficult part is in the idea of "saying a thing (or many things) clearly," (rather than merely demonstrating something) since what I want to say is never pre-determined. I never know what the poem says (or doesn't) until it says it, or says nothing. The method is exploratory, and allows me to peal off the layers of the initial stuff to see what (if anything) is there...

2) BLACK AND WHITE CAMOUFLAGE FLIGHT SUIT

3) The new Yo La Tengo, Popular Songs, has some epic barn burners on it, e.g. "The Fireside" and "The Glitter Is Gone"--these are by turns lovely and subtle, ecstatic and messy. Note: I first typed "bran burners," rather than "barn burners" above. Bran burning is another name for running. Is this an endorsement of both Yo La Tengo and Raisin Bran? Yes, it is. I even dig the former's cover of James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend"

4) And yet, I'm not interested these days in making poems which are only collages. I love collage, but I love lyric profusion/effusion and even narrative just as much. Of course, I have nothing to narrate, and what I do have to narrate I either don't recognize or can't manage. I love details that float. Events that talk like birds on a wire out to lunch in the Vast (or the Void--I musn't forget the void).

5) Need new shirts...

6) STILL LIFE WITH LANDSCAPE IN EARLY MIDDLE AGE

7) Students' art reviews...

NOTES FOR TAKING

2009-09-04T10:29:00.004-05:00

1) The difficulty is not in arranging or dis-arranging language--its assembly or disassembly. Nor is it in the seriousness, playfulness, strangeness with which it's employed/deployed. The difficulty is in doing any, or all, of these things in such a way that you actually feel something as a result. And even more difficult than that is getting a reader to feel something...

2) In poetry, building a structure (with the toy blocks of language) isn't enough. The structure has to have a light on, and there has to be somebody home.

3) "There's a girl who lives on Heaven Hill..."

4) The crux of the matter is the body in the box.

CURRENT(S) AND BLAH AND NEW CENTO BINGO CENTOS

2009-08-20T14:24:00.004-05:00

Reading:

1) Or to Begin Again--Ann Lauterbach

2) Last Evenings on Earth and The Romantic Dogs--Roberto Bolano

3) Big Bell #3

4) Easy Eden--Micah Ballard & Patrick James Dunagan

5) Splendid Darke--Ken Henson

6) The Drought--Dana Ward

Listening:

1) Leaves in the Gutter E.P.--Superchunk

2) History Of--Zero Boys

3) Farm--Dinosaur Jr.

4) I'm a Flower Too--The Sonic Dolls

5) Fate to Fatal E.P.--The Breeders

II.

Really hard time writing anything here of late. Working on so many projects that when I could be blogging I'm too burnt to think about it. Classes start at the Art Academy next week. I'm ready and excited for the new year, but need to tweak a bit more the syllabi... Writing lots of poems--possibly terrible (hopefully not). Work is work, I won't complain. If I owe you an email, I'm sorry. The weird aftershocks of the summer's punk rock tour won't seem to go away, i.e. the damn thing really did a number on my health... Welcome to my 40s.

III.

Poet Kiki Petrosino played Cento Bingo with one of the classes she was teaching this summer, and you can read some of the results over at the Cento Bingo blog.

SORRY I'VE BEEN SO ABSENT

2009-08-04T07:00:00.002-05:00

I've been on tour with Squirtgun in Europe the past few weeks. Now I'm sick.

Fortunately there's this new H_NGM_N (yeah, I know, I'm late to the party) to keep us all company. Looks like a great issue. Thanks N8.

THORNS OF LIFE!

2009-07-06T06:58:00.001-05:00

http://www.myspace.com/thethornsoflife

SQUIRTGUN RETURNS!

2009-06-23T11:39:00.003-05:00

My punk band Squirtgun will be doing a few shows here in the US this week before heading to Europe for a couple of weeks worth of shows in July. See the very short list of our US dates. I hope some of you will try and make it out:

1.

6/24/2009 8:00 PM at Reggie’s
2109 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois 60616
Cost: 15.00

with Teen Idols, the Leftovers, and the Green Room Rockers. Advance tickets available at Ticketweb: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=1752304.

2.

6/25/2009 8:00 PM at The Muse
323 Columbia Street, Lafayette, Indiana 47901
Cost: $10 advance, $12 day-of-show.

4 band blow-out with Squirtgun, Teen Idols, the Leftovers, and the Green Room Rockers. Advance tickets: http://www.urgoing.to/SquirtgunTeenIdols

3.

6/27/2009 8:00 PM at Sonar
Baltimore, Maryland

Insubordination Festival
Purchase tickets: http://www.interpunk.com/insubfest09.cfm?&

THE ETERNAL (Bonus Track Version)

2009-06-08T18:12:00.003-05:00

New Sonic Youth tomorrow...can't wait. The guys I roll paint with are in for it.

Currently reading Michael Burkard's Envelope of Night: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1966-1990. Really enjoying all the donkeys and fire. I would, of course. Also, the whisper and volume, same time.

I'm writing tons and working tons--teaching drawing and (as I said above) rolling paint. Good thing I have a Master's degree. Otherwise, I probably couldn't have gotten this job. What are you doing? I'd love to know. That is, if you even exist at all. You do exist, don't you?

NORTHSIDE TAVERN TONIGHT!

2009-05-31T15:32:00.001-05:00

Ice cream truck going by in my life.

Tonight I will play you some songs.

SIDEBROW AND THEN SUM

2009-05-11T12:32:00.010-05:00

1) My city poem "Minerva System" went up at Sidebrow today. Please check it out here.

2) Clearly, your glass dogs...

3) "The arsonist and barista are trading explanations of steam"--Abraham Smith

4) New Sonic Youth song "Sacred Trickster"--reminds me of Goo, which makes for rockin' new listening.

5) I'll be reading this Saturday May 16th at 7PM in Kalamazoo, Michigan for the Poets in Print Series with the marvelous Gina Myers (who I can't wait to hear read) and Roy Seeger (who I haven't met, but am looking forward to meeting). The reading will take place in Suite 103A of the Park Trades Center at 326 W. Kalamzoo Ave. in downtown Kalamazoo Doors open at 6:30 reading at 7. I hope if you're in the area you can make it...

6) especially if your name is Juan Sweeney!

7) Argument. Electric grid. Plug in and proceed through each statement's truth value. I can't get away from logic--as much as might like to--and nobody gets away from language. Thus, nobody gets away from anguish. From reindeer. It's a stretch. Really. Nobody gets a Way. The question is always what to do with one's hands.

8) I struck out so many times playing baseball as a kid, but somehow always in the last game of the season I connected--ground rule double and an RBI. It was as if freed from ever having to swing a bat again, finally I was able to hit and not cry. That was one time, and another I homered. It felt good to hammer with the sun looking on. A boy swings a bat and hits a ball. Now drunk on a rock in grave outer space, I marvel at connections of any kind at all. The question is always what to do. Or argue. Or to feel something vaulted. The wind up, then the pitch black. Parents on the bleechers and all the kids screaming.

9) POEM

Today very birdsong,

sun out, no damage--

"I'm getting sleepy daddy"

Reading Philip Whalen

Dissolve me in water but let the man
speak: "I keep trying to live
as if this world were heaven."

10) is nothing.

RECORDED/RECORDINGS

2009-04-23T18:34:00.001-05:00

My band Travel's album RECORDED/RECORDINGS w/ liner notes by Dean Young and Laurie Capps is now on iTunes. Please check it out!

TONIGHT TONIGHT!

2009-04-14T06:36:00.002-05:00

If you're in Cincinnati tonight, please check this out. It's really not to be missed.

The Moor Poetry Series presents a reading by:

Joshua Beckman
& Adam Clay

Tuesday April 14th

6:30 PM

Reed Gallery (5th Floor, DAAP Building, University of Cincinnati)

Please contact 253.3503 or evancommander@mac.com for more information.

*****

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His books include Your Time Has Come, two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer, & Take It. He lives in Seattle and New York.

Joshua Beckman’s page at Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/381

Joshua Beckman reading “The Karate Chop of Love”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R70778g8DY

Adam Clay is the author of The Wash. His second book, A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. He co-edits Typo Magazine and lives in Michigan.

Adam Clay’s website: http://www.adamclay.org/

Adam Clay reading “Goodbye to All That, the Birds Included”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WucBOIIZ5WQ

BACK TO BASICS

2009-03-24T08:38:00.004-05:00

"The world is wicked by definition; my job is to stay aware of it."--Philip Whalen

Someone else invented us.

www.thehoverproject.com

from ALL THE HOURS WE'RE AWAKE

How long how long.
Rolling through the jungle motions.
Roaring through the necks of cars.
If parakeet.
If syllabic.
If bite mark carries you lovely ecstatic.
Terrific terror coffee sack.
Pathogen pernicious in the tide water stomp.
Thousands of clownfish,
one single Volkswagen. People,
you’re bleeding; programming, then camera.
This way then igloo.
Smacking, then backhand.
Silly the interpreter.
Ill-weeping inter-pixie-stick
Sunshine, shoeblack, gluestick the mammal.

Pressed up against the Dwarf Cassowary,

the Blue-Eared Pheasant rushes into the future...

"What have you done to my voice heavy with birds as evening falls/The voice that once hurt like bleeding?/Give me the infinite like a flower for my hands"--Vicente Huidobro

DOBBY GIBSON & MATT HART: WEST COASTING

2009-03-04T05:52:00.003-06:00

Starting this Friday 3/6, I'll be doing some readings up and down the West Coast with the amazing Dobby Gibson, whose new book Skirmish is just out on Graywolf. The list of dates, times and venues is below. I hope if you're on the West Coast you'll try and make it out to one or more of these events.

Also, if there's anyone out there, who'd be willing to do a last minute living room reading somewhere between Seattle and Portland--maybe Olympia?--on Saturday 3/7, we'd be grateful and very happy to show up.

Matt

*****

Seattle, WA

March 6, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Open Books

Portland, OR
March 8, 2009, 4 p.m.
Powell's Books, Hawthorne Location (w/ Portland's own Van Wheeler)

Sacramento, CA
March 9, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Sacramento Poetry Center

Santa Cruz, CA
March 10, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Santa Cruz Reading Series
Bookshop Santa Cruz

San Francisco, CA
March 11, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Books and Bookshelves

(w/ San Francisco's Russell Dillon)

Berkeley, CA
March 12, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Flash Reading Series
Moe's Books

San Francisco, CA
March 13, 2009
DETAILS TBD

CURRENTS AND Travel's RECORDED/RECORDINGS

2009-02-24T06:16:00.003-06:00

Reading:

Take It -- Joshua Beckman

Sunny Wednesday -- Noelle Kocot

My Language Did This to Me -- Jack Spicer

Sidebrow #1

Saltgrass #3

Skirmish -- Dobby Gibson

Listening:

Vicious Circle -- Zero Boyz

PENN SOUND

AudioLetter -- Russell Dillon

And speaking of listening, Travel's final CD, Recording/Recordings--a selected retrospective of our last (and final) 10 years with liner notes by Dean Young and Laurie Capps--is now available for purchase here (scroll down to the Travel discs and click on "Recorded/Recordings"). If you're a long time listener, you'll want this to complete your collection. If you've never heard Travel, this is the place to start, as it contains (what we think are) the best tracks from all of our other releases.

AWP

2009-02-16T14:29:00.002-06:00

Back from AWP and nearly destroyed. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Forklift, Ohio; Agriculture Reader, Lumberyard, Big Bell table. We had a blast.

Sorry for all the times I put my foot in my mouth. I think the damage is permanent.

THE NIGHTEST NIGHT is TONIGHT!!!! and CORSO: THE LAST BEAT is TOMORROW!!!

2009-02-05T08:54:00.005-06:00

Hi everybody,

THE NIGHTEST NIGHT, a poetry reading celebrating the poetics and poetry of Gregory Corso will take place TONIGHT, 2/5, at 7PM in the University of Cincinnati's DAAP Reed Gallery.

Readers will include: Jane Carver, Evan Commander, Peter Davis, Scott Dennis, Lesley Jenike, Catherine Wagner and myself.

In conjunction with the reading, we're publishing (and giving away FREE to the first 40 attendees) a limited edition chapbook, featuring work by tonight's readers (and others) that shares some affinity with Corso's work.

Also, please note that the final I GAVE AWAT THE SKY event, the advanced director's screening of the feature-length documentary, Corso--The Last Beat will take place tomorrow, 2/6, in the University of Cincinnati's DAAP Rm 4400 at 5:30PM. Seating is limited, so get there early. A closing reception for the festival will follow the screening in the DAAP Reed Gallery.

Hope to see you there,

Matt

GREGORY CORSO: I GAVE AWAY THE SKY FESTIVAL UPDATE

2009-01-29T11:53:00.007-06:00

Hi everybody,

Sorry to have to do this, but tonight's I GAVE AWAY THE SKY Reading to celebrate the poetics and poetry of Gregory Corso is cancelled due to the weather and road conditions. However, we are re-scheduling the reading for next Thurs. 2/5 @7PM in the University of Cincinnati's Reed Gallery. We're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and we hope to see you out at the reading next week.

Also, please don't forget about the other I GAVE AWAY THE SKY events:

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 7 p.m., Memorial Hall - Muse Sick
$5 Door/ Cash Bar/ Doors at 6PM
Advanced seats can be reserved at Shake It Records and Coffee Emporium
An evening of music with jazz legend David Amram and Jane Carver. This performance of Jane Carver's new arrangement of David Amram's score for Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's film "Pull My Daisy," will feature a live performance by jazz legend David Amram, as well as musicians from the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music.

Friday, Feb. 6, 5:30 p.m., DAAP 4400 - Corso - The Last Beat
An advanced director's screening of the feature-length documentary directed by Gustave Reininger, narrated by two-time Academy Award-nominated actor and novelist Ethan Hawke and featuring Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and poet, performer and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Patti Smith, as well as Corso himself. A reception will follow the film.

For more information please contact: Evan Commander: evancommander@mac.com / 513-307-5055 or visit www.igaveawaythesky.com

For more information about David Amram visit: www.davidamram.com.
For more information about Corso: The Last Beat visit: www.corsothefilm.com

Thanks for all your support,

Matt Hart and Evan Commander,
I Gave Away the Sky Co-Curators

I GAVE AWAY THE SKY

2009-01-16T15:28:00.003-06:00

Hey, this post is to let you all know about a Gregory Corso festival that I'm co-curating here in Cincinnati with Evan Commander and Gustave Reininger. Here's a link to the article about it in this week's City Beat: http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-16965-marching-to-a-different-beat.html

The festival is being held in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati where Evan is director/curator of the DAAP Art Galleries. The list of events will include an art exhibition, a reading, a concert, and an advanced screening of a film about the life and legacy of Gregory Corso. To kick things off, I'll be giving a lecture on Corso's final unpublished manuscript The Golden Dot on Thurs. Jan. 22nd at 6PM in the University of Cincinnati's Reed Gallery, which is located in the DAAP building. See the full list of events, including dates, times and locations below. I hope if you're in the area you'll consider showing up for some or all of these events.

For info about any of the listed events contact: Evan Commander: evancommander@mac.com / 513-556-3210

*****

I Gave Away the Sky: A Festival Celebrating the Life and Legacy of poet Gregory Corso

Tuesday, Jan. 20, Reed Gallery, UC - The Stars In The Sky Are Still Boss
A visual art exhibition exploring the spirit and aesthetic of Gregory Corso. Invited artists include Antonio Adams, Rebecca Cummins, Jacob Dyrenforth, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Goldstein, Chris Johanson, Kim Krause, Tony Luensman, Ryan McGinley, Raymond Pettibon, Bern Porter, and Michael Stillion. Also features the drawings, paintings, and original manuscripts of Corso. Exhibition continues through Friday, Feb. 6.

Thursday, Jan. 22, 6 p.m., Reed Gallery, UC - "Notes After Blacking Out: A Lecture on Gregory Corso and The Golden Dot"
A lecture and discussion by Matt Hart, poet, editor and assistant professor of academic studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati

Thursday, Jan. 29, 6 p.m., Reed Gallery, UC - A Moor Poetry Reading honoring the poetics and poesy of Gregory Corso
Featured readers include Adam Clay, Evan Commander, Scott Dennis, Matt Hart, Lesley Jenike, Cathy Wagner and Tyrone Williams.

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 7 p.m., Memorial Hall - Muse Sick
An evening of music with Jane Carver and David Amram. This performance of Jane Carver's new arrangement of David Amram's score for Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's film "Pull My Daisy," will feature jazz legend David Amram himself, as well as musicians from the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music.

Friday, Feb. 6, 5:30 p.m., DAAP 4400 - Corso - The Last Beat
Director's advanced screening of the feature-length documentary directed by Gustuve Reininger, narrated by two- time Academy Award-nominated actor and novelist Ethan Hawke and featuring Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and poet, performer and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Patti Smith, as well as Corso himself. A reception follows the film.

The Golden Dot

2009-01-09T15:45:00.003-06:00

"Poetry is more than portraiting the poet; though there be no one like you or me in life, each of us select and unique like a fingerprint, are nonetheless a common lot. Language binds us; emotions emit from likewise two stimuli. Nobody's too far apart--" --Gregory Corso from An Accidental Autobiography, ed. by Bill Morgan

JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

2008-12-22T22:07:00.003-06:00

Hey, it's a new live Squirtgun record, Broadcast 02.09.08, featuring 19 tracks recorded live on a freezing cold night in Lafayette, IN last Winter, including 1 brand new tune and a cover of Common Rider's "The Classics of Love".

M

THE HOME VIDEO REVIEW OF BOOKS: VOL 1, ISSUE 2

2008-12-09T18:26:00.002-06:00

Check this out (link below): new home video reviews of Forklift's own Brett Price's The Trouble with Mapping, Gina Myers' Behind the R and Darcie Dennigan's Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse, among many wonderful others.

*****

Announcing: The Home Video Review of Books: Vol 1, Issue 2

http://thehomevideoreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

The Home Video Review of Books is a monthly online review journal of
poetry & lyric prose.

In this issue you will find reviews of:

Gina Myers' Behind the R
Kim Hyesoon's Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers
Lisa Jarnot's Night Scenes
Dan Machlin's Dear Body
Brett Price's Trouble with Mapping
John Taggart's There are Birds
Ara Shirinyan's Your Country Is Great
Brandon Shimoda's The Alps
Joel Chace's Matter No Matter
Jon Godfrey's City of Corners
Jen Tynes's Heron / Girlfriend
Anne Heide's Wiving
Anne Boyer's Art is War
Darcie Dennigan's Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse
Allison Carter's Shadows are Weather
Mark Cunningham's Body Language

2 NEW MANUSCRIPTS AND NO PLACE TO GO

2008-12-05T12:03:00.005-06:00

I'm determined not to send these new books to contests. What I really want is a relationship with a press and an editor... Any ideas? Any takers?

READING in Cincinnati 12/4

2008-12-03T15:53:00.002-06:00

Hey all, just a post to mention that I'll be reading tomorrow night, Thurs. Dec. 4th, at Xavier University with Dos Madres Press editor, Robert Murphy. The reading will begin at 7:30 sharp in the Surkamp Family Welcome Center, which is in the Alumni Center: 1507 Dana Ave., Cincinnati.

For more info contact Dr. Tyrone Williams: williamt@xavier.edu .

If you're in the area, I hope you'll try and make it out.

Matt

BRETT PRICE IS OUT OF THE COUNTRY,

2008-11-29T10:03:00.005-06:00

somewhere in South America I bet, and this is THE TROUBLE WITH MAPPING--his new chapbook, which you should buy immediately for a mere $8 from Flying Guillotine Press. It's beautifully bound with individual handmade map cutouts/collages on each cover. And the poems are DYNAMITE--which will surprise no one who knows Brett and his work. Here's a sample poem from the chap:

ARRIVAL OF THE NEW CITY

The sudden fixedness of a once
Portable future
I accumulate

The useful clutter often
The toughest

Goings to bed before
Tired and wearing out
The comfort of positions
To rest in

And now
To avenue

To expedition by way
Of stride

If in a hurry the way
Blood hurries
The body when yelled at

Pat Steir you a-hole
How does one become you
Terrible

I will never catch
That line and ride even if hurried
So cheer up

And read how
The new city quiets

The young AM blotting
The overcast with its rust

RADIO RADIO--THE JOE MILFORD POETRY SHOW

2008-11-13T08:06:00.007-06:00

No, I'm sorry this post is not about Elvis Costello, but I am happy to use the word "radio" today. It's a word I don't use nearly enough--especially since listening to the radio--jazz mostly--is one of my favorite things. Maybe it's one of your favorite things, too. And if that happens to be the case, perhaps you'd like to tune in (via the internet) to The Joe Milford Poetry Show this Saturday, 11/15/08, at 5PM (Eastern time) when I'll be the guest on Joe's show. While you're there you can also listen to the archived shows, including readings by C.D. Wright, Ron Silliman, Bob Hicok, and many others.

A special note: Dean Young will be Joe's guest this Tuesday, 11/18/08, and that show will begin at 6PM. Regardless of whether or not you tune in to hear me, please tune in to hear Dean and check out Joe's site and his archives.

GRAPESHOT

2008-11-06T08:14:00.007-06:00

It's like this: a thud comes
warning an excess of gusty weather,
and a brown dress-shoe warms
to an igloo of impatience. Impatience?
Impatiens! And thus, you consider it
to be the toothsome obliteration
of all things jawbreaker, all things
rounded up to account
for the very pomegranate nature of the future.
Your fortune teller's written failure
all over its dictums,
walking around in an elevator's circles--
and that's really saying something
so completely mechanical
or it's the last thing ever said
before the sky drops out
of the great dreaming lollipop,
the meadowlark lemondrop,
the secret code calling you
the lining of a stomach,
and risking next to everyone
as you crash into your parents.

TODAY IS THE DAY IS THE ELECTION!!!!

2008-11-04T06:40:00.004-06:00

VOTE YOUR FACES OFF!

My face is a meat truck.

Honk!

I live in OHIO...

My mustache is a dog.

You should see him wag his amazing

land-locked surfboard.

Optimism bleeding

on my blogface.

DUMB BUNNY

2008-10-30T16:41:00.008-05:00

1) "I believe in desperate acts. The kind that make me look stupid." -- Jawbreaker

2) WITH MAMMOTH GALOSHES AND MY BRAIN

With mammoth galoshes and my brain
on a shopping-mall-cruise-ship-spree to Zimbabwe,
I, after numerous trips to a hospital
of someone else’s choice, now dust-flutter
into an unspeakable sympathy of clouds,
not merely an afternoon blueness but my love

for you and you—and yes, even you too—
kicking the horizon like a rock-
star shredding into the suit-coat
of a brand new president, yes, writ large
and emergent as the mammoth aforementioned
and four hundred feelings I’ve composed
this instant… When I finally can’t stand it, I look up
in a book or the sky or a windmill:
How is it the green grass is crying?

3) Sonnet: 14 lines and a lyrical emergency.

4) In poetry, we can’t be out of control in control, so we have to proceed in our sleep until we can’t anymore. One has to drive straight for the edge of the cliff, and then at the very last second, grab the wheel and spin the still speeding engine in the other direction/the other tradition. To put it plainly, art involves REAL risk taking—that is, the possibility of success and failure, joy and heartbreak, smarts and stupidity. You’ve gotta be willing to look stupid (as yourself) to look smart (as yourself). It’s like in Vegas where the only hope of winning anything is a sincere, joyful willingness to lose everything.

5) Always do the opposite, repeat yourself forever. Hello Dean Young. If it doesn’t make logical, rational or practical sense, it might be art.

6) A poem is in some sense always a demonstration, a recording in language, of a particular way of paying attention.

7) There is no seven.

8) Happy Halloween!

MOOR POETRY READING THIS THURSDAY 10/16 AND JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN, FORKLIFT, OHIO 19--ALMOST BREATHING!

2008-10-14T06:22:00.005-05:00

For those of you in the Cincinnati area, I'll be reading with the amazing Ethan Paquin this Thursday night, October 16th at 7:30 in the Moor Poetry Series at the Meyers Gallery on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. The reading is free and open to the public. Details below (minus my details, because what's relevant here is ETHAN PAQUIN!).

Also at the reading, along with a Moor Poetry Series broadsheet (featuring new work by Ethan and myself), the new and long overdue issue of Forklift, Ohio--issue 19--will finally be available. Contributors expect your copies in the next few weeks!

I hope some of you can make it out to the reading.

Matt

******

The Moor Poetry Series presents a reading by:

Ethan Paquin
& Matt Hart

Thursday October 16th
7:30 PM
Meyers Gallery (located in the Steger Center at the University of Cincinnati)
Please contact 513.307.5055 for more information.

*****

Ethan Paquin has written four books of poetry, including My Thieves (Salt, 2007) and The Violence (Ahsahta Press, 2005), which was runner-up for the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award. His poetry has been published in anthologies including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, 2005), and Isn't It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets (Wave, 2002). He is Associate Professor of English at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY, as well as founding editor of Slope and Slope Editions.

Links to reviews of Paquin's work:

Cutbank
Tarpaulin Sky
Buffalo News
Coldfront

SIXTH FINCH!

2008-10-10T13:45:00.005-05:00

Check out the new issue of Sixth Finch where I have a couple of new-ish poems. You can also read brave and amazing new work from my pals Zach Schomburg and Matthew Lippman as well as from a whole host of brilliant others. There's artwork, too, so what are you waiting for? Fly, be free, jump! Now! Be the sixth finch to the bottom of the well, and win a brand new electric...

TRAVEL'S NEW ONE, ANTI-SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

2008-10-06T05:26:00.005-05:00

Check out this preview of Travel's next new record (our 4th in 2008!) ANTI-SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, which will be out in November on the Starfish L.E. label.

I think this may be our most radically disjointed disc yet... And yet, the world of dew is... strangely listenable if you dive in multiple times. You, too, can breathe water.

There are still a few copies left of our last disc, =WRITES as well.

Thanks to everybody who's been supporting the band over the years. We appreciate your antennae even though other people think they're strange.

You can get Travel's music (and a lot of other amazing stuff) by going to the catalogue at www.darrencallahan.com. Thanks. Matt

SWAMPLANDIA

2008-09-29T08:08:00.001-05:00

Welcome...

3 THINGS: JEREMY SCHMALL AND REBECCA MORGAN FRANK READ @ THE PAINTED LADY, IMAGINARY PRESS READING, AND THE NEW ANONYMOUS

2008-09-10T06:02:00.009-05:00

1. Below is an announcement for a poetry reading on Thurs. Sept. 18th, featuring my friend and Agriculture Reader editor, Jeremy Schmall, and newly-transplanted-to-Cincinnati poet and Memorious editor, Rebecca Morgan Frank. The reading will take place in Norwood at the Painted Lady, a.k.a. the home of poets, Kristi Maxwell, Ann Fine, and Michael Rerick. See details about the reading, as well as links to poems by each poet and to their respective magazines, in the message from Kristi below.

*****

Please join us Thursday, Sept. 18, at 7:00 p.m. for a backyard poetry reading. Alas, it is too late in the season for fireflies to act as accompaniment for the readers, but we're sure the readers will glow enough on their own. Tee. Please be prompt, for the natural light's sake. There will be a few finger foods, along with cold things to drink in buckets scattered throughout the yard, but please bring your own bug spray if you prefer to use it.
Our address is: 1808 Lincoln Ave., Cincinnati, 45212
Our phone: 513/698-8205

The readers are out-of-towner Jeremy Schmall and recent Cincinnati transplant (and incoming PhD student) Rebecca Morgan Frank.

About the readers:

Jeremy Schmall is the co-editor and founder of The Agriculture Reader, and the author of two chapbooks, Underneath an Obnoxious Moon and Open Correspondence from the Senator, as well an artist book, The Slapdown. He's been published in Hotel St. George, Pilot, Juked, and Forklift, OH: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. He lives in Brooklyn.

Chap link:
http://x-ingbooks.com/senator.html

Ag Reader:
http://booklyn.org/agric2.html

Poems:
http://juked.com/2006/09/awake.asp

http://juked.com/2006/12/senatorpoem.asp

http://www.hotelstgeorgepress.com/library/08winter/web/content/camera.shtml

http://pilotpoetry.com/s1schmall.html

***

Rebecca Morgan Frank is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the online journal Memorious: A Journal of New Verse and Fiction. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Georgia Review, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, and elsewhere.

Poems:
http://www.guernicamag.com/poetry/372/rescue/

http://www.inertiamagazine.com/i4/frank.html

The journal she edits:
http://www.memorious.org/

I hope you're able to join us!
Kindly,

Kristi Maxwell

2. I'll be reading in the Imaginary Press Reading Series in Minneapolis on Saturday Sept. 20th at 7:30PM with the amazing Karen Carcia and Sun Yung Shin. If you're a Twin Cities person please come out and hear the fireworks. And me. Here are all the details:

What: The Imaginary Press Reading Series featuring Karen Carcia, Matt Hart, and
Sun-Yung Shin
When: Saturday, September 20th, at 7:30 PM
Where: The Jon Oulman Salon
331 NE 13th Avenue, Minneapolis
(upstairs from the 331 Club)
Admission: FREE
website: http://imaginarypress.blogspot.com

2. Two days ago I received an email (from a mysterious source who will remain nameless), which contained the following call for submissions.

THE NEW ANONYMOUS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Announcing The New Anonymous, a print journal whose contributors and editors will remain forever nameless. Indeed, The New Anonymous will publish all work anonymously. And all submissions will be blindly screened and edited, i.e., the submission, editorial, and publishing process will be anonymous from beginning to end. Our goal is to serve as a safehouse where writers—both up-and-coming and well established—can not only question the creative process but also, in the words of Freud, "play."

We are now reading submissions in all genres for our upcoming debut issue and hope you'll join us in this unique endeavor. For submission guidelines and more information, visit our website at:

www.thenewanonymous.com

Todd Colby!

2008-08-28T07:58:00.005-05:00

Check out this recording of Todd Colby's "Brad," which is currently featured on Indie Feed's Performance Poetry Podcast. Todd has long been one of my favorite poets, and this recording only helps remind me of why. It's ferocious, anxious, hilarious and NOISY!

What's more, the podcast's host's bewilderment with regard to the fact that he actually likes this piece is also worth a listen--not to mention that in trying to make sense of Todd's piece he quotes Daniel Nester. I can't think of anything better. Check it.

PAUL VIOLI REVIEW at COLDFRONT

2008-08-21T05:00:00.002-05:00

A piece in pieces that I wrote about Paul Violi's Overnight is up at Coldfront Mag. You can read it HERE.

Back to syllabi...

LATE-BREAKING

2008-08-15T06:00:00.003-05:00

1. Check out these two NEW mighty and marvelous online journals: Sous Rature, ed. by Cara Benson (in which, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a couple of new poems) and Sixth Finch ed. by Rob MacDonald. Dig 'em both.

2. A couple of posts back I linked to my poem, "Captain America" at the Harvard Review site, but I didn't know that my poem "Wallace Stevens Must Die" is also up. Hope you enjoy 'em both.

3. Just in time for their full-length release on August19th Jaguar Love has a new website.

4. Here's a preview of the next (yes, the next!) Travel record, Anti-Social Butterfly. The song's called "Dynamite Ignites".

You can also still get a copy of =Writes with liner notes compiled from all my favorite jazz records here (click on the link, scroll down to the Travel records, click on =Writes and that'll take you to Paypal). Supplies are limited, and the disc is $10.

CURRENT(S)

2008-07-31T16:31:00.007-05:00

Reading/Rereading

1. Superfecta--Clay Matthews (which I wholeheartedly recommend. He does narrative poems the right way, the Clay way).

2. Amulet--Roberto Bolano

3. The Lumberyard #2 (great journal out of Louisville, KY)

4. After Dark--Haruki Murakami

5. The Dharma Bums (for The Beat Gen vs. The NY School class that I'm teaching in the Fall)

Listening

1. Stay Positive--The Hold Steady

2. Modern Guilt--Beck

3. A Brief History of the 20th Century--Gang of Four

4. Boo Human--Joan of Arc

5. Vanhandled--a mix by my pal Vandoren Wheeler (Thanks Van!)

*****

The new CD by my band Travel, =Writes, is now available to order from Travel guitarist, keyboardist, and producer Darren Callahan's site (click on the link above, then scroll down to the Travel records, click on =Writes, and that'll take you to Paypal). I hope you'll check it out. Eventually it'll be up on the Travel site, but knowing us it might be a while.

LAKE LAKE LAKE!

2008-07-07T07:01:00.004-05:00

We're headed to an undisclosed location and will return in 10 days or so, hopefully re-charged!

Until then, here's a poem of mine that's just up at The Harvard Review site: Captain America.

And this: "...poetry, it's easy/ And impossible--like stealing from yourself." -- Paul Violi

Finally: reckless = 1. marked by lack of proper caution : careless of consequences 2. In law: characterized by the creation of a substantial and unjustifiable risk to the lives, safety, or rights of others and by a conscious and sometimes wanton and willful disregard for or indifference to that risk that is a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would exercise in like circumstances. Now, how to relate this to poetry...

In poetry, one has to be open, willing, and able to fail every second. One has to court it, failure. Something's at stake. And this has nothing to do with objectivity, standards, or anything remotely crafty. Rather it's about tuning into the music in the making and the making in the music--to a certain way of paying attention.

Good summering to all of you.

M

NEW TRAVEL RECORD PREVIEW

2008-06-29T13:55:00.002-05:00

Hey friends, check out the preview of my band Travel's new record =Writes at Travel guitarist, keyboardist, and producer, etc. Darren Callahan's site.

And while you're at it, be sure to take a look take a look at what a prolific and talented lunatic Darren Callahan is: playwright, musician, novelist, screen writer...

Over and out,

Matt

THINKING ABOUT... (REDUX)

2008-06-19T22:50:00.011-05:00

Alexis Orgera was kind enough to comment on my "THINKING ABOUT...." post, and as a result we've had a good conversation (via email). With this in mind, I asked Alexis if it would be okay to post some of what was said here and she agreed. What follows is Alexis' comment on my post and a portion of the conversation which ensued.

*****

Orgera: Ok, but when does a poem become too self-indulgent? And can we talk about Notley, b/c I need a "way in."

Hart: Maybe you could tell me specifically what in my post made you think about that, and I'll be happy to address it.

Orgera: Hmm. I think I was reacting to #15 "deliberately absurd dis/connections as a way to work in spit/e of oneself." Though I agree with most of what you say before this: resistance as a sort of active, deliberate recklessness, the point is the poem, the desnos quote, I begin to bristle when we talk about being deliberately absurd. I think this is because I feel like poetry only happens as a natural result of opening up oneself to whatever needs to arrive. That sounds cheesy and whatever, but I feel like an act of deliberate manufacturing makes craft a crutch rather than allowing craft to be the below-ground river. Maybe I'm full of shit and grubbing with semantics--especially because what I was really thinking when I wrote the comment was: I can't read "in the pines." I think it's self-indulgent which is sometimes forgivable if the language is alive and flowing in some way which I can't see in it. To me, self-indulgence has nothing to do with subject matter, rather it's about whether or not you can actually communicate something in a sonically soulful way. ie. poetry is not prose. I'm not a theory person. I don't like writing out of theory, but I do love craft coupled with passion and, as you say, a pushing against one's own boundaries to explore new territory. Now, of course, there's my whole notion of apophenia. Making connections where connections might not be thought to exist. Is that deliberate absurdity? Or is it training your mind to see the connections in everything? In the end, I'm not really disagreeing with anything you said, it turns out, but thinking about what it all means.

Hart: I think what I was trying to get at is the notion that "poetics" is always about the poet (it's a way of seeing that sets the grounds for proceeding), but in the act of writing it has to be about the poem, i.e. getting the self out of the way, so as to be able to open "oneself to whatever needs to arrive." In the moment of writing, one has, first and foremost, to listen to what the poem wants to do--where it wants/needs to go. So at the same time one is getting out of the way, one's managing intelligence has to remain a "shell self" to navigate and articulate the poem's motion and trajectory. It's a balancing act, but one that requires first becoming a fly on the wall, and the "deliberate absurdity" stuff reflects the fact that for me this is a rather violent process. In other words, I'm not very good at stepping quietly into the ether for the sake of the poem, so I have to trick myself into it (by any means necessary), and this often involves undermining, sabotaging, or otherwise flying in the face of my own impulses, interests and desires for what the poem should be. Otherwise, no poems get written. I guess the larger point is that we often have to give up what we know and expect (or what we think we know and expect) in order that good poems get written at all. That Alice Notley poem is significant for the fact that it manages to be a sonnet in spite of the vastness of its hurricane. Additionally, as my friend Kiki Petrosino pointed out, the poem is a lament, it's crying. Now crying can be self-indulgent, sure, but my sense is that this poem, and Notley's poetics, is ferocious. One of the things that I think is so marvelous about it is that it seems to be urgently trying to communicate, while being simultaneously indifferent to whether we understand the communication--the point being that it's enough to FEEL its urgency...

Alexis: Re: getting the Self out of the way for the poem, its violence. I see the deliberateness in that. I think that the poems I've written in the last year or so have been such a process of "purging" almost, an automatic logic, that I forgot about the work it usually takes to be free of expectations going in. I'm finding it again, though, as I sit down after a period of dry months. I sit at my desk, say fuck, and stare at the page and/or screen, depending. So, yeah, I guess we are agreeing here! Oh, and lastly, crying can be self-indulgent, but it can also be terribly beautiful.

The Missouri Review!

2008-06-06T20:58:00.004-05:00

Hey, my poem "Goodnight Everybody" is the poem of the week on The Missouri Review's website. Check it out here.

Matt

THINKING ABOUT...

2008-06-03T13:14:00.011-05:00

1. a poem as a series of resistant gestures--not only to what the poet knows and is comfortable with, regarding both poetry and the world, but also to the poet him/herself--and furthermore to ordinary language (in this case, any language which isn't poetry) itself. Poetry in spite of the poet. "We are crystal sets, at best" (Spicer).

2. resistance as a sort of active, deliberate recklessness in the face--counterintuitive, ill/logical, naive--a grasping at straws and strawmen, rhinoceros/i/es.

3. poetics, then, as a dynamic, ever-shifting description of the baseline of writing a poem--the poet's interests, proficiencies, deficiencies, attitudes, etc.

4. etc.?

5. poetics as beside the point--which is the poem. The point is the poem. The poem drives/ defines the poetics, not the other way around, and thus poetics are ALWAYS value neutral--mine are not better than yours, etc. Poems trump philosophy, esp. when the poems contradict the philosophy. Your poems might be better than mine.

6. poetics as the grounds upon which (and from which) the poet works, but not as the spirit, the gravity, the strategy, the impetus for writing a poem.

7. poetics, therefore, as a passive element in poetic composition.

8. the fact that the important decisions one makes in the activity of writing have nothing to do with poetics, but stem from them.

9. the grounds for decisive writing--writing recklessly/resistantly/personally (which produces one's poetics) are the description of everything every/one has already done in the past, i.e. CRAFT.

10. "craft elaborates, attention extends" (Revell).

10. imitation imitation imitation

11. reading reading reading

12. "a poem must be both delirious and lucid" (Desnos).

13. a poem as something more than (and moored in) the sum of its parts--one thing thrown recklessly against another until the crash site becomes a paradise/monster/gag reflex.

14. gag reflex?

15. deliberately absurd dis/connections as a way to work in spit/e of one's self.

16. Edmund Berrigan's new book: glad stone children.

17. The poetry of Paul Violi

18. Alice Notley's poem "In the Pines" (which my friend K and others have pointed out is a wail, a lament)

19. expressiveness? No, ordinance, explosiveness, report.

20. maybe next time: wearing one's heart out--say at 6PM on a Sunday, in the rain, to a movie.

21 how if it isn't moving, so what? (This is, of course, more than other things even, deliberately ambiguous).

22. truck truck goose.

23. The House that Jack Built, obviously, edited and with an afterword by Peter Gizzi

24. irritation and amazement and bluster.

25. all the hours we're awake...

JAGUAR LOVE!

2008-05-28T15:10:00.003-05:00

Check out the new band, Jaguar Love, which includes former members of The Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves here. And, to prepare for the release of their forthcoming EP (due out June 3rd from Matador) and their full length (due out from the same label in August), download an Mp3 of their song "Bats Over the Pacific Ocean" here.

MASSIVE TOUR THANKS

2008-05-24T08:24:00.005-05:00

Amanda Nadelberg and I had a great time on our East Coast reading tour. Thanks to everybody who came out to the readings and also to the people who were kind enough to host/organize a reading, put us up (or up with us), and/or who made the trip the general BLAST it was. With that in mind, extra special thanks go out to: Greg Ciprioni, Daniel & Brianna Nadelberg, Derek Fenner & Ryan Gallagher, Daniel Johnson & Scott Challener, Chris Janke and Emily Brewster, Brett Price, Chris Martin, Merrill Feitell, Paul Otremba, and Peter Davis.

Matt

EAST-COASTING: MORE READINGS!

2008-05-05T05:41:00.008-05:00

I'll be doing some readings out East next week (and one just slightly West) with my pal Amanda Nadelberg (among other fine folks--see below), and I hope some of you will try and make it out for one or more of these events. Thanks to everybody who helped set these up in such last-minute, far-flung, ninja style.

1) Sat. May 10th -- w/ Amanda Nadelberg, Nora Almeida, and Kate Jaeger, 6PM, The Union Square Poetry Series, P.A.'s Lounge 345 Somerville Ave., Somerville, MA

2) Sun. May 11th -- w/Amanda Nadelberg, Daniel Johnson, and Scott Challener, The Living Room, 7PM, 1 Fayette St., Apt 1 in Cambridge, MA (seating is limited for this one, so please contact me if you plan to attend)

3) Mon. May 12th -- w/Amanda Nadelberg, Slope Editions reading, 7PM, Rendezvous Bar, 78 3rd St. Turners Falls, MA 01376

4) Wed. May 14th -- with Amanda Nadelberg and Christopher Martin, 8PM, Pacific Standard Bar , 82 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11217

5) Thurs. May 15th -- with Amanda Nadelberg, Merrill Feitell, Paul Otremba, and Adam Robinson, 3-Legged Dog Reading: Poetry & Prose, MINAS, 6:30 PM, 815 West 36th St., Baltimore, MD 21211

And back in the Midwest:

6) Fri. May 16th -- w/ Amanda Nadelberg and Nate Logan, hosted by the Marvelous Peter Davis, MT Cup, 8PM, 1606 W. University, Muncie, IN 47303

BIG THANK YOUS; FORKLIFT, OHIO REVIEWED IN TARPAULIN SKY, & DARCIE DENNIGAN'S CORINNA A-MAYING THE APOCALYPSE

2008-04-25T08:53:00.005-05:00

1. Just back two days ago from the readings in California, and I'm finally enough dug out of the hole of not being here for a week that I can write this post to say thank you to everyone who came out or helped with the readings. Very especially praise and thanks are due to: Russell Dillon, Jason Morris, Chad Sweeney, Gina Myers, Jim Maughn, Clay Banes, and Sara Michas-Martin. The readings were a ball and I'm looking forward to being back on the West Coast again soon--though I will not be returning via the red-eye...

2. There's a new review of Forklift, Ohio #18 by Cara Benson in the ever amazing Tarpaulin Sky. Check it out right here.

3. My review of Darcie Dennigan's Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse appeared in Coldfront last week. Read it here.

CALIFORNIA READINGS!

2008-04-16T05:04:00.004-05:00

Hey, I'm reading this weekend in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Berkeley and at Stanford University with a bunch of really amazing poets. I hope some of you, esp. my friends on the West Coast, will try and make it out. Here's the info.:

1) BIG BELL Magazine Release Party w/ Marisa Crawford, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian, and the mighty Russell Dillon. Thurs. April 17th, 9PM, Adobe Books, 3166 16th St., San Francisco, CA 94107.

2) A New Cadence Poetry Series w/ Chad Sweeney and Jason Morris: Fri. April 18th, 7:30 PM, Felix Kulpa Gallery, 107 Elm Street (behind Streelight Records), Santa Cruz, CA 95060

3) Pegasus Books Downtown w/ Darcie Dennigan: Sun. April 20th, 7:30 PM, 2349 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704

4) On the Cut: New Voices in Poetry w/ Major Jackson and Sandra Lim, Mon. April 21, 8PM Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305

Tour Help Wanted, Fou Magazine, and 3 from Robert Desnos

2008-04-05T18:51:00.010-05:00

1) Amanda Nadelberg and I need your help. It turns out that the two of us are going to be doing some readings -- very last-minute-like -- starting in the Boston area on May 10, then Turner's Falls, MA on the 12th and NYC on the 13th. What we're wondering is whether or not any of you would be able to help us with a reading between/around Boston and NYC (we'd be willing to go pretty much anywhere in New England) on the following date:

May 11

and then between NYC and Cincinnati (Western NY, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana...?) on these dates:

May 14

May 15

We aren't looking for money (though of course gas $s would be great, as it's expensive driving around these days), and it needn't be fancy. We certainly aren't above reading in your living room. If you can help in any way, or point us to someone who can, we'd really appreciate it. You can either leave a comment on this post, or email me at forkliftmatt@gmail.com .

Thanks.

2) Check out issue #1 of Fou Magazine, in which I have some poems. And don't worry, you won't be sorry, because issue 1 also contains work by: Bob Hicok, Elaine Equi, Mark Bibbins, Matthew Zapruder, Lytton Smith, Dorothea Lasky and many more. Congrats to the editors on a fine new journal.

3) from Robert Desnos (because I'm reading him again and maybe you'd like to as well).

1. "Be sure to put a life preserver on my tomb./Because you never know." -- from "Great Days in the Life of the Poet" trans. Patricia Terry

2. "But luckily I still have the stars, and the consciousness of my moral greatness opposed to the thousand obstacles the world sets up against my love." --from "Tour of the Tomb" trans. Mary ann Caws

3. "I love love, its tenderness and cruelty." -- from "No, love is not dead" trans. Mary Ann Caws

MOOR POETRY SERIES READING w/ Zach Schomburg and Kiki Petrosino

2008-03-30T20:48:00.003-05:00

Check out the announcement about the third installment of the MOOR POETRY SERIES below. This should be a good one--and really really really real... I hope all of you will be able to make it out. Matt

The Moor Poetry Series
presents a reading by:

Kiki Petrosino & Zach Schomburg

Wednesday, April 2, 6:30 PM
840 Gallery (located in the Steger Center at the University of Cincinnati)

Please contact 307.5055 for more information.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007). He co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books and is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska. His collaborations with Emily Kendal Frey are forthcoming in Pilot and Diode, and his translations of the Russian poet Andrei Sen-Senkov are forthcoming in Circumference. New poems from his manuscript, Scary, No Scary, are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Born, and Laurel Review and can be read here:

http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
http://linebreak.org/12/january-monster/

Kiki Petrosino holds graduate degrees from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Chicago. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Fence, Best New Poets, Forklift Ohio, Alimentum, La Petite Zine, and elsewhere. Her first collection of poetry, Fort Red Border, will be published in fall 2009 by Sarabande Books. She lives in Iowa City.

Read her work here:

http://www.lapetitezine.org/Kiki.Petrosino.htm
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/sestinas/5KikiPetrosino.html
http://42opus.com/v5n4/youhavemadeacareer
http://www.contrarymagazine.com/Allegory.html
http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/
http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/infants_in_arms/

GET OUT YOUR OLD COPY OF DAVID BOWIE'S HUNKY DORY AND LISTEN TO QUICKSAND

2008-03-25T09:55:00.002-05:00

Then you'll have a pretty good idea what I sound like at the moment (except without the awesome voice, or the song craft, or the cover by Dinosaur Jr.).

Slog. Gurgle. Schlupp.

M

JAPANESE DEATH POEM

2008-03-13T09:53:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Dobby Gibson and Dean Young I'm currently reading Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. And while I'm not on the verge of death--at least I hope not--if I were on such a verge right this moment, I'd write this:

Two men cutting old limbs
off my tree. One last listen
to KISS DESTROYER!

(Then I'd die immediately, of course.)

What would your death poem be...right this second?

JON ANDERSON/ JOHN CLARE

2008-03-03T16:48:00.002-06:00

"--we owe the world ourselves--" --from "John Clare" by Jon Anderson

IN THE INTEREST OF BEING MORE BLOGOSAURUS REX-ISH

2008-02-26T22:26:00.003-06:00

1. Working on a third sonnet-sonnet and two full-length manuscripts -- but not so much tonight.
2. Instead, watched on television the debate from Cleveland between Senators Obama and Clinton. I had to keep getting up and walking into the other room. How very squirmy I get when they go at each other politician style.
3. Also tonight, compiled notes for my class tomorrow on the first half of David Markson's This Is Not a Novel.
4. Letters to write: Bretticus, Alexis, and Deano.
5. Secret collaboration with Conway Twitty (which is not his real name of course, and that's part of how it stays a secret)...
6. This afternoon, watched the Teletubbies with Agnes, who clapped and danced acrobatically. I like La-La best. She likes saying "La-La" best. After the original Twilight Zone and Lost, The Teletubbies is perhaps my favorite television show...ever. Big hug. Again again. Big hug. Again again.
7. Listened (doesn't matter when) to The Blood Brothers' Burn Piano Island Burn, then 2 mix Cds--one of Berlin-era David Bowie that Darren Callahan made me, and one by Mike Vallera with bands like Eastern Youth and The Good Life--incidentally Darren (who's in Travel with me) and Mike are my two cohorts in a new band called The Dictionary. See the album cover. See pictures of the recording.
8. Took some ibuprofen.
9. Made some pesto.
10. Sang and played 3 songs on the guitar: two of my own and "The Science of Myth" by Screeching Weasel.
11. Tweaked a few new poems.
12. Printed out Forklift submissions.
13. Tomorrow tomorrow...
14. How could I end on the number 13?
15. And while I'm at it: Do aesthetic judgments really always imply economic ones?
16. Emails.
17. Course Descriptions
18. YOU ARE HERE
19. Thank you for everything.
20. Matt

APOPHENIA, HARPY-DOM, and SIMPLY ROCKET!

2008-02-18T08:27:00.007-06:00

In a strange and wonderful turn of events, Alexis Orgera, who has some great poems in the new issue of Forklift, and who I met for the first time at AWP in NY, has done me the great honor of writing a post/review on her blog about my Lame House chapbook SIMPLY ROCKET. You can read what she wrote here. She's even made a chart cataloguing the poem's dis/connections in the fog.

Thank you, Alexis!

SIMPLY ROCKET IN COLDFRONT MAG, ETC.

2008-02-10T14:01:00.000-06:00

1) I swear I'm gonna get back to writing actual posts soon, but, in the meantime,

2) John Deming has written a thoughtful and exuberant review of my Lame House Press chapbook, SIMPLY ROCKET, at Coldfront Mag. Read his review here: http://reviews.coldfrontmag.com/emsimply-rocketem-by-matt.html

And you can still buy SIMPLY ROCKET here: http://lamehouse.blogspot.com/2007/09/now-available-matt-harts-simply-rocket.html

3) Check out BIG BELL editor Jason Morris' essay in Jacket Magazine on the so-called "New Sincerity". It's an interesting read (and not just cause he mentions one of my poems): http://jacketmagazine.com/35/morris-sincerity.shtml .

4) My old pop-punk band Squirtgun played a reunion/benefit show last night in Lafayette, IN for a sold out crowd (in a teeny, tiny place, but still...). Thanks to everybody who came out.

Matt

NEWS FLASHES AND FLASHBACKS

2008-01-21T12:45:00.001-06:00

1) Forklift, Ohio will have a table--no. 441--in America's Hall 2 at the AWP Bookfair this year, and we'll have a brand new issue for sale--our 18th!--featuring cover art by Elizabeth Zechel and poems by the likes of Matthew Rohrer, G.C. Waldrep, Dean Young, Dorothea Lasky, Todd Colby and Amanda Nadelberg, among many marvelous others. Stay tuned to this blog and/or http://www.forkliftohio.com/ for more details coming soon. Also, at AWP we'll have some (FEW!) remaining copies of a handful of back issues, along with some free giveaways and some weirdly light industrial surprises. If you'll be at AWP, please stop by our table and say Hello!

2) The good people at The Agriculture Reader have done it again! This is without a doubt my favorite print journal going at the moment, and I'm proud to have a few poems in this new issue. See it, read about it, acquaint yourself with all the contributors, and most importantly BUY your copy here: http://www.booklyn.org/agric2.html

3) My old pop-punk band, Squirtgun , will re-unite for one show in Lafayette, Indiana on Feb. 9th. The show will take place at The Venue (corner of 6th and Main) in downtown Lafayette. The cover is $6 and all proceeds will benefit the YWCA's anti-domestic violence programs.

And last but not in anyway least,

4) check out a brand new Michael Schiavo cento/sonnet at Cento Bingo.

GOODBYE, PUBLICO POETRY

2008-01-12T09:27:00.001-06:00

For those of you in the Cincinnati area: after five years of amazing art, music, and poetry events, Publico Gallery is closing its doors forever.

With that in mind, please consider coming out to the final reading ever at Publico Gallery (1308 Clay Street in Over-the-Rhine) this Wednesday Jan. 16th at 8PM. This event is a FREE group reading featuring:

Pat Clifford
Evan Commander
Scott Dennis
Norman Finkelstein
Matt Hart
Cindy King
Kristi Maxwell
Aryanil Muhkjaree
Michael Rerick
Dana Ward
Tyrone Williams

Additionally, we'll all have the privilege of reading behind an art-object podium made for the event by artist Keith Benjamin (who happens to be one of my colleagues at the Art Academy and who is an amazingly inventive sculptor).

More about this event and all the Publico closing events at http://www.publicoart.com/

NYC Friends: This Just In: FORKLIFT, OHIO and THE AGRICULTURE READER-- Premiere Final Installment of One Time Only Reading Series

2007-12-20T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'll be reading at KGB on Wed. Jan. 2nd at 7PM with Forklift, Ohio's Assistant Editor Brett Price, The Agriculture Reader's Editor Jeremy Schmall and the The Apocalypse Reader's Editor Justin Taylor. If you'll be in the area, we'd love to see you there.

For directions to KGB, etc. here's the link to the reading on the KGB site:
http://www.kgbbar.com/calendar/event/2008-01-02_forklift_ohio_a.html

And the official announcement for the event goes like this:

FORKLIFT, OHIO and THE AGRICULTURE READER-- Premiere Final Installment of One Time Only Reading Series

As Voltairine de Cleyre once wrote, "The goal strived for should, and must, be a very different one from that which led the mediaeval fanatics to despise the body and belabor it with hourly crucifixions." We could not agree more! Start 2008 off right by coming to the KGB Bar on January 3rd to hear poetry by Jeremy Schmall, Matt Hart, Brett Price, and Justin Taylor, who between them are the editors of Forklift, Ohio; The Apocalypse Reader; The Agriculture Reader; and Come Back, Donald Barthelme. Poet Julia Cohen says "attending this event will raise your IQ by 50 points," and she'd know. This special non-repeating series of one promises a potpourri of modest thrills that it's almost certainly capable of delivering. Let geniality reign!

Bios:

Matt Hart [Let's skip mine, since if you're reading this on my blog, you're probably either a) one of my pals or b) one of my enemies. In the first case, you know me too well, and in the second case, you don't need anymore ammo].

Brett Price is from Cincinnati, OH and is the assistant editor of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, and Light Industrial Safety. He is working toward an MFA in writing at Bard College. His work can be found in such journals as H_NGM_N, Octopus, and Incliner.

Jeremy Schmall edits The Agriculture Reader, and is the author of a chapbook Underneath an Obnoxious Moon and an artist book The Slapdown. He lives in Brooklyn, the sandwich capital of the Western Hemisphere.

Justin Taylor is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader (Thunder's Mouth Press), a collection of 34 new and selected short stories about the end of the world, and "Come Back, Donald Barthelme" (McSweeney's #24), a celebration of the author's life and work. His writing—fiction, criticism, and poetry—has been published in The Believer, Bookslut, The Boston Review, Dennis Cooper's Userlands, Pilot Poetry, Paste, and numerous other magazines, journals, and websites. His website is http://www.justindtaylor.net/