Jared Stanley's Blog, page 3
May 12, 2010
Milk Thistles, Michael Pollan
"My own experience in the garden has convinced me "absolute weediness" does exist – that weeds represent a different order of being, and the fact that Thoreau's beans were no match for his weeds does not mean the weeds have a higher claim to the earth, as Thoreau seems to think. [...:] I jotted down each species preferred habitat. Here are a few of the most typical: 'waste places and roadside'; 'open sites'; 'old fields, waste places'; 'cultivated and waste ground'; 'old fields, roadsides...
May 11, 2010
Autobiography of Couplets
When the composition of the poem begins as a description of Tim Lincecum's hair reeling as he pitched opening day at the Astrodome; trying to describe this to someone not watching the game. When the poem begins to take a field full of weeds as its final subject. When the poem, finally, attempts a cosmic disclosure. When the poem must use the word naughahyde.
New Magazine Verse
New poems are in print in the latest Columbia Poetry Review and the latest New Delta Review.
Ink was used, dust inhaled.
May 5, 2010
Dirt, Weeds, and Heavy Metal
Thanks Karen for letting me know that the new issue of Galatea Resurrects #14 is up, including a review of Book Made of Forest by Harry Thorne. Thanks, Harry, for describing why Dio is in the amongst the weeds.
I love Galatea Resurrects. A lot. I love Eileen's writing. I love Eileen's editorial notes.
Weds.
I just saw the District Attorney make an illegal U-turn, park his car, and jaywalk across Main St. Details, dear pixellated spectres, details!
May 3, 2010
April 27, 2010
Some Readings in May
I'm Coming Over!
Sunday May 9th – Merced, Lines of Flight. The Partisan.
Friday, May 21st – Brooklyn, New York – The Stain of Poetry with lots of people, including Melissa Buzzeo
Friday, May 22nd – Bushwick, New York Poetry Time! w/Lauren Levin and Catherine Theis
Sunday, May 23rd – Philadelphia, PA New Philadelphia Poets w/Lauren Levin and Catherine Theis
April 18, 2010
April 16, 2010
On to the Cathedral and Poop
Taking my poetry students to Yosemite this weekend. These are the exercises:
Exercise #1
Find a spot in which you're completely alone. In twenty minutes or so, describe EVERY SINGLE THING around you, no matter how minute or how big, no matter whether 'natural' or 'human.' The aim here is accuracy, and for you to be as complete and present to all of your senses as possible.
"From inner ear to farthest owls." – Ronald Johnson
Exercise #2
Why write about nature? In the Western Tradition, we speak of ...
April 15, 2010
Who Are Our Forms For?
Returning, over and over, to This Compost; today it's this:
Insisting that "truth" was symptomatic of specific bodies, Nietzsche wondered "whether philosophy has not been merely an interpretation of the body but a misunderstanding of the body." Nietzsche's physiological reanimation of the question of knowledge hinges on the somatic urgency of poetry, which is that each act of articulation, in writing or speaking, is an occasion of wisdom, the circumstantial composition of the real. Emerson's i...
