Madgalene's Response/Whalen Tribute/SoCoCo At the Toad

Reminder: SoCoCo Reading Series Resumes 2PM Sun. Jan 11th as "SoCoCo At the Toad" Toad In the Hole, Santa Rosa with Lu Garcia, Gwynn O'Gara, Ed Coletti, David Madgalene, Mark Eckert, and Centa Theresa.



San Francisco Bay Area Poet David Madgalene Responds

November 6, 2008

Dear Ed,

I want to respond to Joseph Bednarik’s lament, “The Law of Diminishing Readership,” which you posted on your blog. I can’t help thinking about a recent concert I attended by South African drummer, Baba Shibambo. Shibambo asked us all to dance, to clap, and to make noise. He said, “In my village, there is no audience. We all participate.” With Shibambo’s encouragements as my touchstone, I should like to counter Bednarik’s argument that the fact more people are writing poetry while less people are reading it is a bad thing. I have to believe that the more people writing poetry, regardless of readership, or lack of it, is all for the best. Because that means that more people are attempting to enunciate their own experience for themselves rather than to have others do it for them. While it truly is a shame that many good poets, such as most of my friends, and, I might as well say, with no false modesty, in my opinion, a good poet such as myself, will never get the audience that we think we deserve, isn’t it better for us that we are at least trying to write poetry rather than just to live in sycophantic adoration of someone like Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost? And by the same token, if I believe that, must I not likewise extend the same courtesy to some young poet (or perhaps not-so-young poet), and believe that they, too, must be better off writing their own poetry, however humble, rather than to merely in live in sycophantic adoration of my own humble efforts? I am not Robert Frost, and I may not have one iota of his poetic gift, yet nonetheless, is it not a good thing that I write poetry anyway? Should indeed there be some misbegotten young sonneteer out there who has not one iota of my poetic gift, is it nonetheless not a good thing that he or she is writing poetry anyway? If nothing else, is not an act of true courage for someone like me, a mere pygmy at the feet of Robert Frost, to nonetheless, utter, “I AM…?” Is it not nonetheless an act of true courage for a mere pygmy at my poetic feet (if such a thing were even possible, I’ll grant you) , to nonetheless utter, “I AM…?” True poetry, I believe, is written for the self, regardless of readership, or lack thereof, while I am still generous-hearted enough to empathize with anyone, who bitten by the poetry bug, honestly thought, encouraged by family, friends, or teachers, could possibly write poetry to a world that had even the slightest trifling interest. However, I, for one, will never, never bemoan that fact that more people seem to be writing poetry than reading it. I’d prefer to echo the words of Baba Shibambo, and declare that I should rather wish to live in a world where there is no audience for poetry, because we are all poets!

David Madgalene

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Santa Rosa Philip Whalen Tribute Reading/Word Temple/Copperfield's Books/Nov. 7, 2008

If You're So Smart,
Why Ain't You Rich?

I need everything else
Anything else
Desperately
But I have nothing
Shall have nothing
but this
Immediate, inescapable
and invaluable
No one can afford
THIS
Being made here and now






(left to right Gail King, Phyllis Meshulam, Pat Nolan, David Bromige(sitting), Clark Coolidge, Terri Carrion, Bill Hawley, Michael Rothenberg, Brian Howlett, Katherine Hastings, and Ed Coletti)



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Avanti Popolo

Avanti Popolo (Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus) Manic D Press, San Francisco, 2008. Includes writing by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Ed Coletti, James Tracy, Gil Fagiani, Lawrence DiStasi, Thomas Centolella, Kim Nicolini, Kim Addonizio, Giancarlo Campagna, and many others.





Columbus, the Mafia, & Denial

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the Ocean blue.

1.

Columbus Circle
June 29th 1971
Joe Columbo
shot into 7-year coma
not by
Laughing Otter
nor by
Green Rock Woman
not even Crazy Horse
or
Crazy Joe Gallo
but by
an African-American
Jerome Johnson.
It was about
Columbo’s thing
not our thing
as in my thing
but Cosa Nostra as in
Mafia’s Thing
as in
Christopher Columbus’s
thing, that made-man who
dwells among us ever since.

Joe Columbo
only 40
youngest mob boss ever
maintained to the press
“There ain’t no mafia
no cosa nostra!”
And that Christopher Columbus
was a “great Italian role model.”
Today we might call him
A made-man
by those
Cappi di Tutti Cappi,
somehow Spanish
Cabezas de Todas Cabezas
Jefes de Todos Jefes”
who kissed Cristobal
on each Italian cheek
The naming is the creation:
“Let there be
Cristobal Colon
from Cristofero Columbo,
And there was.
Hence forth this
Made-Man
to make our History!

2.

Indians! Indians! Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.

Columbus announced,
“When you ask for
something they have,
They never say no.
Give me, give me
Gold, Gold, Gold!
Give me, give me
Slave, Slave, Slave!”
And I seriously doubt he ever said,
“Please.”

3.

He made the trip again and again,
Trading gold to bring to Spain.

Joe Columbo and the Gambino gang
Traded in heroin all over Harlem.
They didn’t bring it to a king or president.
They just brought it along with
Protection, prostitutes, and numbers rackets.
“Their ain’t no mafia, no cosa nostra,”
Columbo cried, but La Cosa Nostra
Sails on and on like those
Three little ships...(that) left from Spain
(Columbus, this poor excuse for an Italian)
Sailed through sunshine, wind, and rain.


by Ed Coletti in Avanti Popolo, 2008

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Shnozzes &Knowing/Poetry Bailout/ Foreleg Eardrums/

Fewer & Further Press is pleased to announce the publication of Ed's son John Coletti's Same Enemy Rainbow. Same Enemy Rainbow is 30 pages, hand-sewn, and printed on laid paper in an edition of 200 copies, 40 of which are special editions.

Copies can be purchased for $8, postpaid.  Please visit the Fewer & Further Press site for an excerpt and cover image.  Payments can be made through the site with Paypal.

The special editions are signed by the author and include a small double-sided broadside, for $10. If you would like to purchase a special edition, please contact the editor for availability.

If you would like to pay by check, make check payable to Jess Mynes, and mail it to:

Jess Mynes
121 Lockes Village Rd
Wendell, MA 01379

Thank you very much.

Jess Mynes, editor

Schnozzes and When We Know by Ed Coletti














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Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers


By Charles Bernstein in Harper's September 26, 2008


From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School.

Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.

Charles Bernstein’s most recent collection of poetry is Girly Man. His poem “Pompeii” appeared in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine; his essay “Wet verse at The New Yorker” appeared in the November 1989 issue.

Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.

Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.

Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably.

As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.

The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices.

We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904.

This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation.

I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message.

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Foreleg Eardrums
by Amy Trussell


Stop and put your shirt on the fence and look heavenward.
They say there is a hexagon at the top of Saturn’s pole,
though your naked eye doesn’t register it. Trust it anyway,
like your affection for another person, embedded
with a type of gem not found inside the earth’s dark muscles.
You cannot bear it away to keep forever.
It will not melt away on the tongue like mousse from Maison du Chocolate,
But softens the blow of any tumble and pops the rib back into place
when the heart is large and broken.
It sets sail with a full mast,
and it’s anchor does not break coral.
Listen, the grasshoppers hear your tale of survival
with the delicate eardrums on their forelegs.
They invite you to come through the wormwood,
the sprouting hemlock, and the wreckage of Fall still
lying in the yard.
Release strife and be glad of the bees’ return,
their hives oozing with royal jelly, oblivious to cell phones.
Dig the afternoon when the gods of light come on like honey,
nodding at your delicate capture and release fishing.
When you get home, throw the black drape off of the piano
and pound the keys as if it were your last song, or your first.

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Oblivious / More On "Glut "/Petaluma Poetry Walk, City Lights, etc.

Oblivious by Eddie C.


Petaluma Poetry Walk
& 2 Other Readings

Ed Coletti will be reading at

Petaluma Poetry Walk - Sept 21st
with Michael Rothenberg & Terry
Carrion at the Apple Box 6 Petaluma
Blvd N. at 1 PM.
Diane DiPrima
will read at Apple Box the following
hour. Here's a link to the full
2 pg Poetry Walk Brochure.

City Lights Books - SF - October 13th at 7PM - Avanti
Populo Reading - In addition to
Ed Coletti, also the great Diane Di
Prima, James Tracy, Kim Nicolini,
Cameron McHenry and Giovanna Capone.

Arrividerchi Restaurant - San Rafael - Monday Nov. 3d - 6 PM - Ed Coletti and great Italian Food!



Triolet On Time

“For boys add to their woe by sitting still”
Was the best line of my youthful poem.
Now age and illness ask again why will
Such boys add to their woe by sitting still?
You’d think of this they’d had their awful fill
And, dreaming dreams of life they’d finally sow them.
“For boys add to their woe by sitting still”
Was the best line of my youthful poem.


(October 13, 1985 - uncovered July 08)

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More On So Called "Glut" Of Writers

It took awhile, but I finally got Poets & Writers to get me the following very interesting article on our recent subject of supply and demand. By the way, many of you believe (correctly) that it's better to have lots of artists rather than lots of almost anything else. I, of course, agree. And none of us is going to stop writing just because there are so many of us, however...


The Law of Diminishing Readership

by Joseph Bednarik
As marketing director of Copper Canyon Press, the thirty-four-year-old independent publisher of poetry in Port Townsend, Washington, I am required to read a lot. While most of the titles on my reading list are poetry collections, I recently read two nonfiction texts that got me thinking about the "economics" of creative writing.

So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance (Paul Dry Books, 2003), by Mexican poet and business consultant Gabriel Zaid, and Reading at Risk, the sobering report published by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 2004, articulate the challenges faced by the swelling legions of creative writers longing to find a readership. Consider the following statements extrapolated from Zaid's book and the NEA report:

1. Production of creative writing far exceeds consumer demand.

2. Accredited MFA programs in creative writing continue to proliferate, while the practice of literary reading is in steady decline.

3. Many publishers require underwriting to produce and distribute literary titles because sales do not support production costs.

4. Publishers can, with relative ease, attract a thousand manuscript submissions-plus reading fees-by sponsoring book contests.

What's wrong with this picture? If you're running an MFA program, a book contest, or a writer's workshop, or selling other goods and services that support the writer's life-absolutely nothing. If you want your book published and read by an audience other than friends and family-everything.

In a statistical mood, I once estimated how many "good poems" were being produced by recent graduates of MFA programs. Keeping all estimates conservative, I figured there had to be at least 450 poets graduating nationwide each year. If each MFA graduate wrote just one good poem a year for ten years, at the end of a decade we would have 24,750 good poems-not to mention 4,500 degree-bearing poets, each of whom was required to write a book-length manuscript in order to graduate. New poems, poets, and manuscripts are added to the inventory every year.

Read Complete Bednarik Article

Here's someone attempting to disprove the title of this site -- "No Money In Poetry"

POETS REFINE MONEY

after reading in Baltimore, photo credit Michael Ball

There are thousands of Americans everyday who are looking for a safe place to invest their money. Poets are the best source for removing negative charge from your wealth, and raising the collective conscience of the planet. You can change your life FOREVER by sponsoring a poet today! CAConrad is one such American poet serious about making poetry a lifelong quest, ready and willing to refine your money! If you are interested in sponsoring this poet, call (215)563-3075, or write to CAConrad13@AOL.com. You won't believe the difference a poet will make!

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No Poetry In Money Either

(art by eddie 2008)











The Operative Word Is “Skillions”

Because of the network of creative writing workshops,
there are skillions of good new young poets each year
...and no money in it. (Richard Silberg 7/11/08)

So is the world a better place for this?
There was a time I craved coffee houses
with Italian espresso machines
like in North Beach and Greenwich Village,
And it took such a long time
but we got them with a Starbucks
on every block in San Rafael and Stockton,
Coffee so burned that overroasting
became the standard for mediocrity
unchallenged until skillions of MFA
poets competed to cave-dwell
in cramped musty corners —
New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review,
VQR, Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review —
And so it goes with coffee and with poetry.

- Ed Coletti / July 2008

The following response comes from friend and wonderful poet Jack Crimmins

Ed, thanks for the ancient Chinese madman poem (See Du Fu's poem below and also Jack Crimmins' poem "The End of Poetry.")! I liken it somewhat to your ancient Open Mike Max madman poem which I think captures City Max very well.

And re "Skillions", it is very interesting to me at this time about the world of poets, poems and money.

The poet Jack Gilbert has said that money ruined poetry, i.e. that the money in it for those who make it; teaching at universities, publishing w/trade presses, big prizes (gary snyder just won $100, 000 from somebody), has made poets keep producing the same work/ same books over and over, when sometimes they had only one good book early on but needed to keep going to make money.

And Silliman cries out that the big publishers keep giving the prizes to writers who publish with their presses, like Robert Haas, cuz it keeps people buying their books.

And money, lack of money, lately has me asking myself questions about my own publishing. Whether to put one's own money into books, then hawk them oneself, and really thinking I probably won't do that much more. There are so many poets now that to find a publisher that is willing to pay for producing a book is a crap shoot, and highly unlikely w/out moving in the right circles, mostly teaching, or some kind of post-avant press world, or getting a huge write-up from Silliman.

Which then makes me question why then write poems except for the joy of it. Jack Gilbert only published a few books, in part saying he thinks publishing takes some of the joy out of poetry. Of course, if one doesn't publish, there is no money, no anything, except the joy of writing.

Which then makes me think, why not go body surfing instead? Anyhow, check out the attached poem.

Best, jack


I Am a Madman

My thatched cottage stands
just west of Thousand Mile Bridge

this Hundred Flower Stream
would please a hermit fisherman

bamboo sways in the wind
graceful as any court beauty

rain makes the lotus flower
even more red and fragrant

but I no longer hear from friends
who live on princely salaries

my children are always hungry
with pale and famished faces

does a madman grow more happy
before he dies in the gutter?

I laugh at myself -- a madman
growing older, growing madder.

- Du Fu (712 - 770)

The End of Poetry

emptiness no emptiness
done again
with words done
fire outside of time
the shallow end
pools of desert water
fool’s gold
a fever
in the mountains
a fortune found
writing again
emptiness no emptiness

~ Jack Crimmins / January 18, 2008

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™

Our New Name and "Carlos"

Our New Name - "No Money In Poetry"

Well, our previous site names, "Ed Coletti's Poetry Blog" and "Poetry Venue" no longer need be used. Recall that I hate the word "blaaahhhg," and "Poetry Venue" was rather lame. So we are now "No Money In Poetry."

The new name had been staring me in the face all along. Note the long-time introduction to the site at the top, Robert Graves' quote, "There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either." Then, a few days ago, Richard Silberg sent me an email about publishing and correctly observed, "no money in it." However, for Richard and most of you reading this, poetry is its own reward, thank god.

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and now something a little bit different

3 Pages From "Carlos"
(Round Barn Press 2008 - drawings by author)

Here is a tease from my long "Carlos" sequence. I began these quirky moody poems almost 20 years ago during a rough patch. They've finally gotten a home.



carlos

carlos on the turn of shore don't watch
ocean sky
drown or blaze
drifts half inch above the sand
carlos is the tidal pool, starfish mind,
carlos cool
he know he
carlos half inch 'bove the sand



carlos undercover

this me he say
to the fat man in the hat
with the gun like a hard on
up his shiny yellow coat
gonna get his today and carlos
he the law get the job done
be respectable when the law
jump the jive dude maybe give
carlos a sack of his blow
for reward and he sell it to geronimo
a little for himself, take the dough,
buy rosa and lito present.
first he got to get by
the fat man in the pink hat
with the gun like a hard on
up his shiny yellow coat.




the shore

carlos walks
the shore
like he going
to walk around the world
the shore
it don't stop
he could walk like this
all the time and keep walking
and right now carlos
need that keep walking
like it never end
the shore



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Family Matters/Other Poems/

Recent Release From Round Barn Press
(cover illustration by Jim Spitzer)

The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

-W.H Auden “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”

Eternal Gardens

Had my father written me poems,
Nasturtiums would have sprouted from my navel,
Dahlias from my rectum, and, of course, he did not,
But my children and their children
May walk in all my colors—
So many gorgeous beckoning gardens!

The most moving part of your reading was from Family Matters; I'm really enjoying the poems on the page, too. They're so honest and heartfelt without being sentimental.
- Lynne Knight author of Night In the Shape of a Mirror




2 Unrelated Coletti Poems

Kiki Smith Takes On Politics

If the sculptor or print maker
recreating the body perfectly
as pain, as pain the body is,
could apply the same chisel
to any politician’s cardiovascular
digestive and nervous systems,
she would attempt to capture only
that deep clenched grimace under
lying all such unrelenting
hyper extended artifice.

Center of the Universe

In an expansive universe similar to our own,
eyes and tongues staring speaking,
distant little planets move about
you their center star
certain all is for you,
all critiques directed towards you,
“too hot” “not enough”

Whether you shine or hide,
smaller planets hold
little sway over the sun,
perhaps a bit of a tug on a ray here or there
a deflection, an errant beam set straight.
You are all about light
but dim noticeably
when you strain to imagine
what some tiny unnoticed planet
might soundlessly
extract from you today.


And please don't forget

2008 Marin Poetry Festival - May 14-18 - including May 18th reading by Robert Bly, Eavan Boland, and Jane Hirshfield at Dominican College in San Rafael.

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the comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or
"Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign
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what you like. If you have any difficulty, email me at
edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.