Laurie Anderson with Ai Wei Wei/Onomatopoeian Empire/Ed Coletti Poems, Publications, and Reading 2 Poems/Nominations/

Intelligence: Laurie Anderson (with Ai Wei Wei)  

amazing combination of insight with music and major international hookup - 
-so cool and right on! The complete concert at the Luminato Festival in Toronto 
May 29, 2013 featuring the queen of NYC performance art Laurie Anderson.

PLEASE NOTE that when you hit this link, there will be a ridiculously long pause.  BUT I figured it out.  Just put your cursor on the black progress bar at the bottom left. A circle will appear. Pull it a quarter inch to the right, and you'll be right into Laurie!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA4j4TLznE0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Ed Coletti’s Recent Acceptances by Literary Journals

(Dates signify expected release)

    

"Tetzel Box "                    
East Coast Literary Review            
2013         

"On Plumbing Following A Divorce"      
North American Review                 
2013

"The Poet As Survivor Assistance Officer"           
Journal Of Military Experience       
2013

"Freight Train"                                                    
Lummox                                  
Nov 2013

-"Lying on a Chair Swing in August"                   .                          

-"New Years Eve"                                                          

-"Once Upon A Time In China"

Edwin E. Smith Q (England)

2013

-"Resisting the Created Need to Text and

  Tweet"                                                                                  

-"Astonishing"

The Round Thing
Oct 2013

"Perhaps Not Yet"                                              
Ghost Town Poetry Anthology    
Jan. 2014 

On Plumbing Following A Divorce

Plucked corroded

by her hand

the cold water faucet

handle turns useless

as a cartoon steering wheel

torn from its post.

She will not

absolutely will not

permit herself

to investigate

using a pair of pliers

(something like a pump handle)

and so admit now even

such a task as drawing water

has become a running backwards

to a time of women at the well,

a time before men,

a time of mothers.

                                             

 


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Ed Coletti Reading

"wet on wet"

 

and



"Kerouac Cataract"

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT SONOMA COUNTY POET LAUREATE?

Bill Vartnaw 2012-13 Laureate

Nominations are now open for Sonoma County's eighth Poet Laureate. The Poet Laureate is a Sonoma County resident, whose poetry manifests a high degree of excellence, who has produced a critically acclaimed body of work, and who has demonstrated a commitment to the literary arts in the County. The Poet Laureate often participates in official ceremonies and readings. The Poet Laureate will not have a formal job description but will be encouraged to develop an agenda promoting poetry and the literary arts in Sonoma County. Organizers of various community events may invite the poet laureate to participate in their events. There is no stipend or compensation for this position. Deadline for nominations is October 31, 2013 and the new Poet Laureate will be announced in December. SUBMIT A NOMINATION HERE

Review of Koneazny Book/Bauman Photo/Beckman Sonnet/Coletti Paintings/

Review of Paula Koneazny's Installation

 by Ed Coletti  

Noticing well and over the years how people have different ideas about what poetry is, I wonder how the vast majority of occasional poetry readers and even traditional poetry lovers might feel about the exquisite experimental work in Paula Koneazny’s little combined poetry/photography book, Installation (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2012).  I suspect that many, not discovering an easy answer to “What does it mean?” would reject it outright.  However, were they to express their “reason” to me, I would respond in accordance with the title of my first mentor John Ciardi whose text was titled HowDoes A Poem Mean?

As might be expected here from the assistant editor of the concrete and experimental Volt Magazine, Koneazny’s “meaning” begins and ends in studiedly tangible photographic images which may defy immediate prosaic description but which serve as poetic installations.

The poet spends quite a bit of her writing minimizing the essentiality of words or their ultimate value.  However, she is a poet and, by definition, requires words.  But she uses them in much the same manner as she uses photography, to create or build her image as in “Stele 1” which ends,

we can

w/ frontal cast

iron / clad

& back slash

separate (in other words

sideways)

suture

Lest I leave the totally false impression that MS Koneazny is at war with words, I’ll point out right here that she looks into their use and their usage as few do. 

Prepositions are sometimes added to verbs to say that something is true now:

She jots down the molecular structure of anxiety.

“You morsel, you,” he scribbles in.

William Carlos Williams’ immortal “No ideas but in things” is wonderfully rampant here in Koneazny’s “Field Guide To A Girl,”

neighbors push their backyards together

leave her the crack between/ gaping hole

where appliances were once electrified

This also makes me mindful of “Seven Songs & Song Pictures,” (the English translation by Jerome Rothenberg from Ojibwa by Frances Densmore,

Song Picture no. 54

in the middle of the sea

long room of the sea

in which I’m sitting

Each song picture is combined with a primitive drawing, a most concrete image.  How like Paula Koneazny’s use of photography. 

And from “In a declarative sentence much can come in between:”

He had no formal training; aluminum and copper gave him a shudder.

Then one day he stumbled into some driftwood.  The next thing he knew he

owned 3 pianos. No longer having to illuminate anything, he experienced

a sense of freedom. He said, “Movement in the exhaust pipes created

this...”

There remains so much to be said!  Don’t take it from me.  Prose cannot describe Installation.  Get a copy for yourself, now!

Installation can be purchased from Tarpaulin Sky Press

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(Photo by Martin Bauman)

Breath

 by David Beckman

Beware this new import from the East -- yoga. Suspect celestial and/or bizarre influences coming into play and inducing never-ending hibernation

                                                -- attribution tk (circa 1863)

On the inhale see atoms cascade from

Mercury’s moons. Attain full backward

arch to flower the heart. On downward

dog feel sunspots kiss and planets spin.

In raised palms cup the heat that firms

cell walls, warms dark matter and

loosens galaxies. In sun salutation reach

for Ursa Minor, prompting the spine

erect. Come lunging twist, hear knees

speak in tongues and watch the floor

recede, a damask carpet seeking orbit. In

lotus pose open birth canal lilywide

stretching you a body length past your

birth and one exhale from your demise.

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View More of Ed Coletti's Paintings at Flicker 


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Proust Questionnaire Redux/Breakfast/Ed Coletti Radio Broadcast/Emily's "Funeral"/3 Poems by Ed Coletti (Triolets)

Do The Interactive Proust Questionnaire click here/now!

Answer questions about your favorite historical figure, your hero, your greatest fear, etc, etc.  Then you can compare yourself with other respondents!  I came out closest to Jane Goodall!  Go figure!

click here/now!

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Ed Coletti On KRCB Word Temple Show Reading of February 20, 2013. Click Here to listen. 

(Photo of Ed Coletti and Charles Wolski in NYC Dec. 2013)

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Example of a Spontaneous Emily Dickinson "Big Read" Event

During early March, Poet Larry Robinson circulated the Emily Dickinson poem "I felt a Funeral in my Brain," and I, in turn asked Larry a question about it.  The following enlightening email conversation ensued among Larry Robinson, Ed Coletti, David Beckman, and Katherine 
Hastings.  I hope that you find it as interesting, fun, and joy-provoking as we did.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

 - Emily Dickinson

Thanks, Larry.  I'd forgotten - what a remarkably great poem!  I have some difficulty at the line "-till it seemed that Sense was breaking through-"

What do you make of it?  I'd never really studied the poem much.  I'll also pass this along to Beckman, Hastings, and Joyce.

Ed

I share your struggle with that line; it's like a koan, isn't it?

Larry

Yes, great poem. Thanks for the query, Ed. A quick check yields many meanings for “sense,” including “apprehension” and “discernment.” I suspect Dickinson had one of these, or another, such meaning in mind (It’d be fun to see which meaning was most current in her time).

I don’t use my OED a lot these days (micrographic, and getting really heard to read even with the provided magnifying glass).
I used to subscribe to it online...does anyone? It would probably give good answers.

David

This poem isn't addressing the funeral of a person, it is addressing the decreasing mental capacity in the speaker's brain — a mental breakdown, a descent into madness.  That's why reason, or "Sense was breaking through".  Re-read the poem with this in mind and all the metaphors start clicking.  

Thanks for sending Emily out, Larry!

k

Yes, indeed that works for me!

This has been fun!

Thanks,

Ed

Yep, ditto. Nice insight, Katherine.

D.

Thanks for sending the question around, Ed.  It's always good to take a deeper look at deeper, more complex poetry!  ;-)

k
 
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3 More Ed Coletti Triolets

Triolet On Stockton

The bankrupted City of Stockton, “C” “A”
Lies dying in San Joaquin’s Delta.
Each Fat City house turned empty crate
The bankrupted City of Stockton, “C” “A”
Where mortgages domino day by day
No one benefits as all the wealth of
The bankrupted City of Stockton, “C” “A”
Lies dying in San Joaquin’s Delta.


Triolet On a Partial Line
From “Norwegian Wood”
By The Beatles

Or should I say “she once had me”?
Possession is nine-tenths of law.
Almost nothing accrues for free.
Or should I say “she once had me”?
Today, tomorrow, yesterday,
Continuum both once and yore.
Or should I say “she once had me?”
Possession is nine-tenths of law.


Triolet From a Line Within “Ohio” By
   Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Should have been done long ago,
Delay proves always fatal.
No excuse for status quo,
Should have been done long ago.
Vain war impacts Ohio.
Kids now scarce years post natal.
Should have been done long ago,
Delay proves always fatal. 

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Also, take a look at my 5 New Jazz Poems at the valuable Jerry Jazz Musician site.  Once you find the poems, please comment on the poems at the site

  
 

Why Books?/Coletti "Coltrane, Dig?" and "Bodies" a Painting/Amy Trussell & Krista Brown/

Happy New Year 2012 from Ed Coletti at No Money in Poetry 



The unadmitted reason why traditional readers 

are hostile to e-books is that we still hold the

superstitious idea that a book is like a soul, and

that every soul should have its own body.

Adam Kirsch in Poetry November 2012

I like and respect Kirsch's quotation with the

              possible exception of the word "superstitious." -ejc

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Painting "Bodies" (Acrylic December 2012) also by Ed Coletti (more images of coletti paintings)

Coltrane, Dig?

I suppose what it is with trane and me is

he takes all the time he wants to take

even outside of time, sidereal time,

stardust time, bessie blue time,

through-and-through-him time,

trancey groove time, even arranged time.

The duke laying down stevie blocks,

trane ain’t gonna be no mortar here

he gonna weave a kinda mesh  

round duke’s work, trane lacing

duke’s solidity with blue spirit,

blues spirit.  duke hears it, stays

near it, layin’ stevie blocks

now playing trane blocks, the duke

in-spired, layin’ down trane blocks.

Then comes slo-trane’s pleasing

molasses blue invention and

no one makes new like coltrane,

the original organic cat and not such

a stranger-in-a-not-so-strange-land,

he resonates—that’s it—we get trane,

that why trane — is — trane.

you hear a bass soloing, wherever

that bass is echoing, whoever

that bass, he echoing trane

that what jazz all about.

If the drum set belong to tootie heath or to

philly joe jones, it don’t matter. they both

coltrane without his horn, c’est la vie, man,

trane be something else, something like

                        deity ethereal night, man. I mean you take

nancy, you give her a lavender face

so she be nancy with the laughing face.

what you got be only coltrane stirring

something delicious in his pot,

coltrane doing nancy, no need explaining

her gleeful countenance,  you dig?

trane, hey, he got no need to wreck the show.

- ed coletti

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Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami’s crime consisted of reciting a poem extolling the courage and values of the popular uprisings in Tunisia. For that he's been sentenced to life in prison.

Please join with a remarkable list of prominent poets from around the world and urge the court in Qatar to reconsider.

POETS MUST HELP POETS! ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FREE SPEECH ACTIONS ORGANIZED BY POETS IN MANY YEARS!

Please join Alice Walker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Marcia Lynx Qualey, Sam Hamill, Philip Levine, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carolyn Forché, Martin Espada, Chris Abani, Jerome Rothenberg, Pina Piccolo, Pilar Rodriguez Aranda, Nana Nestoros, Jack Hirschman, Patricia Smith, Paul Polansky, Ron Silliman, Menka Shivdasani, Karam Youssef, PEN America Center, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, co-founders of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Rootsaction.org, Code Pink and Split This Rock, and many more of our friends in this global campaign to free the Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami, sentenced to life imprisonment for reciting a poem! Sign this petition and send a letter the Qatar Embassy! We can do this!

http://act.rootsaction.org/o/6503/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=136398

 
 "Poetry Moonspell" by Krista Brown

Moonspell

There seems to be little territory to stand on

anymore, only several inches of water

running through the canal streets

of this nearly abandoned heart

housed in the city that was almost

sucked down as the next Atlantis,

drenched in toxicity,

blue gas flames shooting from

the top of the water.

We were hip deep in despair

but the temple priestess said

the ocean goddess has given us a gift.

So I looked in the palette and saw

the woman of the tide pool and starfish

that are open wherever they end up

in this earth and sky running with river,

oceans, blood, oil paint.

Go to the blood bank and let them

tap my heart, feeling back to the time

of my own transfusion,

how light I felt the next day

standing next to the sea of the outpost,

moon in the sky like a tugboat.

Some liquid part flowing through me

was once filtered through another’s center.

Look at the fishes’ perseverance

and intelligence as it whips upstream

to find its pool of re-creation,

the flesh medicine for our sad restless brains.

And there are the elephants

who sensed a tsunami before it came,

and bowed down to lift people

and carry them back up into the jungle.

Scientists say we are not that different

in our chromosomes from eels and butterflies

so maybe there is hope for us.

Fluttering in the chest as my offspring plays guitar.

A coastguard or fireman rushes into the

double doors on the news

carrying a perfect baby to safety

and the moon card turns over in endless sky.

Trust instinct, trust the inner pull

toward illuminated mystery

even in times of shipwreck.

-Amy Trussell

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Review of Katherine Hastings' Cloud Fire/ 3 More Coletti Poems/James Joyce Reading "Finnegan's Wake"/

 Katherine Hastings' Cloud Fire (reviewed by Ed Coletti)

Katherine Hastings’  curiously named publisher, Spuyten Duyvil in New York City, actually provides me an apt leaping off point for her incredible achievement Cloud Fire.

 

“Spuyten Duyvil” derives from the New York Dutch and their “spewing devil” where “spui” and “spuit” involve the gushing forth of water.  However, while we have so much of water here, it is the fog-shrouded California Pacific, much better painted by a gentle sorcerer stirring rather than a fearsome devil spewing—less gushing, more being.  

Still, lest I forget, the book’s title contains both clouds and fire,

My city whose hair is a cloud fire

This theme of “hair” continues into the poem “Lonadier Rampant.  A poet “too near the bridge,” does jump, and Hastings, after painting Lynn Lonadier  crash from a cliff into the sea, then has her beloved San Francisco sing a final lullaby,

Lonadier  Your hair/Will be the last of you/To hit the sea/The city that saved you again and again/Rising swiftly/To still you/To sleep.

It is the City-By-The-Bay, shrouded and elevated by fog that provides Katherine Hastings (also the painter of her book’s cover) her magical palette.  She becomes the Whitman of clouds, singing of clouds

Fog-mantle on the breast of meadow/where voices from the emerald womb—feathered throats and bud bloom—sing through

I don’t employ the word “masterpiece” frequently, and never casually.  However, in the case of Hastings long opening poem, “Clouds,” I have no choice.  In it, I feel the spirit and depth of Hart Crane’s “Bridge”

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest/The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,/Shedding white rings of tumult, building high/Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

And  Hastings on “flight,”

We do this like children or angels living/on the ledges of waves and lips, downy/wings so white they hum every color./Bees rolling in a white rose.

Cloud Fire works best read in one sweeping panorama from front to back.  Hastings begins in clouds, opens into complex life experiences and wraps up in a final poem also title “Clouds”  where, “In fog you are everywhere/and nowhere.”  Amidst the clouds and between them, the book exposes both the grime and glimmer of earth below as in this from “ O’Sidhe of Greenwich Street,”

...With one hand she catches a dove,/breathes it back to flight, with the other/turns the sizzling knob.

Were I to give you my reader only one bit of advice today, it would be to buy this book now.  Then take it home and read it through from beginning to end, and over and over.  It’s that good!

Cloud Fire at Amazon

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3 More Ed Coletti Poems

A Trio of Triolets (tree-oh-lays)

Figuring that probably 95% of serious poets writing today eschew traditional poetic forms for free verse, I surmise that the poets who do at least occasionally try formal verse paradoxically could be termed today's "rebels."

I liken the "restriction" of such forms to swaddling a baby. The resulting security is a benefit.  "Restricting" myself to a poetic vessel seems to free the soul to pour its contents into the container in a way that is different from an uncontained beginning.  I've chosen the triolet which issues from 13th century France, is similar to the rondeau, was briefly popularized by Robert Bridges at the turn of the 20th century, and which can lend itself nicely to humor.

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.

Published at The New Formalist  September 2012

Triolet Of The Critical Loser

“Stick to painting, I don’t like your poems,”

Averred Cowboy Bob who I’d beaten in chess.

Perhaps he feared lofty emotions,

“Stick to painting, I don’t like your poems,”

More difficult work beyond his knowing.

Give him Kipling, McKuen, Edgar Guest,

“Stick to painting, I don’t like your poems,”

Averred Cowboy Bob who I’d beaten in chess.

Triolet From A Line By Eric Clapton

My darling you look wonderful tonight.

Your short silver hair, shining opal eyes,

When I see you smiling everything feels right.

My darling you look wonderful tonight.

Thought of your passing’s a terrible fright,

Loss of part of me, joy and wisdom dies.

My darling you look wonderful tonight.

Your short silver hair, shining opal eyes.

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James Joyce Reading Anna Livia Plurabelle Section from Finnegan's Wake