Roberta 1

I’m looking for Roberta.
I thought I saw her in Iraq, but it may have been
in a pit of fire
I’m the guy who spent 20 years looking for Roberta.
Currently, I’m not able to walk and my
wife said she was unaware of the problem until
she got a postcard from
Roberta.

I have a well documented relationship with
Roberta--YES, we rode bikes together.
I payed a lot of taxes so I could learn
that the worst place to die is
Mexico.
Do you think you’ll
be able to love
the baby?
I named him Roberta...for Roberta.

I dreamt Roberta and I were watching TV
on the wall of a nearby building. We had sexual
problems. I bribed the Waxman and he
showed me this stock photo of
two men cooking hot dogs: togetherness.
He called it “Sassy Stock.”

Roberta’s favorite things are trash mounds,
community, rebel groups, sheep, pizza places
with casual atmospheres, ultimate personality
surveys, burn pits, bar drinks, and deep sadness.

Sometimes Roberta asks me “what windows are
open on your computer screen?” or another
favorite is “do you
have any piercings?” I can’t sing well
and boys don’t like me.

News flash: Roberta is dead.
She was doing some illegal logging
and was thinking a lot about poetics and her
personal style. It just got to be too much.
Roberta=sad times, but sometimes + happy times
for me. Roberta convinced me to get a Diddy Kong
tattoo and I’m glad of it.

WELL, the orders have LITERALLY been pouring in. I know I promised you a lot of things like a copy of the ticket, drawings, and excerpts, but because I was born in 1835, and do not know how to use a fucking scanner, I am, for now, only delivering on one of those things: EXCERPTS! But hey excerpts are the most important part anyway because you get to read what you're going to buy and then read again hopefully(?). So here they are...a few little chunklets from this juicy showstopper:

What are we? We are Utah’s call and answer song. The most adorable singing child on earth has found religion.

________

The plaque says roughly “this plaque commemorates stuff that kids are interested in.” I apply things, broadly, to my life. After performing in Disneyland, I got a phone call that Merthyr is now a soldier of love. What are sacred emotions?

________

I’ll be making appearances as the shape of Montana sometime in the next month.

________

It scared me so bad that I wouldn’t go back into the house. I thought of three stories I wanted to tell you, and I worried about them as I drove away from the house and took off my shirt. Then I thought about what it would be like to get hit by a car.

________

The opening scene of my autobiographical film is a dog running through tall grass, and the camera follows behind him.

That's it! That's all you get! Delicious, right? thought so. peace.

P.S.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_84MAfap6c&eurl=http%3
A%2F%2Fvideogum%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

the shield of medication/help a sister out

Everybody hurts, and that includes me. Brothers and Sisters, I'm hurting because I did a bad thing, a real bad thing, and now I have to pay for that bad thing. I got a real bad speeding ticket of about $250. I won't reveal just how fast I was going, but if I had, theoretically, been going 4 mph faster, it would have been a felony. Now, anyone who knows me can tell you I am unbelievably cheap, and that I HATE paying for things. And on top of it all, I am poor as fuck. What does this all mean? Well, I recently made a chap book that is inspired by the life and teachings of one Marie Osmond, and I'm pretty proud of it, so proud that I'm going to sell it...to you.

I'm offering you the one thing I have to offer you in exchange for money/and or goods: poetry...and house cleaning if you're interested. So, if you've been feeling guilty about something lately, and need to absolve yourself, buy my book. If you've been thinking about volunteering or donating to charity, do those things, but also buy my book. Don't feel obligated to buy the book, just know that if I can't pay for this ticket there will be a warrant out for my arrest (and I will get arrested).

I'm confident I can scrape the money together one way or another, but wouldn't it be great for me if you could help me? and great for you? So, I'm asking for $5 for the book, and $1.50 for shipping, so that's just $6.50 total! In the next day or so I'll be posting excerpts, some drawings, and a photo of the ticket in question.

If you are interested in owning your own copy of THE SHIELD OF MEDICATION please e-mail me at garciajesou@gmail.com. Also here is the cover, as kindly prettied up by Kasey:

Let's talk about Stein Ba-by / Let's talk about You and Me

mmm k. So, this is super late. sorry.

I think Stein was a genius. I mean, the work she put out in the the early 20th century is so much more interesting than the majority of "main stream" poetry that is widely available today. She had such a gift for sound and rythym, and though I hate to use this word, her poetry feels inspired. I don't think Stein necessarily always had a clear idea or intention when writing her poetry, but it feels like it's about something, but that something
isn't fixed or rigid in any way.



Ok, now I'll talk specifically about Stein's work. I've actually read Tender Buttons a few times, and enjoy it a great deal. I'm always surprised by how much I enjoy the process of reading her work; especially when reading something like The Making of Americans. It's a pretty repetitive piece, but I can't help liking it. I think it has something to do with the idea of American identity, which, to me, is a fascinating topic. As an ex-patriot living in France, I think Stein is able to offer an intriguing look at what makes a person American. now, I realize a majority of that text is really difficult to read, and is probably not specifically "about" anything, but when I read the text with the previously mentioned idea in mind, I can't help but base your interpretations on it.

One of Stein's most well known poems, "Susie Asado," contains a favorite line of mine, "Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must." The image of trees trembling is really stunning, and I love that Stein never discusses the dance going on around her, but instead invokes all these strange images. I also enjoy the "render clean, render clean must," but I'm not sure why. There is something secretive and shameful conveyed in those words. I think it's best not to search too deeply for one meaning or idea in Stein's work. It can be really discouraging if you're told a work has to mean one, and only one, thing.

Whitman and Dickinson

Wow.

People are really hating on Walt Whitman, so I think it's necessary to provide him with a little bit of a defense. First I'd like to speak to Whitman's egotism, or perceived egotism. We all know that Whitman is often lumped in with the transcendentalists, or rather the most famous transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau, but I'm not sure he fits into that category. This sounds completely ridiculous, but I think Whitman transcends transcendentalism. I'll give you an example: Thoreau and Emerson didn't really give a fuck about women's issues. I mean, Emerson's ideas about self-reliance probably support the notion of women's liberation, but he certainly never singles out the issue in his writing. Thoreau never discusses women's issues either. I can't break bad on them too much because they did write several works on the terrible injustices of slavery, the Mexican-American War, and treatment of Native Americans, but the point is, Walt Whitman was the only male transcendentalist to discuss women's equality in his poetry. He speaks about women as his sisters, and says that men and women are of equal importance. There is a passage (not included in our text's excerpt) that proves my point:

I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

With everything I mentioned above in mind, I don't really see Whitman as a super egotistical person. I mean, I know he wrote those favorable reviews about his own work and submitted them to newspapers, but that's just really funny, not really egotistical. Whitman just writes about everything. I think there are a lot of similarities between Whitman and Kenneth Koch, as far as their poetry is concerned. Neither of them have a filter for the material they consider worthy of being in a poem. They seem to find inspiration in everything, and their poems are an attempt to capture their own amazement and curiosity about the world around them.

One of my favorite passages from Song of Myself is "And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, / For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, / (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and / about Death.) / I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the / least..." Whitman is stepping away from traditional notions about God and religion, in that he finds more interest and beauty among human beings. God is not of interest, but the many individuals Whitman encounters are infinitely fascinating.

I know this is total blasphemy, but I like Walt Whitman more than Emily Dickinson. That's not to say I dislike Dickinson's poetry because I do enjoy her work, but I've never found it as interesting as Whitman's poetry. I realize Dickinson's poetry can be dissected, and that one may find a lot of meaning within her poems, but I'm drawn to Whitman's longer cataloging style. I find Emily Dickinson to be a fascinating person, and that she, Whitman, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller are integral to the Transcendentalist movement, and add some much needed perspective.

I know it takes some time to get used to Whitman's style, but you just have to push through it. Admittedly, I didn't like Whitman the first time I read him, but now I like his work more every time I read it. It's too bad our text doesn't include the full version of Song of Myself, though it's easy enough to find it online, nor does it include my favorite Whitman poem I Sing the Body Electric, but I think that poem might be a little too...um, intense...for the anthology.

WR 441

hello all.

This isn't really an introduction...it's just a semi-new poem. Cool.

"the difference between human and animal language"

When he hears the leopard's call
When he hears the eagle's cry
I use 500 words, naturally, to
tell a very poignant story about
my own bedroom and cold snacks
When I saw the visitor, I said
please. help. out. The basic machinery
requires only that you know the rules.

I developed an association between
magnets and language. Sara wash apple.
I couldn't tell you the subject, I have
no grammatical competence, but I
can manipulate. The little plastic
words taught me how to enter other
peoples' heads. We have developed a
spoken language.

We have found evidence in fossils
of what we sounded like. The
evolution of speech is the key to
the best pizza and drugs.
I am more human because
I am a modern human
and have a round tongue.
My teeth are crowded and I
could die. My larynx makes
me more likely to choke
and die.

B=R=E=A=T=H+E

I hate the word "breath."
I mean, it fucking sucks.
It may be the worst word in
the world. If I can see anything
I can't see anything. I hate the
word "line." What kind of words
do you hate?
I'll have a headache tomorrow
from all these breathy lines.
If I wanted to talk about
words, well, I wouldn't
talk about them...I wouldn't
talk about it. I would talk
about all the food that sings to me!
I would talk about hating.
I spend most of my time
hating, or just angry.

Are you ever happy? No.
Nothing is worse than breathing.
I think about helicopters today
and how they fuck you up.
If I have to ride the bus
one more fucking time I'm
gonna freak the fuck out.
You are just funny, and you never
say anything important, but you
feel important. Where did all
these fucking trees come from?

Movies are made to be fucked.
Yes, I know what you're thinking,
doggy-style or enchilada-style.
My answer: Both. That's right.
Tempeh, harder! Cat toes, cat
toes, cat toes, cat toes! My cat had
no toe, and he would tell me on
his way out the door "I think you
have a mental illness, but I am
your angel, so don't stress."
1883 was a long fucking time ago, dude.
Shit has changed.
Your world is a kind of
uninteresting darkness, but
I wish for you to be here right now!

Do you look shit up, or
do you just think of it?
Neither, our lord god plants
things in my cokes and I drink
it and there you go, you have an
idea. Let's lie down for awhile.
Music makes you feel things, and
poop. A feeling, still!

I was stressing. BIG TIME.
But I'm like a sandcastle, so
don't fuck it up by peeing on me
or some shit like that. YOU'RE SO
FUNNY! I don't need anything
cuz I'm just spinning tunes and
it's easy now. Things should be
funny and sad all the time, everything.
Peace, fucker.