Readings

I'll be reading a few places in the next few months:

November 29th
Emory University
Harris Hall Parlour
Atlanta, GA
8PM
With Reb Livingston and Jill Alexander Essbaum

December 8th
So And So Reading Series
The Distillery
Boston, MA
8PM
With Reb Livingston and Andrea Baker

December 10th
Robins Bookstore
Philidelphia, PA
6 PM
with Andea Baker and Jim Stewart

Book Update

I am in the midst of a poet's most difficult job. How to promote your work and not seem like a jerk? How to be an artist and not be egotistical? There are only a few copies of the first printing of Derivative of the Moving Image left!

Here are a few tasty samples:


Ornithology


Being disabled is not what you think.
Limitation exists only within the context of others
as the only language the body knows
is that which it tells itself.
Movement appears painful from a distance
when rather it is just the body reiterating itself.
Like one of da Vinci's hopelessly grounded things
these limbs make a contortionist out of me,
lifting my one good wing from the sidewalk
I unfold finally, cinematically,
after a winter of wordless birds.


From Hypnogogic Diary

VIII


Now, you are no longer yourself
but a variation of.
I resist taking you in,
not in repulsion but worry.
You prove your accidental cruelty
in this structure that can
no longer bother to move
beyond itself, redefining our
ideal, our own small interest
in death. When you go
will you leave behind merely
a space that the human figure once filled
or will a likeness remain?
As mundane as it sounds,
I am finally settling into this life.






From A Paris Hotel Room


It was the spring after my sister died that I began to notice the moths. They would follow me from room to room beating against the window shades or showing themselves in the one tiny patch of light as I dressed for the day. Some days, some hours, I would count as many as twenty and still they held no significance for me. I saw them as many see the trees which line the highway, just passing objects.

One afternoon when the rains came I let the girls take off all their clothes and run naked in the yard while I danced around them in my blue nanny dress. I don't know why I did that. That night the moths were so large that they woke me like a burglar might. I put bowls of sugar around the house to keep them from the books.

Occasionally, the elder of the two girls will touch my arm and speak of my sister as if she remembers her. She tells me that my sister is dead.

Then the moths. They like to linger in hot places like the roof of the car. The smaller ones cling to my hands as I water the garden in the morning. When I ask others if they notice the creatures with the same consistency most deny it or act as though it is ordinary. The few that show an interest describe them as hideous monsters. I argue them to be more beautiful than butterflies.

The Book Party: Photos From Nancy Wendel

The Big Day

Book Party for Jennifer Bartlett
Derivative of the Moving Image
on
Friday, Nov. 9th
7-9 PM
Word Bookstore (www.wordbookstore.com)
126 Franklin St.
Greenpoint Brooklyn
take the 'G' train to Greenpoint Ave.
Walk 1 block to the river
Make a left on Franklin
Wine Provided!

News

As we progress rather quickly toward WAR with Iran, remember to write to whomever will listen (or not) and try to stop it! Meanwhile, if you are not convinced that Iran is NOT THE DEVIL STATE rent 'The Apple.'

I'm reading tomorrow at Pete's Candy Store with the fabulous Betsy Andrews and the wonderful Jim Stewart.
7PM
709 Lormier
Drinks, Sandwiches, and Poetry
What more could you ask for!

Also, there is a benefit for Will Alexander:

BENEFIT READING FOR WILL ALEXANDER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST, 6-8PM
BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery / F to 2nd Ave, or 6 to Bleecker
$10 suggested donation, more if you can

Poet and artist Will Alexander has become seriously ill and has no health insurance. In order to help him defray the cost of treatment his friends will gather and read Will’s work as well as poems for Will.

JEROME ROTHENBERG
TONYA FOSTER
JOEL KUSZAI
BILL MARSH
MARCELLA DURAND
TOD THILLEMAN
JOHN HIGH
RODRIGO TOSCANO
ELIOT WEINBERGER

(and more tba)

Funds raised will be sent to POETS IN NEED, a nonprofit organization set up to help poets in crises. If you can’t make it please send a tax-deductible donation with a note that it is for Will Alexander to:
POETS IN NEED
PO BOX 5411
BERKELEY, CA 94705

The Brookyln Rail

If you are out & about in New York, I have a poem on the last page of the Brooklyn Rail. Yeah!

Awww, yes. Snuggling up with a good book!

I am really surprised at the way I feel now that I am able to hold my book. All the rampant critisms I have of myself have faded, and I feel utterly at peace. I was telling a friend today that this has been such a journey for me. Tarn called it an "epic." I have waited so long, and held on for much longer than almost anyone I know has had to. Most of my contemporaries are on their second or third book by my old age -- nearly forty! Some of the delay is my own fault. I think that I am kind of a famously underachiever. Someone who was always too shy and insecure to really accomplish much. There were a series of events that really pulled me into poetry and made me more self assured.

The first of these was my move to New York, and my access to poets. Then can my marriage to Jim who was on the same frustrating path. A big boost was our decision to create Saint Elizabeth Street. Then, UNM Press accepted my book with the help of VB Price. When I met the poet Andrea Baker ...who lives around the corner...her success provided a new model, and she has been enormously supportive and helpful, as I hope I have of her! Finally, the relentless egging on of my father and Nathaniel closed the deal.

I am in sort of a strange space, however, because my immediate circle has seen the book, but it won't be in the world for another week. Neither of my parents have seen it, nor have Nathaniel and Bill Olsen. It's another waiting game...with lots of work to come. Luckily, I have my students, my kid, my husband, my mother's pending trip to NY, and laundry to distract me!

Blessings are always mixed. Some people who are everywhere in the book will never see it. My beloved sister most of all, my step-mother Elizabeth, Gene, Mary Higgins, and my super-hero of a grandfather. But, overall, life is good...

Now if only I could find that paint guy's number...

New Arrival

My book is here! And it's lovely, thanks to the good folks at UNM Press. Last night, we had a wonderful celebration with the Bakers, Julia, Nancy, and three nutty boys. There was champange all around! I'm too exhausted to say more.

Iran

I am so heartbroken by what is going on in my country, I don't know where to start. In NYC the news is geared toward President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia U. The media is on the bandwagon trying to convince Americans as fast as it can that we need to attack Iran, Let's follow the train of thought.

1. The first line of the Times is that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. Is this supposed to turn Americans toward war. Don't MOST AMERICANS have prejudices against homosexuality. What has Bush and Co. said about gays?

Bush 2003 I have no problem with homosexuality -- I have a problem with homosexual acts.

"I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage. And the surest way to protect marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution."
--Third Presidential Debate, Tempe, AZ, October 13, 2004

2. We should attack Iran to stop them from getting nuclear weapons...

The US has nuclear weapons, and has been the only place crazy enough to use them.

3. We should attack Iran because they don't like Isreal.

When is Isreal going to start defending itself? Also, has Iran DONE anything to Isreal, saying and doing are not the same.

4 Ahmadinejad."denied that Iran is involved in smuggling weapons into Iraq, as the US government has charged." The media wants us to believe this is a lie. Iran and Iraq have known opposing groups, IF they have supplied any weapons, it has been to people on our side.

I am begging people to stop being apathetic, I agree that Ahmadinejad is a jerk, but I refuse to live in a landscape of constant war. What can we do:

1. Don't vote for Clinton or Guiliani. This will assure war.
2. Donate money
3. write your senator
4.try to spread the word
5. go to marches -- there is one in DC this Saturday

Just came back form my first bike ride with Jim! After a difficult morning, things seem back on track. The laundry is washing, the cats are sleeping, and Jeff is with the Bakers.

In other news, Lisa Jarnot is reading at the Poetry Project on Wed.

I did an interview with Didi Menedez here.

And the fabulous book arrives at the press this week!

Poems in Wodgathering

I have some poems in my first magazine working with poets with disabilities, Wordgathering

Book News!

The book is arriving the week of October 5th, but can be ordered now.

We are having a fabulous book party.

Nov. 9th
7PM
Word
126 Franklin Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
718.383.0096
www.wordbrooklyn.com

There will be wine, you know it!

My Gift!

For my 38th birthday, my husband bought me this....and taught me how to ride it!

Bad news/good news

I just got poems rejected from Fence for the 80th time. I don't know what's up with them. The poems I sent are close to other stuff that they publish. They are also part of a trio of which the first is arriving in The Brooklyn Rail next mont h. Yea!

The book is at the printer. It won't be long!

Mahem Hits Manhattan!

There's a taxi strike in NY! O my goodness, how will all the rich people get to work! It's fashion week to boot. Surely, Naomi can't ride the bus in THAT!

hi mom! of first day of kindergarten & college

Two Lines

These are my favorite two lines in a song ever:

"The boys who made me lose the blues
and then my eyesight."

Lee Bartlett

Today I am thinking about my father, Lee Bartlett. Last night, I read sections my father's magazine, American Poetry. I was looking at Fall, 1988, the issue which is posthumously dedicated to Robert Duncan. The issue includes an interview with Bill Everson, who was friends with Duncan for forty years. Mary Fabily (whose name I am surely misspelling) was a lover/wife? of Everson and one of Duncan's closest friends. Note: Duncan, while gay, seemed to have some funky stuff going on with the ladies that is unclear to me. Everson speaks of jealous tensions surrounding the Mary -- and I have been reading simuliar stories about our beloved Ms. Levertov.

But, I don't mean to write about these guys & gals. The point is: ah, my daddy!

The deeper I get into his work, the more I realize how seminal it is/was to the world of poetry. As I have mentioned before, Talking Poetry, for example, is probably the best book of interviews with poets that I have run across. Where else is there one collection with interviews with Michael Palmer, Anne Waldman, Thom Gunn, and Clayton Eshleman? Just to name a few. In addition to a stack of books on Everson, including his biography, my father also edited/wrote/worked on DisemBodied Poetics for Naropa, a book of James Laughlin's letters, an Anthology of New Mexican poets, The Sun is But a Morning Star (which I now know comes from Duncan), the American Poetry Series (which includes books by Everson, McClure, and Tarn), his own book of poetry -- the Greenhouse Effect, the letters of Stephen Spender, a bibliography of Beat poetry, and the first essay on the Language Poets called "What is Language Poetry?" which arguably may be where the term LP derives from. & these are just a few.

It is amazing to grow up and find that something to which you never quite paid attention is so valuable to your work life. It's like growing up to be a filmmaker and finding out your mother had an affair with Woody Allen.

It frustrates me that this great work has been pushed aside. I so want to share it, not out of nepotism, not for the money or glory, but simply because IT'S REALLY GOOD. My father's work is just as important as Silliman's and Perloff's. And the older folks know and regard him well. But, I can't help but feel he's been shrugged off by the younger generation -- unless they are poetry fanatics who read EVERYTHING (Matt Hendrickson).

I think this loss is because many of the books are out of print. Also, my dad is not an internet guy. He's not even in Google! I can't help but also suspect that it's the old paranoid West-East Coast poetry thing. (Sometimes I feel like we are rappers -- oh! by the way, he wrote one of the first essays on that too!)

Since it is highly doubtful that the Times will publish my letter, I've decided to post it here. The Times resistance against publishing letters in from DOE teachers in general makes me suspect that either they a). think we are dissgruntled workers exaggerating or b). only want to disclose one side of the story. I do plan to send the letter to the mayor, governor, and chancellor -- which of course, will all be a waste of time.


To the Editor:

It is ironic that on the day I resigned from the New York City DOE The Times had an editorial about the lack of teachers. I am one of those teachers who is quitting six years into their career. I never had a problem with the salary, nor benefits, which I find decent. My issue is that in six years of teaching, I was excessed three times. I was blantantly discriminated against because I have cerebral palsy, and harrassed by more than one assistant principal. My colleagues have also been treated with utter disregard. Recently, colleagues with 20 years of experience were forced to re-apply for their jobs. I am very stubborn and worked hard to be a teacher. If, over the course of six years, I had been treated with one speck of respect, I wouldn't be handing in my papers. Until the Department of Education treats its teachers like human beings, no amount of money will keep us.

Letter From Cid

Going through my old things, I surprisedly came across a letter that Cid Corman wrote me while I was working on my Muriel Rukeyser thesis, some of which will strike as contraversial. I leave out the beginning formalities for the sake of time. The letter was a response to my question about the marginalization of Rukeyser's work. I don't know what ultimately led me to Corman-- perhaps that we had met briefly earlier at Naropa. It was exciting to re-find the letter, and his comments were insightful, not only to Rukeyser's work, but his attitudes about women and Niedecker.

"Muriel R I never met or knew personally. I did admire her early book THEORY OF FLIGHT. Her WAKE ISLAND meant well but was a big disappointment to me. I found her work uneven, but even so- more interesting than most. Lorine is much finer and is gradually finding a greater audience -- long overdue. (All my people are/were independent spirits, like myself, and that tends to keep us out of the standard taxts, at least while we're "alive.")

I think she (MR) was included in John Ciardi's MIDCENTURY AN ANTHOLOGY from the early 50's. She may had have had a poem or two in Oscar Wms pocket anthologies - but he and his wife (Gene Derwood), poor poets, were far more conspicuous. Whether MR ever attained a place in Untermeter's standard texts in the late 30's and 40's - I cant recall. Possible. But meagrely. I see she's NOT in the Ellman OXFORD job - no more than LN is.

I wish women wd get off the gender kick: they narrow their perceptions needlessly. Lorine has sharper eyes than this. And was a wonderful human being.

Academia/the Establishment have all the credentials that work with regular publishers and they guarentee BIZ/sales/money. They have the buyers in their pockets. As simple as that. By and large publishers have NO sense of poetry. Jay Laughlin exceptional, but even he has missed out on some great ones. (He has first crack at Zukofsky and LN).

Poetry often, alas, is slow becoming accessible to its audience. Higginson boosted Emily imensely but merely tolerated her as a freak. Whitman and Melville as poets were largely posthumous figures"

I will type the final two paragraphs tommorrow,