George Carlin in Twain and Swift Territory

Dali/Quixote Napkin by Tom Kane (w/tea stain)

The following is a small excerpt from the 2007 George Carlin special "It's Bad For Ya." In some ways it is a humorous take on similar territory explored in the recent Robinson Jeffers post. Once again, Twain and Vonnegut and Swift come to mind, the great satirists who cared enough to rip their beloved fellow travelers a new one for the sake of redemption. The pitch Carlin builds here nearly takes him out of comedy all together; though he might have lost a step or two physically in his later years, he was never more scintillating, acerbic, and spot-on as in this portrait of the human condition. (It's hard to imagine that a language disclaimer is necessary at a small press poetry blog but here you go: George uses many of those famous seven words and more, so you've been warned).




As I mentioned in last Thursday's weekly post, due to schedule changes at my paying job, the archival posts will now be on Tuesday and this is the first. This week it's issue #57 of Lilliput Review, from June 1994. Hope you enjoy the selections, including a poem by the late Michael McNeilley, author of the Lilliput broadside 15 sexual haiku/senryu, a visual art/poem, and one for Kurt Cobain. Has it really been 14 years?



down they came

down they came and I wiped
them out ----the bastards
-------they'll be back I know
-------sit over there ---so don't then
they'll be back I tell you
you'd better listen ---we'd better
-------hurry we've just got time
-------to get one in
we'll be ready for them next time
won't we but we'd better hurry
-------shit here they come ----here
-------take this no wait

Michael McNeilley

The Light Above It Is Burned Out

The stepladder's closed,
leaning against the stacks.

If it were in Humanities,
symbolism would shine all over.

In Government Documents, it waits
for the maintenance man to get off break.

H. Edgar Hix

More InSerts

NowHere

Richard Kostelanetz

Global Village

The noon spider
spins a porch-web,
silk lines snaring
my thought. I see
5.5 billion humans
in a single fly
abuzz by the dusk

Walt Franklin

Brautigan and Bukowski
------------i.m. kc
With first light and your sigh,
the heavy dew evaporates
from the pane.

K. Shabee

best,
Don

Basho Haiku Challenge Winner

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Roberta Beary is the winner of the 1st annual Basho Haiku Challenge for her poem:



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on the church steps
a mourning dove
with mother's eyes

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I'd like to thank Roberta and everyone for their enthusiastic participation in the challenge. The level and quality of work in the nearly 200 poems I received was so outstanding that I will be publishing a chapbook of the best 24 poems received sometime after the 1st of the year. 19 poets will be featured. As mentioned in my last post on the challenge, all poets included will receive two copies of the chapbook plus a six issue subscription to Lilliput Review (or a six issue extension of their current subscription). Roberta will receive Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated and edited by Jane Reichhold, contributor copies of the anthology, and a 15 issue subscription to Lillie. I will be informing the other 18 poets included sometime over the next week via email.

In addition, did you notice I said 1st annual?

I've decided that this was so successful, that the 2nd Basho Haiku Challenge will be taking place the same time, next year.

Finally for the poets who participated but did not have their work included, I will be thanking them with free copies of the two current issues of Lillie (or a two issue extension etc.).

My most sincere thanks to one and all for making what could have been a formidable task a real pleasure.


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There was an interesting article in the New York Times this week on how an Amercian poet has never won the Nobel Prize. It's worth a look-see.

Curtis Dunlap, over at Blogging Along Tobacco Road, has sent along a notice that the Australian Haiku Society has created a webpage for tributes to William J. Higginson. If you have been moved by his work and legacy, you may want to contribute. The deadline is October 27th.

Last night, I gave a talk at the local library school on things librarianish (ok, collection development, if you're curious). I decided things needed to be put in the proper perspective and so opened up with a poem by Gerald Stern:

Stepping Out of Poetry

What would you give for one of the old yellow streetcars
rocking toward you again through the thick snow?

What would give for the feeling of joy as you climbed
up the three iron steps and took your place by the cold window?

Oh, what would you give to pick up your stack of books
and walk down the icy path in front of the library?

What would you give for your dream
to be as clear and simple as it was then
in the dark afternoons, at the old scarred tables?

It just so happens that Stern grew up in Pittsburgh and chances are that he is speaking of the Main Library where I work and many of the students come. Though the fact resonates it isn't necessary to remain relevant. I suggested to them this wasn't so much of a geographic shout-out to the Burg, nor a poem about nostalgia per se, but a poem about what happens to dreams. And that I wanted them to not think about their dreams but those of the people who have come and continue to come to the library through all these many years.

I can report, despite many a renovation and reinvention (& for the sake of a little resonance), that those old scarred tables remain, as do those occasionally recaptured dreams.

On the way out in the elevator, a student from the class asked me if I was the publisher of Lilliput Review. When I said yes, she told me a delightful story of the poet Peggy Garrison coming to the bookstore where she worked in Manhattan and telling her proudly of her publication in the mag.

As we rode down in that tiny moving room, the small world of the small press expanded very briefly for a moment.

Featured this week from the Lillie archive is issue #72, from August 1995. Enjoy.


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Multiple Choice: Erotica

As condom
is to skin

so poetry
is to:

a) the act
b) the art
c) the ought

Ken Waldman

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A Study

One thousand views of Backbone Mountain.
One hundred black-hair brushes.
Seven stylistic changes.
One or two regrets.
Two hundred details.
Ten thousand things forgotten.

Leslie Carroll

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Tableau

In a Renaissance painting
whose title I've forgotten
completely as a stronger man
would have forgotten you,
Lucifer holds a seat
in the heavenly councils back benches,

the way you might think of me
when I call,
untangling the telephone cord
from my horns.

J. D. Smith

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Apple Blossom

My first bar in Dixie--
all the usual beers but
Brueghel would've loved it
painting freightyard
royalty displaced
by urban renewal, bean soup,
like ambrosia, 50¢ a bowl

Walt Franklin

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academics:

every word they write
another earring melted down
into the golden calf
of American poetry.

scarecrow

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¶ i will not drown
--rather i will raise the level of the ocean

scarecrow

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best till next time,
Don