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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Rut Intervention


Rain
Photo by D.R. Wagner




ONE HUNDRED MOONS
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon
moonmoonmoonmoonmoon

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What Windshield Wipers Have in Common With Life
—kathy kieth, pollock pines



clear/not/clear/not/clear/not/clear/not/clear/not/clear/not/clear/not/clear

clearclearclearclearclear/notnotnotnotnot

clear clear

NOT.

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Is this poetry?

Let's get out of our ruts this week and try some experimental poetry for our Seed of the Week. No right or wrong here; break out of the box! Stretch the limits of the envelope! Get past clichés like those two... Send your experiments (poems/photos/artwork/andwhatelse) to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline here, since this isn't a give-away.


Yesterday Medusa Mis-spoke: Poetry Unplugged has Featured Readers this week in addition to Open Mic:

•••Thursday (4/30), 8pm: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, presents Neeli Cherkovski and Sam Eliot Stern. Poet/Author/Biographer Neeli Cherkovski will present selections from his new book, From The Canyon Outward, published by the national-award-winning R.L. Crow Publications. He will also present works from other publications and a few unpublished works, in addition to his fine anecdotal and story-telling forays. Neeli (born in Santa Monica, 1945) is an avid, vivid, and integral part or San Francisco poetry. He has written twelve books of poetry, including the award-winning Leaning Against Time; Elegy for Bob Kaufman; and Animal, as well as two biographies (Bukowski: A Life and Ferlinghetti: A Biography); and his Whitman's Wild Children (a collection of critical memoirs) has become an underground classic. In the late 1960's, he co-edited the poetry anthology, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns with Charles Bukowski. Since 1975, Neeli has lived and worked in San Francisco. For five years he was Writer-in-Residence at New College of California where he taught literature and philosophy. Currently he is completing an as-yet untitled memoir of his life in poetry, a collection of poems on his travels in the Philippines, and a "selected poems". He teaches in The Floating University, offering courses in poetics, along with David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg.

Sam Eliot Stern is a native of Sacramento who currently resides along the rugged Pacific Coast in the sleepy college town of Santa Cruz. While currently devoting most of his resources to finishing his BA in Anthropology, Sam still has managed to record a full-length debut album with his band, Stenographers, entitled Our Mythology. He moonlights as a multi-instrumentalist, both live and in the studio with Sacramento rock-and-roll band, The Stilts, and he contributes to the music-centric art blog, The Butterfly Net, as well as steadily working on a variety of prose, poetry, film, and musical projects. Check out his work at www.myspace.com/sameliotmusic or www.myspace.com/stenographers or butterflynetissomethingtoread.blogspot.com

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my email keeps getting spammed
by those claiming they’ve got giant blueberry plants
that can grow in your own backyard
and put out tons of bowls year ‘round
and I wonder if it a scam
though I admit it is tempting
but I'm supposedly against such genetic modifications
as well as pro-organic
and therefore I could be giving to my enemies
However, isn't wanting berries instead of candy more noble?


—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

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THE HEMILOGUE
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

Speak up if you can’t hear me.
OK, I guess everyone’s settled in.
We’ll begin.

It’s important that you pay close attention
to absolutely every word I say.
Your opinions and comments are also very important,
so if we have any time at the end of this presentation,
and I’m not saying we will,
then … to save time, let’s move right ahead to the subject:

We know that a monologue is one person speaking to an audience.
That works great for humor, where the only feedback
the speaker solicits is appreciation.

Then there is the dialogue, which is two or more people
exchanging facts, thoughts, or ideas.
That often just doesn’t work,
because it requires that someone be silent and listen
while someone else is speaking.
Of course, it is against many people's nature to do that.

So the time has come to create a new term
which I have dubbed the “hemilogue”.
Briefly, it is simply half a dialogue,
with the major difference being that
in a hemilogue, there is virtually no feedback.

Some common examples of hemilogues today are:
telephone announcements that leave no opportunity for reply;
endless loop recorded parking restrictions aired over the
public address system at the airport;
politicians exercising a filibuster;
any utterances of a guard dog; and…

I’m sorry, we have now run out of time.
As a special parting treat,
I have left an empty space beneath each of your seats
that you are free to fill with your comments and ideas.
You’ve been a great crowd.




Snake Does Like His Juice
—Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz

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Today's LittleNip:

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

—Steven Wright

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—Medyewsa