it looks like if we don't get 100 likes by the end of this week they will murder that cute sea lion.
the good news is its completely free to do so. that poor sea lion.

James Browning Kepple
November 8 via mobile
Do you know how to get to the philharmonic? It takes a lot of practice
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A.e. Lautremont likes this.

Kim Göransson or you can take the subway?
November 8 at 11:52pm · Like

Undergroundbooks 
88 likes. 12 more and this puppy lives. lets save this puppy. i mean seal. not the singer. shut up. i mean i love you.

11 more, press that little blue square and we can all go to sleep 

So achingly close, just need one of you beautiful souls in the cycberspace to press that little blue like button, be our 100 and make sure that the monkey doesn't get shot, we here at undergroundbooks will support and love you for it! (door prizes? chance to win a european holiday? all up in the air) go ahead, pull the trigger, you know you want to! 
UndergroundBooks
Page: 99 like this
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Holly Sprouse likes this.

Kim Göransson the 100th like will get a free tour of new york with JBK by boat.
November 9 at 12:25pm · Unlike · 1

100 Likes
2012
DING DING DING DING We have a winner, boy and did it come down to a footrace, were gonna have to verify this, yes it looks like Travis Jeppesen has beaten out Eden Petri Snug by a shoe! Wow, What a race! Now Vanna tell him what he's won!

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UndergroundBooks likes this.

So we're throwing a party to celebrate our 100 likes ! (boy it was a foot race!) KRAUTSOUND - KRAUT RADIO GOING LIVE NOVEMBER 10th (tomorrow) 12pm European Standard Time, 6am East Coast Amerika, were gonna have this party rocking at 6 in the morn! Come check out East Germany's hottest DJ Max Mueller as he spins ALL DAY to celebrate ! Downtempo Lounge, Funk, Rap and Soul come on yall get on down with the KRAUTSOUND

krautsound
www.undergroundbooks.org/krautsound



Undeground Radio 
from Leipzig, Germany. 
Be prepared

1 hour and 3 minutes Ladies and Gentlemen get your tape decks ready, we have a live all day show, you can tune in here! and please if your up at 6 in the morn or your a european about to have lunch (12pm) press the button and get on down with your funk ass self!

KRAUTSOUND - KRAUT RADIO GOING LIVE NOVEMBER 10 (tomorrow) 12 pm European Standard 6 am EastCoast Amerika, We gonna have the party rocking at 6 in the morn. An All day event, stay for the madness or pop in throughout the day to see how the party is kickin, this will take care of all your needs doooowntempo lounge, funk, rap and soul, come on yall get down with the Krautsound, LIVE


1 hour and 3 minutes Ladies and Gentlemen get your tape decks ready, we have a live all day show, you can tune in here! and please if your up at 6 in the morn or your a european about to have lunch (12pm) press the button and get on down with your funk ass self!

Steve Aquatic Zissou thing is online right now people!
November 10 at 8:08am · Unlike · 1

UndergroundBooks damn son this shiznit is hot!
November 10 at 10:27am · Like

dunno if your sippin a lemonada in the sun or relaxing by the pool, but I tell you what east germany has never been this smooth or sexy we're LIVE ladies and gentlemen, KRAUTSOUND, just click the link and press PLAY, you know you want to snuggle underneath that former iron curtain, this will melt your speakers, were talking hot, everybody loves the sunshine!

James Browning Kepple KRAUTS UNITE - EVERYONE LOVES THE SUNSHINE!
November 10 at 10:40am · Like

just when I want to get violent
 I let the dub mix from east germany 
chill me the fuck right out, 
dig the KRAUTSOUND, 
were now 6 hours deep in the mix

James Browning Kepple 
hour 7 and it just gets hotter, if this would be a telethon we'd buy jerry lewis a new pair of legs just so he could dance to this!


November 10 at 1:01pm · Like

hour 8 in the mix coming up, can't stop won't stop DJ MAX MUELLER keepin it fresh
just press PLAY join in on the eastern german revolution

HOUR 10 this man is a monster in the mix, approaching old school german hip hop plus the new shit coming straight out of Leipzig! This Max Mueller is a 
TERROR on the turntables, Tune in while the party keeps spinning!

UndergroundBooks so clocking in at just under 11 hours of straight music, the shoes ends with DJ Max Muerller: "The German Nihilist says Fuck you We hate the people"
November 10 at 4:47pm · Like

James Browning Kepple So clocking in at just under 11 hours of straight music DJ Max Mueller ends the night with this quote "The German Nihilist says Fuck you We hate you people!" Classic, can't wait to hear more.4:48pm

Hi, my name is JBK. Its a pleasure doing my first Live Poetry Corner here at Underground Books . ORG ! I would like to say first and foremost that I have been to alot of  "poetry readings" in my day, and as I read the flyer for this show: SpotOn! at the Harlem Jazz and Gospel Getaway I didn't know quite what to expect. The venue is in a beautiful old school prohibition style Harlem mansion sitting right fat at the top of Marcus Garvey park at 123th and Mount Morris Park. In Manhattan it is one of my favorite locations, so its hard for me to turn down just the spirit of the old Harlem poetsters just on principle. When you mention libations and top caliber company at one of the most acoustic friendly spots in the city... I say, Yes Mam, I'll be there. Thanks to Joyce Hanly for   
           inviting me. 

So on to the experience.                                                                                                  And an experience it was. 

This SpotOn! crew was lacking one member as they were still stranded in the receding water of Hoboken New Jersey and was not able to attend. The function, an improvisational poetry and music performance allowed the performers to go on with brave resolute, devoid of their triad. I can't say what the turnout would have been sans storm or the show sans 1 performer, but gosh dang! these kids were on fire. They started out with their scripted performance material and ended it with that, which was both top notch. The fun begins when they introduce the audience participation to name 2 words and they would perform then extemporaneously, what a joy! The first that caught my blackberry video is their reaction to the called out "Harlem Honk" ! 

Now I've witnessed  several shows that Joyce Hanly has put on at her establishment, all of which have been outstanding. This is nothing like anything I've ever seen. As they work through the audiences suggestions I keep my head hidden behind the blackberry and bide my time. When there is a lull in the suggestion period I seize my chance.  I shout AIRPLANE GLUE, and this my friends, is where the real bond between high flyers continues...

Ladies and gentlemen, I've seen a bit of shows in my day, but nothin of this expulsion,
here we have the artists, naked with their backs to the wall, performing the hits under high pressure physics, hats off to their craft for it truly comes off as something supernova.

Michael Douglas Jones (companionstar) and Elyzabeth Meade of Manchester Symphony Orchestra Fame tore it up on the dance floor if you will. I just wish terribly that I would have brought a better camera to the event to properly cover their brilliance. Amongst other things, their organization is geared up to put on a Tomas Tranströmer play this summer, and I can't wait to hear the reviews. These kids are burning up the circuit, so click all the links to find out where you should be in the near future. In a morning where your humble reviewer woke up and wanted to put a gun in his mouth, this show was the perfect solution to the everyday doldrums people suffer in their ho-hum non poetry life. I beg you to reinvest yourself in the new burgeoning frontier that is poetry music improv cause it is the defiance of a common man stuck in a world controlled by language,  giving him the chance to release. (this is a true happy ending)

-jbk

There is a kind of bias in most modern fiction that favors writing which seeks to make itself invisible, that the language itself shouldn't "get in the way" of the story, that the story is all-supreme, like a thought buried in a slab of marble that only require the writer to carefully carve it out. This is a tendency toward realism, or at least toward a certain kind of realism, which stands in opposition to the poetic, language for the sake of language, the ornamental or self-conscious, language that stands out. That the writer is best advised to write himself out of the writing, as it were, and not let his "ego" interfere.

This notion seems to coincide with the title of Josh Davis’s latest novel "Vanishing is the Last Art" (Pretend Genius Press), but in terms of language, this is not a novel of disappearing, but of an almost obsessive appearing, of over-appearing. The language drives the story along, the story (if now it is a story? The appearing) of Charlie Fell, a somewhat indifferent but ironically enthusiastic seller of baseball cards (or whatever it is), traveler of external and internal landscapes, romancer of women and moments.

The novel is told in loosely fitted scenes, fragments, rants, parties, that along with the poetic language gives an overall detached feeling, like a thin film of something draped over everything, which is not a bad thing, hinting of this disappearing. The feeling is that you just can't quite be sure about the "reality" of what's going on. We are firmly in Charlie Fell's head and Charlie Fell is that kind of narrator who might be truthful, but then again might not. He’s both there and not there, likable and not likable. He might be a walking ghost stuck in purgatory collecting not baseball cards but lost souls.

But back to the writing, the language, which, on practically every page, bursts with tongue-twisting, remarkable poetry. Sometimes, and that is my only complaint, the enthusiasm and jokes and clever observations become slightly too nerdy and, at least for me, at times, fall flat. This is two sides of the same coin, and will probably turn some people off, at least those who like to carve marble: an almost carnal energy and love for the written word (permit me to quote one of many delightfully punch-drunk, blistering paragraphs):

"I am starting to miss rudeness, slanted eyebrows, the ability to shock, pizza that doesn’t taste like leather, and the lullish orchestra of car horns that follows a single offender for days—that draws large red A’s on car hoods, and incites finger parades as far as the eye can see. I miss the sleazy pick-up artist, the academy award performance of barflowers, and the sweet choking aroma of sixteen kinds of smoke blending into the ineffable potpourri of the east. I miss orange alerts meaning something. I can’t believe I just said that, but I do. I miss the toothless, trailer huddled masses. I miss jukeboxes with filthy, vulgar bar-rock. I miss the fear, the stiffness, the pallor, and the knowledge that at least half the other poor bastards in any given room at any given time will be going home tonight with their right hand. I miss grit and impropriety. California, you make me want to wash my hair in tar, have my teeth painted at a Chinese beauty parlor, and don a proper Brooklyn boom box blasting the fuck out of Public Enemy records against the sweat stream out of the suited, untranquilized masses—thinning hair, semen stains, sullen shoes, deranged eyes, madness—hungry madness—beautifully damned, and archetypally bemused death vultures that hang over us all that we call man, women, husband, wife, sir, madam, doctor, dealer, boss, paperboy, clerk, whore, bastard, junkie, or Mr. President."

There is an obvious influence in Davis's writing of that kind of beatnicky stream of consciousness, but it seems whenever you make that comparison, you can't help but to simultaneously cover the work with an inescapable perfume of dead urine and nostalgia. Vanishing is the Last Art (or VITLA, as the kids are calling it) luckily escapes this awkward decomposition: it doesn’t reek of sentiment for a better time in the past but pushes relentlessly against the (more dull, perhaps, harder to find a grip) edges of our current society, but also against the edges of what is meant by adulthood (Charlie Fell seems to be stuck in this kind of prolonged defiant pubescent limbo), and ultimately the sticky super-edge  business of what makes a person (am I real?)  

Actually, reading VITLA, and it’s the first time I'm reading anything by Josh Davis, I was reminded more of Chuck Palahniuk than Jack Kerouac, in the furious drive of the prose which feels more like poetry, the rhythm and repetition, the imagery, the schemes, characters drunk on modern romantic loser's detachment syndrome. Where Palahniuk's sordid wit is incomparable, Davis has a particular knack for describing people and their seductions (I always hated Palahniuk's sex scenes, he suddenly turns into a metaphor cheese shop.)

Anyway. I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who likes books that seethe with the whole spectrum of human emotions, shamelessly, and refuse to go to rehab.

-Kim

see www.vanishingisthelastart.com/ for more details.

My boss said he needs some filler materiel for this hurricane piece they’re working on back at the hq, says hes got a new band, a midget Hungarian kid that lisps and plays the jewharp with his eye, such startling lovecraft nightmares I awake to, see a pair of shoes hanging from a wire entangled in the tree. These kicks hopefully just take out the lan line, but it looks tragic already that the power once again goes out here in Ridgewood Queens.

Proper bottle alignment, one vodka one tequila, a bag full of limes and enough cran to dilute down. Power shortage, or outage or Power out

We call it power in the business

Well it needs to be said really, that a hurricane party is a hell of a design in itself, this one however has just been slapped together in my old age, maybe I lack conviction for this girl, nothing but liquor smoke and chewing gum.

 If your port of origina is from an area encountered by hurricanes, then you’ll always get that sweet salty taste in your mouth as you behold a proper storm heading home and rapacious wish to chew miles in the drowning hydroplane to get there, }setup lawn chair and sit on the beach and let it roll, [

If it behooves you

I wish this hurricane was headed to Houston, just so I could have that feeling again. This is a bit lackluster with no car. or lawn chair.

                                                                                                                      Hurricane Poem #57

                                                                                                                   I listen at the window
                                                                                               I can hear you creeping around,
                                                                                                                              Where art thou?

The governor just urged residents to stay off the roads, use caution and heed warnings.

He also had a warning regarding power outages.

“If you do not have power, please do not choose today to tap into your creative juices and jerry-rig a [power source],” said Christie. “If it looks stupid, it is stupid.”

                                                                                                                                                                               Come on in Sandy,
                                                                                                                                                                  I’ve got a shot of tequila
                                                                                                                                                        To deal ya, won’t you dance?

 those shoes are still bothering me, just hanging there clutching on to the tree and low voltage line, the air is brilliant and clean, the sky dark grey the winds continuing into day 2.

Now this is true nature beginning its artful dodger over brooklyn terrace, to rain down further on these poor strongholds of man,

And one can always question the rain, but the wind when it whips up in this mighty full moon, we may bear down only on our fortitude and hope for the best in such desires.  Doesn't just quite have the ferocious superstorm steed in my humble opinion, but in bursts you can feel tastes of the vacuous bowels of the Atlantic, I just wish it had come to destroy.

So I’ve lived through no action before

And this is no action jack lets see your sandy swat you fearsome bitch!

Empty I wake to everything the same way, 
alas 10:37 the next day, I have been through the most boring storm ever. I had candles ready for pencil scrape, now back to power, back to the norm

The Tragedy Never lost power.

“Theres a Hurricane Outside”

“go to hell marty!!” she leaves the room and slams the door

“but Sandy Wait”

By Martin Levitt
an excerpt from 
The Hurricane Diaries

I'm running a bit late, just missed the express at 14th st, I prewalk the platform and arrive at 6:54, Stephen Downing the great stalwart is corralling the creme de la creme of New York outside, he informs me that his daughter has just gotten a 2 book deal for her young adult fiction, with get this, AN ADVANCE, I smile, cause it genuinely feels like I have just received the same, life is good. I shake some hands, and light up a smoke, he says "Your still smoking that shit?" I laugh, I said yeah well, times are tough. He says his son is going through the same thing. Outside on 72nd, the patrons fill in.  I smash my butt, and go up to the rabbit hole above.  Welcome to the Triad. 

I'm sitting in the front row next to the former head of Phillip Morris, hes the perfect accompaniment to such a smoking performance from the Mabel Mercer Foundation's Artistic Director KT Sullivan and the sultry Karen Kohler.  Now I have seen both perform, but never together, and never in such a theater.  The Triad is a true cabaret  minus the girls selling cigarettes and shots, and the structure, layout and size of the room is a perfect addition to such a unique show. Its been awhile since I've seen a cabaret, but from the performances I have had the pleasure to have witnessed from both entertainers at the National Arts Club's Dutch Treat Club I knew I was in for a treat. I glance down at the tickets people have placed on the table, and the two drink minimum -cash only stares right back up at me. The waiter approaches and says "What would you like to drink", I made the admittance that I don't drink, truth be told the ice cold georgi vodka sitting in the fridge warmed with jealousy at that moment, with fine spirits in the air, your humbled reviewer ordered water, as he was informed that there was a two drink minimum, I say water, he said sparkling or flat. I say flat. He disappears. I am sandwiched in on this deadline, reviewers from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are flanking the back sides of the theater. 

The chit chat from the high profile flows over the tables as the stage rests empty with the  piano caressed in fur boas asleep, waiting to spring forth. The pianist sits down with his red bow tie and red socks looking very serious. He finally glances across the audience for 3 seconds, gives his approval, then back to the seriousness of the score. The conversation comes up to Astrological signs rather quickly and not by my hand. I should never admit the obvious, everyone has that moment of confusion. I should just say "I'm a Scorpio", but sheepishly say yes former Scorpio, newfound Libra, and this man, and point to our companion, is no longer a Sagittarius but an Ophiuchus. The piano player is pressing the keys methodically quite soft as to not make a sound. I'm wearing black jeans, still not a corduroy class of the Phillip Morris sort, or the ilk of the many slacks.  I'm beginning to think that this show will not start at 7. 7:17 and the crowd is dying down a bit, my water order has never arrived. I would hate to pay for water, but with no liquid I'm in the clear. Damnit! Bottled Flat Water has arrived, god knows I'm glad I brought some laundry money. I personally cannot tell the difference in Saratoga versus tap, this may not turn out to be such a great review if my palette is so daft since 1872. The lights have dimmed, the lemon added, someone acutely mentions "something is happening".

KT approaches as a sauntering dilettante  a dream in violet, champagne spilling from the glass as she joyously cheers Vienna  singing in a light operatic purr clinking glasses from the back of the house. The germans sure know how to party. She looks elegant in a purple sequined long dress. She has now made her way up to the front of the house and has clinked us all, even the plastic cup of Phillip Morris's ice tea. "Vienna!" A roar of applause cheers the salutatory KT. She welcomes us to the program, and this is where you find out exactly what the meat and potatoes of this performance will be.  Its an education, a translation, an enjoyment of 100 years of music represented here, half in german, half in english, and spackled through a bit of both, the translated translated and then sung resung again. The intimacy of this theater is perfect for her voice and presence. 

The Second number really hits. Strauss' 1874 tale of Adele, a maid going out to a masked ball pretending to be her mistress. This is where KT really separates herself out as something more substanced then just a brilliant singer, she is acting and singing in german, its quite a feat to be able to easily mesh and combine so many angles. She is showing her legs in german. The line of her spine counting the pretty vertebrae. She just grabbed my knee, shes grabbing all the knees of the front house and then proudly flaunts her's to show her pedigree. The lights flash like a seizure as she ends high.  Its hard to tell whats scripted and whats not when you have such a synergy between performers. She starts My bed. I am a vamp half woman half beast. I suck my men dry and then bake them in a pie.  She is having fun. She straddles the chair and sings of having Brecht's Hat,  Thomas Mann gives me a facial with Goebbels shaving cream! 

This is where the two woman performance finally begins as Karen Kohler graces the stage and the show begins to change. She is dressed in a full on tux, and they start the song "Special Girlfriend". The coexistence of their voices is quite good when it works,  sometimes over the length of the program it can be a bit off maybe just because I can't speak german, but KT deet deetly dees really highlight the lower voice of Karen. They agree that their man is no good and the piano player joins in on the actions portraying a third character in the exchange. You can tell that this show has taken a new course. Karen sits down in the chair with her legs spread and watches KT go on about emancipation to chuck all the men. Chuck the men out of the Reichstag! The variant german and english rants are great. Men are the problem with humanity! 

An East German Bright Red Book appears in the hands of Karen, who hands it to KT to find a picture. It was hugely popular in east germany and is entitled the 10th Muse by Clare Weiderhoff "The Berlin Mouth" at the old Black Cat cabaret. Her show "God men are stupid" went for a thousand run. And per Karen was as tall as she was wide.  They both grab one side of the stage and the light goes down, one sings in english the other in german. KT vanishes and Karen  stands alone to speak of translations. She explains that translations are needed to keep songs alive.  And shes dead on. It would have been a shame to not hear these songs whether in the original or in english. Jeremy Lawrence is apparently the culprit of most of these translations, and hats off is due, for the english sounds crisp and flowing.  She then performs "Purple Song" she has translated this one herself. She goes back to german on a bouncing thunder of the piano. She is best when she is like this, full of energy, convicted, and belting out, I can hear the familiar foot stamp from the crowd. The rights to purple days and purple nights! When shes singing in german she really takes it up a notch. 

The next song is pretty swell, Its the Masculine/Feminine Feminine/Masculine portrait of the two woman. KT playing the dressed up Feminine/Masculine, Karen the Masculine/Feminine she puts on her top hat. The chemistry is hot between the two young ladies and it serves to produce a Mascufemine  hermaphroditic baby! There's no cuter neuter and there making more! wrestling together in the chair.  They are dynamic together here. 

"Conqueror" shows the true animalistic wanton passion the women have for a virile dirty dog of a man but only on occasion. As KT puts it "Power is the greatest arousal of them all."  She could use a little touch of Attila  a hit of him, a bit of him is quite fun. When love gets a bit to vanilla Attila is the one I see, my Attila the Hun. Karen gets in on the action, Now a days there are no conquerors, but bankers and generals one bald and one fat. Young men come to soon. Older men are to sweet and cuddly like a macaroon.  No cock ever crowed loud enough for me she intones. Hot virility, oy vey she wants to marry a barbarian! A cute little brute who knows how to shoot - Attila  my hun.

We enter the whorehouse via KT. The Grand plan of men on the shore. Johnny is taking to long, someone take a gun and shoot a peek hold in the door. Karen ensues Love is not like time, So why do you waste it sun, The Mandalay German Song is a raunchy boy waiting for the gruff knowen mistress behind the wood. Enchanting this comedy in german. 

KT is suddenly scrubbing the floors, rubbing them bare in hate, she is a witch of a soap monger, scrubbing the floors whilre you a gawkin'. You'll never know who your talking to. KTs range is this level, from washer woman to operatic, its range. A bawdy angry scrubber woman mischievous in her plans for the men who stare, happy for the ships coming into the harbor. Happy in glee to see it all leveled.  The Black Freighter Arrives and the men are brought to her in chains. They ask her finally should we kill them Now or Later. Right now she soothes. The pile of bodies , that will learn ya! and the washer woman is left standing. Dark and powerful. 

KT is back to german, she is the lament of the whore, stocks are bad and her beau has gone back to his wife. If I never kiss again she quips, I'll finally get more sleep. The next number is the Munchhausen song by Friedrich Hollander 1932. She states that its her belief that this is his Dream of a Weimer Republic. Liar Liar Liar The Truth is hard and real that's why we need fairy tales. Karen comes in with the german Louga Louga Louga, KT wants to buy the illusion.  They coalesce at the end to bring a stunning tribute going liar for louga!  

The madness of Hitler. The spring will come in the Ruins of Berlin. A midst the ruins of Berlin the trees are in bloom like they never have been before. Together The Ruins of Berlin. Both make there way to the back of the house, the stage goes dark and a great round of applause breaks out. I must say at this point KT is prancing like a youthful nymph. Leonard COHEN? He comes out in Take this Waltz, this Waltz in Vienna from the back of the room Karen: Take this waltz! She is singing face back to the stage for the sound is bouncing around the theater.  And then she's there, behind me, very intimate, and she waltzes the wind of Vienna. I prefer her version to Cohen's substantially.  KT answers and then they grab hands and walk together singing, KT SOARS  bringing the entire house down with everyone clapping and stomping, they both belt out "THE RUINS OF BERLIN"

So a hell of a show. My overall appreciation of the evening breaks down this way. Two songs towards the end I received the bill for the water! I think that I have never purchased this much water before. It was well worth it. It saddens me to think that during this period of time in history this was an active scene. I would love to have this vein of performance, literature and language, song and protest so magnificently woven together to form a hoot house sexy songfest from such talented sirens, all the time. Throw your TV out the window, take off all that distracts you, this truly is vibrant  human performance.  "Vienna to Weimar" is worth its weight in water, to flow forth the hope that these sort of shows continue and thrive in the future!

-Theodore Renworth

A dictionary is a book of words. Oxford dictionaries: “a book that lists the words of a language in alphabetical order and gives their meaning, or that gives the equivalent words in a different language.” Mariam-Webster is simultaneously both less and more sure in her account: “a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactical and idiomatic uses”. Oxford permits the appropriate and accurate “have swallowed a dictionary: informal (of a person) use long and obscure words when speaking”, but neither allows, however tempting, any semblance to a joke in defining itself (such as, for instance, you’re reading it right now, dumbass.)

the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi) is Sean Brijbasi’s fourth (that we know) collection of letters/words/things (forthcoming on (publishing press unknown)), following Still Life in Motion (2004), One Note Symphonies (reissued 2007), The Unknowed Things (2009) (all available through pretend genius press), and his first attempt at an actual dictionary. This is not a bad fit. It is successful in that it too has words arranged alphabetically. 

Note: Some of these words appear to have been translated from a foreign language. Some of these words appear to be in a foreign language.  

Comparative analysis: 

Dictionaries have given rise to many heated debates, not just among scrabble enthusiasts, but perhaps most notably between descriptives (so called “caps”) and prescriptives (so called “hats”), the two major parties in the dictionary world, where the former seek to describe words as they are (“come on baby, nice and slow/ride like you in the rodeo”) and the latter words as they should be (“To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds”). Many (letter) heads have rolled (ha). Ain’t to be resolved anytime soon, irregardless.

What continually seems to inform Brijbasi’s writing is this tension between form and matter, language as containment and language as wild-eyed irreverent party girl. Language that says Yes Sir and language that says Woohoo Bob and language that says Yeah Well? Fuck You Too. The dictionary, as a form, perhaps the most ancient and complete of the many literary forms, provides here a sexy straight-jacket in which we get to witness the 'poet' dislocate himself. Our eyes wander to Houdini’s Milk Can Escape of 1901 and it’s unmistakable influence on Freud’s Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten (on joking with the unconscious) four long years later.

A possible signifier of this writing “style”, if we must signify, if we must speak of styles (we must speak of isms), is an experiment which seems to draw more from modernism than post-modernism, a kind of new- or new-new-romanticism which amplifies rather than subdues the “poetic”, wiggling loose the aching tooth of “after” and rarely stray, however weird-ass, from the possibilities of narration. Even in the weird-assest and most abrupt sections of the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi) we sense the narrator hiding, possibly behind a curtain, like that old man what's-his-name in Hamlet, and it is in this space between the weird-ass and the narrator (the question of the narrator/the question of the weird-ass) that the text seems to come alive.

This “come alive” will probably not happen if you have spent too much time riding around town on the bicycle known as realism and need to get your fix of plot and character development, forwardness and what not. Then you will probably read the first word of A ("ableberry") and speak of such things as pointless cleverness nonsense pretentious artsy bullcrap for the sake of pointless cleverness nonsense artsy bullcrap pretentious. This is a popular multi-edged response to art, that at the same time it is too much (artsy), that it is useless (for the sake of itself), too little (bullcrap), fake (pretentious) etc., or in other words: “my child could do that!” A popular response to such a response is to defend art, to educate art, to guard art, to call forth art’s meaningfulness, art’s rareness and fine fine goody good-ness. This is a mistake. Art is dumb and pointless and too much and too little (contradictions) and yes, useless, and yes, your child could do it. Is doing it right now in fact. While you’re reading this your child is drawing bold circles with a red magic marker all over your functional cabinets. 

...

dreams of terrible angels

two lovers in the snow. Two lovers framed by jade (color). Two lovers pierced by the sword of a mighty rhododendron (flower).


Ros|e-mary (heaven). The gentles call to you from Hibiscus. The bare settles in. The cardinal falls through the ice—his mitre a maypole for more graceful children, who having filled their cheer with scrawn, live artfully among the mundane.  

Stricken with night, the dog breaks its own leg and vomits the stars before us. 

I can’t remember the songs. Only the women who sang them and the ground they stood on. The bluster of hair as clouds moved behind them. Praying to the old logic. We who are human never wanted the necessity. The looking up in shock. The inevitable coming to this of life. When she died I followed her to the door and held her face in my wound. They say there will be more for those who are beautiful. 


-from the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi), under D


...

At once we notice that to seek a penetration of such a work will surely prove foolhardy (as penetration is suggestive of depths). How then shall the work be addressed, properly read? I mostly read it laying down with my feet slightly elevated recuperating from a terrible swelling (and painful) caterpillar infection. I would propose thus that one good way of reading the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi) is to read it improperly,  to read it like one might hold eye-contact with a stranger beyond the appropriate micro-moment and into the creepy and awkward after-moment, to read it dumbly (and dimly) and let the infection of language take hold, set you temporarily into a raging fever.

It might also be helpful to consider the work as a pose. In the introduction to the work Sir De(s)mon-d Mott writes: “There is little if anything profound about ‘the dictionary of coincidences, volume i (hi)’. It is only appearance.” A pose (in its dumb undepthness) is often infectious without aspiring internal-mushy-ness: I touch my nose you touch your nose I touch your nose. (In fact, the mushiness, the sentimental, in Brijbasi's multiverse, is often pushed past its own expiration date, that it accomplishes an air of the post-sentimental). Esteemed feminist, children's book writer and psychoanalyst Rita Hubbert writes: “A pose is a question that can only sufficiently be answered with a counter-pose. Consider the caged monkey flaunting his swollen buttocks to passing-by tourists in some zoo. We can say that such a pose is nonsensical, a provocation, a boldness, a gesture, an embarrassment, a random act of monkey violence that exist only to egg our irritation. Which is to say, we choose to emphasize the monkey’s monkeyness, as in “you fucking monkey”, you-them-monkey vs. me-us-not-monkey, for to entertain the possible honesty of such an act, such a pose, such an art, to take such a question seriously […] threaten surrender and acknowledgment of a similar bare obviousness, a similar aching sullen assness in ourselves. Indeed, it threatens to upend all our carefully constructed identities, civilities (virility) and hierarchies.” (Long Last The Horizon, unlearn matter, 2004)

Experimental novelist No Jung Cho writes in his IShitAmerica (Innit, 2009): “To pose is to be empty and defecatingly alone, open to shattering rejection.” 

Yes. Reading Brijbasi, we are reminded of this monkey shit, this almost-human, this too-human, this troubling posing and prancing assness in ourselves. If the monkey could typewrite, we find ourselves asking, how wondrous and inspired would not his mating song be, how informed and anguished his love letters? Would he not, like so many before him (Goethe, Bartok, Bell), plagued with too much disorienting longing, explode the very confines of his expression? Noah Webster, who spent twenty-seven years collecting seventy thousand words for his dictionary, learning twenty-six languages (lies), only to die an unspectacular death from old age, was he not also in hot pursuit of love and that which we might call "the flighty", or at least a compatible mate? In his entry on love from 1828 we find the puzzling “9. A thin silk stuff. Obs.” On being broken-hearted he writes: “Having the spirits depressed or crushed by grief or despair.” 

Please ask yourself the following questions ahead of our reading group discussion next Friday. 

• A kind of unlearning of proper language connection?
  
  
• Means a kind of infancy of language?
  
  
• Words without context and context without words?
  
  
• What is a word?
  
  
• A kind of painting with words (and in words)?
  
  
• Splash splosh plosh.
  
  

• Once we were happy.
  
  
• Where is the “trauma”?
  

Above all,  the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi), like all half-decent poetry, is a love letter. It is also a traveling log, a shipwreck, and a welcomed anti-venom to the tyranny of reason. As American short-story-flash-ness it stems not, as so much such, from mute Hemingwayan macho-realism ("On the table stood one solitary flower-pot. Die, motherfucker, die.") but have one foot hanging aloof in the Eurovision tradition of the fleeting (and flamboyant) inward. 

This has been an introduction to the dictionary of coincidences volume 1 (hi) by Sean Brijbasi. If you possess a kindle and are some kind of member and wish to quickly aquavit yourself with Sean’s writing, The Unknowed Things is available for (I think, more or less) FREE on amazon. Stay attuned to developments regarding the release of the dictionary of coincidences volume i (hi) at: www.seanbrijbasi.com. 

Or www.pretendgenius.com

Or watch this trailer for tDoCv1 (hi).

Next week we will take a closer look at the dictionary's main characters and "How The Dictionary Gave Me The Evil To Sit Down In The Face Of Great Courage"

-Juniper D'artagnan