oak and mercury

tester

2005-06-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

this is a test

eL pOBRE mOUSE #3

2005-05-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

el pobre mouse #3

accepting submissions
thru september 1, 2005 {tell yr friends}

we like it experi mental whatever that is
we like it 5 pages or less poetry, hybrid or prose

we like it when you email it to

sarahandkyle@earthlink.net

or send it snail mail to
pobre mouse
899 oak #7
san francisco ca 94117

love,
eds. sara larsen & kyle kaufman

if you ask us how we want it we'll say man to man

2005-05-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

favorite song to dance crazy too without thinking or rational movement:
AT&T--pavement--from the album "wowee zowee"

fav. small press book right now (tho there are so many--):
Red Juice--Hoa Nguyen--Effing Press, put out by Scott Pierce down in Austin.

fav. piece of furniture in my apartment:
bed by big windows

fav. album this week:
Black on Both Sides--Mos Def

fav. part of body right now:
hips

fav. perplexity:
queer cloud-light suffered on beach whiskey-mambo

its impossible to get the feeling i'm feeling right now down, especially list form.

lets percolate in some matter loose in mind--the yeats reader is pretty great--i still have so many pobre mice--in a box here--we don't need no haters--celebrate orangeness of 7:42 pm--watch motorcycle diaries--all night we've been talking to liars; and its just not in the style of tigers--so supersize it; passing deaf dogs on waller street--coffee, i've become a cliche--in the murderousness of the world
still gotta say: dancedance
fucknotdancing; i want to have a dance dance party; so what

a most basic poetic statement

2005-05-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

sweet accord; there are no great possessions; just what is left; on a few; papers; hopefully;
not burnt; in "inappropriate" libraries; or book; stores;
my friends; become married; pregnant; book publishers; books published; make; a circuit; a most ancient; rhizome; of energy;
the crown; blooms;
make sure yr work; blooms; is manifest; it belongs to everyone; now;
as art; transcends the artist;
observe money; will it buy; you;
the dance; the eye; the intellect; will it to bring;
you what you; need; don't accept poverty; poverty is what; institutions give;
you; fight them; everyone; has to be; a supporter; i guess i can say; of each other;
everyone; has to be a supporter; of each other
there must be; a contentment; with what is produced; this is; art; be
proud of it; study; be rigorous; be content; that you; are good enough; because;
the world is; the earth is; good enough
this is a start; a most basic poetics

awareness outside our scope:

2005-05-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

They let the country be erased, leaving a blank slate that they could rebuild in their image. This was the goal of the war".

naomi klein on the reason there is no real reconstruction happening in baghdad--except in the american "green zone"--from her talk "How To End the War"--see www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21980/

this is an excellent article on whats really happening in iraq right now, and i very much recommend it--

also, news from University of Poetry, be aware of this project:
Contact: Marvin X, 510.472.9589 or mrvnx@yahoo.com
East Coast: Elliot Bey, 215.991.5926

press release reads as follows:

"Crack a book before you're booked for crack."
--Paul Cobb, Publisher, Post Newspapers

The Post Newspaper Group and the University of Poetry is organizing the Hug a Thug Book Club to increase literacy in the community by distributing books first throughout the neighborhood as an educational and crime prevention method. We would like a brother or sister to read a book before they do thirty years to life, not after, if possible. Books would be given out by on the street or wherever youth gather, in barber shops, beauty shops, record stores, night clubs to increase social awareness and literacy. After all, Malcolm X was a thug before he read books; Huey Newton was a thug before he read books.

We will also distribute books to juvenile halls, prisons, domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, mental health and drug programs, schools and elsewhere. Clients with reading problems would be given attention.

The project will involve authors reading books at such sites to serve as role models to clients. Let the clients meet the authors and dialogue with them. One purpose would be to discuss the how the clients can write books and possibly transform their lives.

We would publish an anthology of client writings to encourage literacy as therapy and self improvement.

There will be a benefit for the Hug a Thug Book Club in April or May 2005 at the San Francisco War Memorial building to raise funds to purchase books from authors, publishers and bookstores. We want to support local authors (especially self published), publishers and bookstores as an example of economic unity. The benefit would feature persons such as actor Danny Glover, Dr. Julia Hare, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed and other prominent individuals in Bay Area arts and letters.

The benefit would be followed by a monthly lecture and/or forum on books and other critical issues but the focus would be literacy, including workshops on reading, writing, publishing, spoken word and other related topics. For more detail, see Marvin X's Manifesto for The University of Poetry that suggest this project can and should be done nationwide, at least in the twenty seven cities heavily populated by African Americans as suggested by Amiri Baraka.

Other supporters include the Vanguard Foundation, Global International Entertainment, the Bay Area Black Publishers Association and Black Bird Press. If you would like to be a sponsor or supporter of this project, or would like to donate books, contact Marvin X at the above address. {end of press release}

happy bday

2005-05-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

happy birthday my good friend kyle, the big 30. much love!

la mala educacion de sarita maria

2005-05-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

here i am again looking at the walls of my cubicle here. last night i watched movies all night--first "finding neverland"--which made me just want to become a fairy--or tinkerbell, a light--fly out the window--and i love johnny depp--isn't that so pre-teen?--but he is the most brilliant and inventive actor--out there--seems to me--also watched half of pedro almodovar's "la mala educacion"--"bad education"--it was story within a story within a story--once you knew a character, he turns out to be a different character altogether--fucking fabulous--except i fell asleep--didn't see the end--yet

wrote chance poem using words from "the golden bough" by frazer--and words from--audio commentary on "finding neverland"--wrote until jack got home--that was the time limit--till jack got home from school--one and a half pages

dustin hoffman in my poem

writing alot using chance--techniques--i am studying so much myth--as you know--my friends--that chance seems appropriate--it is very grounding

very grounding--to let go of the 'self'--the "i wrote this out of my head"--tho i did write it--i did pick my method--my sources--but to recind some control--thats good, very good.

and it is interesting to write by chance methods within a form--like chance in a sestina--which is a great and difficult--i thought--form.

whats everyone else doing right now? whats working on--mon paramours

white goddess and suchly thingys

2005-05-08T21:20:00.000-07:00

this is a very ancient story--we percieve, astonished--the white goddess, by robert graves is--well, pound says we must--read--(read: abc of reading, as i am paraphrasing from memory)--i'm only in the first chapter of the white goddess--titled "the battle of the trees"--from the cad goddeu--my brain overfloweth--and whatnot--somewhat like a tree--"the derwydd, or Druid, or poet, was an 'oak-seer'"--(pg 39)--the importance of this book--is the rigorous steep--ing--in myth--especially--the immanance of--the nine-fold muse--"patroness of the white magic of poetry"--(back cover)--anyway--i will not pretend that i can--pontificate--endless, analytic, or just telling what the book is about--because it would be--bullshitting you, if i--did try--all i can say is--i love reading--i love reading--and i love reading this book--

according the the welsh minstrel poets--who were not the court-bards--influenced by politicos--but who

"went from village to village, or farm-house to farm-house, entertaining under the trees or in the chimney corner according to the season. It was they who kept alive an astonishingly ancient literary tradition, mainly in the form of popular tales which preserved fragments not only of pre-Cymric, but of pre-Goidelic myth, some of which goes back to the Stone Age. Their poetic principles are summed up in a Triad in the Llyfr Coch Hergest ('The Red Book of Hergest;):

Three things that enrich the poet:
Myths, poetic power, a store of ancient verse." (pgs 19-20)

i quote this at length bc it--is so important--there needs to be no mistake--from welsh minstrel poets to ezra pound--poets--must--study--rigorously--and i do think that these three things are invaluable to poets--as well as--i'm sure--some things other--
went to a poetry reading the other day--where i won't say for now--but wondered who everyone was reading outside of their own work--and how deep--then--how deep have i read--and how much deeper--do i challenge myself to go--will not work--just on the surface--the face--of--but hold that--as well as--take it further--

i'm writing circular here--actually no--rhizomic--branches everywhere--branches and roots--o there is another great book!--roots and branches--by robert duncan--another book to put on the ole list!--much love muchly dispersed--me to you

pacific

2005-05-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

IMG_1951
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

somewhere on rt 1
some rough day last february
coming back to sf from
santa cruz

its better in the matinee, the dark of the matinee

2005-05-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

just woke up from the sleep you can only sleep when you've stayed up the previous night drinking whiskey with yr friends, dancing around a hotel room.

its a grey morning. i dreamt i was reading bad poetry interspersed with triangles to a carful of un-interesteds. and i think i flew somewhere. i often have dreams where i fly around or where i'm near the ocean. someone told me neptune was in my 7th house--that's why i'm dreaming of beaches--clear geometric opulescent carribeans--hovering tsunami waves (i've had that one for years, before even the one that happened a few months ago)--which sometimes crash and sometimes just stay poised--like that famous japanese tsunami painting (or woodblock??)--
i think its coffee time--perhaps it should be shower time before that--i am greasy and can smell my blood alcohal--

for those who live in sf~~~i hear there is an amazing movie on jazz great cecil taylor playing at the roxy right now--he talks alot in it, what he says applicable of course to all arts and poets--i haven't seen it yet myself.~~~also, there is an open poetry reading in dolores park tonight at 7 which sounds interesting. i have no idea who put it together but i think i'll go~~AND if you haven't been by PENS AND NEEDLES zine store on 14th street at guerrero you should swing by and check it out--lots of zines and small press mags, handmade crafts, arts, and the lovely diy anarchistic spirit that 14th street is doing so well. support them, then get inspired and make something!

luce

2005-05-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

IMG_0939
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

lucy-goosy
on loan from julie g
while she is in england
studying

sara

2005-05-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

Jack 031
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

me
in
drag.

ha HA!

2005-05-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

this has been a long day at the desk of intake. reading as much as possible all day and at times coming here but not really knowing what to say--o well--

you know, my best friend julie and i used to trade our private journals with each other back when we lived in filthydel--thats what this blog feels like--trading ideas that might otherwise just dissolve amongst papers and faxes
and all the blah regalia of workingdom. those of us who write these at work, have taken workingdom and transformed it! HA! (i will be paid to write, somehow). love and kisses.

All without reservation that man
imagines is relatively true, what
he has not imagined IS absolutely.
jess

"her power is to open what is shut, shut what is open" OVID

2005-05-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

this morning, moss on the steps, listening on my way to work to a love supreme--downpour.

last night met kyle over at abir cafe and read new work to each other. i realized as we talked that i am practicing a poetics of surrender--surrender to the metaphor, surrender to the dance, to the music. going thru the work submitted to pobre mouse (lit mag i co-edit w/ kyle kaufman), i noticed that alot of people's work is based on the eye--the image--especially the cinematic eye, which is something other than the human eye--the eye that captures, the eye that frames--and in a way it's interesting--to harness energy within a framework--as in magic, within the circle--but something about this bothers me--i can't place what it is exactly--what is it about the precedence of the framing eye? i feel more akin to the dance, riding with the rhythem and the sound--& this is not antithetical to the eye, but a balancing polarity--

i've been working on alot of poems that start with whatever it is i see--pane of glass--tree--i'm right there within the image as well. but also working within the framework of music--writing to stravinsky, coltrane, pavement. and my poem rides that. --and writing on the typewriter--slow pace of type, slappy beat of type....this is what it is right now.

reads: Cantos Ezra Pound; The Spiral Dance Starhawk; The White Goddess Robert Graves; Loba Diane di Prima; Magnetic Fields Andre Breton

sara and sf

2005-05-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

sara and sf
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

el pobre #2 collage party

2005-05-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

el pobre #2 collage party
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

oakandmercury.com

2005-05-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

oakandmercury.com
Originally uploaded by saramarialarsen.

alright.

2005-05-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

san francisco rainy day here, first week of may, and i'm wearing my glasses.
this grey feeling happening, reading books at work, shirking work. did the whole blog thing on a whim, another way to keep up with friends, etc..
this morning is rather usual: cold coffee, people coughing on MUNI, flowery dress, boots,...reading "the spiral dance". thinking about robert duncan, in the mood for robert duncan, wish i had brought a robert duncan book, is lisa jarnot still writing his bio, i wonder?
ok friends, i'll be back, bearing photos and such, will torture you with how cute my frickin kittycat is, and how rainy sf is today. love, s*