“poetry wants to be on every street corner
hissing from the cracks in the sidewalks
from the columns of print in the newspapers
on the lips of people on buses going to their
miserable jobs in the morning

poetry wants to be
in the prayers of dogs and the
screams of acrobats
in the terror of politicians
and the dreams of beautiful women

poetry wants to be
an eye through which the world will see itself
and tremble“

For his birthday, in memory.

“What am I saying?

Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

my heart still loves, will break.“

Remembering Ted Berrigan on his birthday

“And yet we are determined to speak across borders,
even if borders pass through every word.”

Remembering Ingeborg Bachmann on her birthday.

“People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.”

Remembering the inimitable Mary MacLane on her birthday.

“We come crawling through these cracks, orphans, lobotomies; if you ask me what I want, I'll tell you. I want everything. Whole rotten world come down and break.“

Remembering Kathy Acker, one of the greats, on her birthday.

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.“

Remembering Anais Nin on her birthday.

“Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine“

“Storm the Reality Studio. And retake the universe.
“
Remembering William S. Burroughs on his birthday.

“Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”

Remembering Sarah Kane today on her birthday.

“Put something down.
Put something down some day.
Put something down some day in.
Put something down some day in my.
In my hand.
In my hand right.
In my hand writing.
Put something down some day in my hand writing. “

Remembering Gertrude Stein on her birthday.

“There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.“

Remembering James Joyce on his birthday.

“I am a most fleshly man, and see
in your body what stirs my spirit.
And my spirit is intimate of my hand,
intimate of my breast and heart,
intimate of my parted lips
that would seek their solace
in your lips.“

Remembering Robert Duncan on his birthday.

“How can I be kind? How can I find bird-relief in the nest-building of day-to-day? Necessity supplies no velvet wing with which to escape. I am indeed and mortally pierced with the seeds of love.”

Remembering Elizabeth Smart on her birthday.

“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”

Remembering Mina Loy on her birthday.

“Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense — the creative act.“

“I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. My poems are acts of force and violence directed against the evil which murders us all.“

Remembering Kenneth Rexroth on his birthday.

“Nothing will prevent me, neither close attention nor the desire to be exact, from writing words that sing.“

Remembering Jean Genet on his birthday.

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.“

Remembering Philip K. Dick on his birthday.

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

Honored to share a birthday with Shirley Jackson. Remembering her today.

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”

Remembering Gustave Flaubert on his birthday.

“The Soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend –
Or the most agonizing Spy –
An Enemy – could send –

Secure against its own –
No treason it can fear –
Itself – its Sovereign – of itself
The Soul should stand in Awe –“

Remembering Emily Dickinson on her birthday.

“Life originally came from miles of dead parties, decomposing cardboard, sequins, noise makers and sadness.“

Remembering Steven Jesse Bernstein on his birthday.

“You, too, with all
the instrangedness in you,
instrange yourself,
deeper“

Remembering Paul Celan on his birthday.

“A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.“

Remembering Anne Sexton on her birthday.

“We name us and then we are lost, tamed
I choose words, more words, to cure the tameness, not the wildness.“

A happy birthday today to one of my favourite poets and visionaries,, Alice Notley.

“Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.“

Remembering Sylvia Plath on her birthday.

“I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.”

Remembering Arthur Rimbaud on his birthday.

“Come to the lights my sisters and take what you need
Doesn't matter, my brothers, your Sunday creed
'Cause each one's a lover to this winter night star
A pilgrim, a pioneer, that's who you are.“

Remembering Laura Nyro on her birthday.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.“

Remembering Oscar Wilde on his birthday.

“this is not a spell
it is an act of desperation
the poem dictated to me by another will
a kind of being writing is
opposite myself i recognize these hands
smash the keys in
the necessary assertion of reality“

Remembering bpNichol on his birthday

“The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.“

Remembering Ken Kesey on his birthday.

“Words can strip the power from a memory or an event. Words can cut the ropes of an experience. Breaking silence about an experience can break the chains of the code of silence. Describing the once indescribable can dismantle the power of taboo.“

Remembering David Wojnarowicz on his birthday.

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.“

Remembering Antonin Artaud on his birthday.

“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn. “

Remembering Dorothy Parker on her birthday.

A stranger appears, found sleeping on a church pew, and is taken in by the insular religious community there. In an effort to uncover who our recalictrant protagonist is, the community members reveal themselves, oftentimes inadvertently. What begins as welcoming turns to suspicion and mistrust as the community prepares for a festival. Lacey writes her story with a gathering menace that recalls the work of Shirley Jackson. A compelling read.

“I am nothing to put to rest. I am nothing but a fireball. Take it.
Take it and something will erupt.
Tomorrow, no noisy mournings. Tomorrow, a collection of regrets.
We'd wanted them for so long. They can ruin our lives.
We'll read about them in our biographies when we're dead, dead, stone-cold dead.
A paragraph about what we never once mentioned,
A paragraph describing how we managed a secret.“

Remembering Lydia Tomkiw on her birthday.

Reading Christopher Moore is like watching a juggler deftly toss some flaming torches, razor sharp knives, and adorable gerbils mid-air and keep them aflight. This compulsively readable slice of noir features drag kings, a bartender turned P.I., a corrupt vice squad, an ancient Chinese dragon, and a moonman, among other indelible characters, all propelled into a twisty plot. Irreverent and bawdy; an utterly delightful page turner.

“The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of
people moving and standing.

Those standing resemble stories, like stones, coal from the
death of plants, bricks in the shape of teeth.

I begin now to write down all the places I have not been—
starting with the most distant.

I build houses that I will not inhabit.“

Sad to hear of Keith Waldrop's passing. A poet, translator, and founder of Burning Deck Press, his work means so much.

“All who want me would like to eat me up, But I am too expansive and am open to all sides, desire this here and that there.“

Remembering the audacious and inimitable Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven on her birthday.

Photo by Man Ray.

“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.“

Remembering my favourite neurasthenic, Marcel Proust, on his birthday.

“Instead I have told my story over and over
at parties, on the edge of meetings, my life
clenched in my fist, my eyes brittle as glass.

Ashamed, people turned their faces away
from the woman ranting, asking: Justice,
stretch out your hand. Come down, glittering,
from where you have hidden yourself away.“

Sad to learn of the passing of Minnie Bruce Pratt. May her poems continue to be read and cherished. RIP.

“I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews. I would roll like frenetic blood on the slow current of the eye of words turned into mad horses into fresh children into clots into curfew into vestiges of temples into precious stones remote enough to discourage miners. Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger.”

Remembering Aimé Césaire on his birthday.

“And yet we are determined to speak across borders,
even if borders pass through every word.”

Remembering Ingeborg Bachmann on her birthday.

“When I write, I solemnly visit myself.“

“Be plural, like the universe!“

Remembering Fernando Pessoa and his protean plurality on his birthday.

“Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of
the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.“

Remembering Lorca's birthday.

“The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much and laugh at the inevitable.“

Remembering Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, the Divine Marquis, on his birthday.

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a
miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd
from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.“

Remembering Walt Whitman on his birthday.

“We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.”

Remembering Angela Carter on her birthday.

This hefty and stunning book looks at the performance collective Blacklips, where Antony Hegarty performed as Fiona Blue before he formed the chamberpop ensemble Antony & the Johnsons. Here those years, 1992 through 1995, come alive through interivews, essays, and photographs as well as scripts of some of the weekly plays that were performed at the Pyramid Club in New York City. Captures a vital moment where underground art flourished.

“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.“

A happy birthday today to the inimitable John Waters.

“'Even freaks need homes, countries, language, communication.
“'The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in. Anywhere. It is for you, freaks my loves, I am writing and it is about you. Since humans enjoy moralizing, over and over again they attack us.
“Language presupposes community. Therefore without you, nothing I say has any meaning. Without love or language, I do not exist.“

Remembering Kathy Acker on her b-day.

“And we're all poetry because we're compressed and lyrical
Or vast I'm full of their endless lines they're full of my care“

So excited to find that Alice Notley has published a new book. The Speak Angel Series is a hefty 600+ page epic. Eager to dive into this and see where Notley's extraordinary and visionary imagination will take us next. I love the peculiar music of her poetry and the dedication she has to her singular vision.