Everyone was working it out

I just invented Podcasting for myself. I mean, I just found out what it is. So I guess I discovered it. But anyway, in case you are the way I was and don't know what Podcasting is, I'll tell you.

So basically Podcasting is where you can get radio shows automatically set up to get into your computer or, in my case, phone. People record these shows with their friends and put them somewhere so when you "subscribe" you can hear them. What I do is I plug the tape adapter thing into my phone and the other end into my car's cassette player and listen to: Car Talk, This American Life, and The Orange Alert Podcast.

So now that I've told the people who don't know what one is, can the people who do know please tell me what are some good podcasts to listen to/subscribe at?

In return, I'll tell you that this video, which I saw at Montevidayo, is pert huh:


I read through a bunch of my old blog posts. It's different how I did it before and how I do it now. I used to write about Bruce Springsteen a lot more.

Most likely you'll go your way and I'll go to an open mic tonight. I am excited about that out of all proportion. I used to talk about the Boss but now it's always about the books and now I want to say that for a little while there including now I am against creativity.

==BREAK==

OK, it's tomorrow and I went to the open mic last night. It was awesome. There were people who played songs on guitar and were working it all out and there were people who read poems they wrote earlier in the day. There were a lot of rhyming poems that rhymed words like "way" with "say."

It felt really good to get in the mix a bit, see people working it out for themselves. Everyone was working it out. Like, liking poetry maybe or just talking.

I went with Joe and Justin and I might start a blog called EveryOpenMic. My holy grail is to go to a reading and hear three poets make the same rhyme. When that happens, I will stand up, arms raised over my head, and yell, "Done!"

The thing I like about bad poetry is that no one is wrong about what it is. Most people, though fewer, know what good poetry is, too. But then there is the other majority of poetry, which is difficult to agree on. Some people like it and some don't.

In the presence of a mediocre poem, everyone gets nervous. Do I like it? What is it about?

Then maybe there is a line in the poem that is funny, and the sighs of relief come out sounding like laughter.

Or perhaps the mediocre poem is written by a friend, and thereby becomes a good poem. Perhaps the mediocre poem is written by a mediocre poet! who has sweater-wearing friends.

I am afraid that many books are not so good but are books because of friendliness.

But I am not afraid that this means anything! It doesn't!

My book is mediocre-at-best, fuck. Why worry? I still want many people to read it and I think many people will enjoy it. Some of the poems, like "It's Down to MOM or CLAUDIIIIIINE" are great.

The Seinfeld rerun last night was merely okay.

Nicholson Baker, or more accurately Paul Chowder in Baker's novel The Anthologist, maintains that great poets only have a couple great poems. The rest of their work is supporting material. It shows that the great poems weren't flukes.

That's making too much of it, I think.

I want to make less of poetry. It's good to enjoy it when an enjoyable poem comes around. Poets though some of them make it their lifework to nail it down, lock it in.

I guess we have to go out searching for poems we like. Somehow this seems drearier than looking for TV shows we like.

The thing to do

I mean the thing for me to do is to let poetry happen naturally. I've read only a handful of poems in the last year or whatever that I really, really, like wow Mom check this out, liked.

I mean a handful of poems that I didn't have to work however hard at liking.

Which I don't think is a bad thing. I mean, that's awesome. That's a lot. My mom anyway will tell me sometimes that not only does she love me, she likes me too.

I want to understand everything and own it, but that happens In Due Course.

Here's a poem by Paul Celan from Guernica. We'll work it out.

IN LIZARD
skins, Epi-
leptic,
I bed you, on the sills,
the gable
holes
infill us, with lightsoil.