Beach Ustream

                Jacob Steinberg and Spencer Madsen came together one Sunday night for poetry. Usually Sunday nights are dedicated to football. Poetry is better than football. Fuck football. On June 19^th we had the explicit pleasure of witnessing this New York duo read online. Jupiter, Florida was their location, specifically a house roughly six miles away from the beach. To make the occasion even more special Spencer quit his job in a dramatic fashion and high-tailed it down to Steinberg’s house. You know, because poetry ought to be this dramatic, especially on the beach. 

                Beach Poetry could become a possible genre. Spencer Madsen wrote poems on the beach, making them ‘beach poetry’ or, as Frank Hinton put it ‘shoretry’. As Spencer spent a great deal of time in Florida, he overheard children’s conversations. Florida conversations by children tend to be a bit ridiculous. Somehow the mixture of tacky culture alongside a lack of any intellectual rigor (as per Spencer, nobody cares about art in Miami) makes it one of the wealthiest pieces of trash in the entire country if not the world. 

                I like how Spencer and Jacob tore apart Miami artists. That was fantastic. Each one completed the other’s thought about the sheer uselessness of the artists there, particularly one such idiot who wanted to call his gallery “Formalism” as he thought that would be the most radical name for it. Personally I’m amazed artists even live in Miami. Usually I figure artists move to Miami, no actual art originates from that location. How both Spencer and Jacob manage to survive in such a hostile, difficult, and stupid environment is beyond me. At least those mediocre artists paid for this duo’s sushi. So they had some value: transferring money to worthy poets. 

                Spencer read a poem from “Let People Poems”. He welcomed us to his poem. After we had been brought into the poem’s space, he began. I’m a big fan of Let People Poems. Reading about a sad human feels realistic. What I hope is someday Spencer finds ‘true love’. Or at the very least that he gets to ride his bike with someone sweet. 

                “Porn” Jackson Nieuwland’s chapbook received attention. For his poem Jackson focused on the importance of cuddling. Cuddling is a lost art form. As Jackson often focuses on the fantastic-ness of the world this feels like a logical place for him to explore. I’m amazed he managed to send his chapbook all the way to Mr. Steinberg’s address in Florida. Guess porn moves quickly. Jacob read it with his characteristic swag. As a bonus, he read his poems on “NewWaveVomit” as well. That was not all he needed to let out.

                Upon Jacob showing off his pink underwear and one rib, Spencer began reading. They had a ‘relay race’ poetry reading. “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” interested Spencer. As these were small pieces it fit in nicely to the poetry selections. David Foster Wallace wrote this book, a collection of 23 short stories. I miss him and feel a bit strange that “The Pale King” even got published as it is a bit of an ‘incomplete’ book of his. 

                I liked the focus on Julio Cortazar. Jacob translated these poems along with reading them. Apparently no one has bothered to translate his work into English, or precious little of it. Both Jacob Steinberg and Stephen Tully Dierks happen to be huge fans of this writer. Hopefully I can find more of it at some point, it is fantastic. 

                To show they were open to more experimental forms of prose they read “TLC’s” song “Waterfalls”. Or rather, Jacob did not read this, he felt it. I remember where I was when I first heard “Waterfalls”. For me, this song spoke volumes to me. Grade school suddenly became comprehensible with the help of this magnificent group. Suddenly everything in my life gained meaning thanks to TLC and this song in particular. 

                “Thought Catalog” came up. Spencer read his rejected article. “How to want to quit your Job” was the name of his article. In it he described in vivid detail about the dread of facing your job. Each bit mentioned the alarm clock, shower, train, bus, and thinking about the difference between you at home versus you at your workplace. Hearing him mention the tiniest of details convinces me people may be interested in the anguish of a workplace. Somehow I made it through five years with trepidation about such uncomfortable conversations with bosses.  

                Spencer will be coming out with a book. 95% of everything he’s ever written on the internet shall be removed. All of a sudden he’ll restart his brand (known as ‘rebranding’ by Impossible Mike) and become a new internet person. I think this is great idea. The book (entitled ‘A Million Bears’) will bring Spencer Madsen the poetry groupies he’s always wanted. 

                Carolyn DeCarlo had her poem read. This gets extremely explicit. While I’d like to explain what happens in the poem, I don’t want to ruin it. Details help build the scene and contribute to the mood of the poem. Eventually the focus shifts away from the individual’s perspective on pleasure to helping others. 

                “Goldfish” talked about the stupidity of fish. Jacob thought the Goldfish had it easy. They don’t remember anything. Instead of engaging or remembering things they manage to live in the moment, not experiencing pain. Love can copy this fleeting moment. Having these intense emotions means you often forget about the past and hope for the best future. 

                We watched as Spencer and Jacob bore their very souls at the end. Seeing the two of them bond at the end helped me understand how important words can be. These two were brought together by a love of the word. Now I hope to see them do future ustreams as this unstoppable poetic force. Perhaps they might even bring some semblance of intelligence to the most vapid state in the union but that may be asking too much.

Ear Eater #6

                I sat ready. Food surrounded me waiting for consumption. My computer screen quivered with anticipation as I typed words into it. A few stared vacantly into their computer screens. They knew something was about to happen, something amazing, something that would change their lives forever and ever. 

                Steve Roggenbuck’s face emerged from the darkness. From darkness comes light. His teeth shone brightly out of the darkness. I’m certain Frank Hinton was happy. Everyone who was there appeared to be glad to see her. Words escape me in describing her attire. Photos failed to capture her radiating beauty. 

                All sorts of people were at the official gathering. Shaun Gannon appeared. Holding a camera Shaun was the videographer for the event. We heard countless people introduce and network among each other. In order to avoid the noise Steve showed off the surrounding area. Firefighters stood by outside. They were at the ready in case things got too hot for the poetry reading. 

                 Andrew James Weatherhead came out to Chicago from New York. While he introduced himself he explained how New York audiences were a bit more difficult than in Chicago. Though he had a slow delivery it was funny. Some of his poems had amazing lines, such as “Four more beers”, “Emails are unbelievable”, “Sleds sledding on other sleds” along with reading tweets. Metazen received some attention as Andrew read a few poems he had submitted to Frank Hinton’s site. Using weird details (ink jet printers, Statue of Liberty, etc.) made the poems that more graspable. 

                Frank Hinton read. “Fantastical Magical Life” got played.  According to Cassandra Troyan this was the first time anything like this had been done at Ear Eater. We watched her type things into a computer for the video. Once that had finished she read in a computerized voice with the caption “Sad Cave” above it. That was the title of the poem.  A girl and a boy hung out together. Each one began to explore the other, slowly, gently. Both of them rode in a boat together. Having such a long one drew me into the material. While it lasted 37 minutes it had become a whole environment with its short, suggestive sentences.

                Timothy Sanders read at the actual, in real life party. He’s the author of “Orange Juice”. According to Cassandra Troyan the book sold out. Coming all the way from Austin, Texas he began with a poem about a growling thing. I liked his delivery. Each word came out so clearly. For the first poem, he did a fantastic job of mentioning every single possible detail, how the animal moves, what it thinks, what it says, etc. Smells were described. Anything you could possibly want a description of had been included.  

                Meghan Lamb continued the evening. Introduced as a ‘poly-artist’ she had visuals and sound backing her up. The visuals included pieces of Americana, bits of farms, clear blue skies, etc. None of these are things I encounter on a regular basis. Her poem followed the video beside her to some degree. Listening to it explain the process of aging, awareness, and the bleakness of years passing. Growing up can be a bit gross and awkward. The poem felt extremely, unrelentingly dark. She asked why she pushed away all those bits of childhood, too quickly it felts. Stuffed animals were thrown on the floor. An ambient noise built up slowly. Using the same words over and over again made sense towards the end as Meghan made an entire environment come near collapse.

                Closing the evening was Mike Kitchell (known as “Impossible Mike” for the impossibility of his greatness). “A Contingency of Evil” got read first. He read it with a huge amount of energy. This one appeared to be bleak and surreal. Something was done with a millipede, something I cannot repeat on here nor want to. Really it takes a lot to shock me but the extreme details and gruesome actions were quite perverse. Later that evening I had nightmares about millipedes. 

                Seeing all the poets after the reading was exciting. We got a great feel of how they were normally. Great amounts of alcohol were consumed in the name of art. The inside of the refrigerator revealed that I and Cassandra Troyan enjoy the same brand of hummus, the rich creamy taste of Sabra. Everyone grew merry at the end. Virtual hugs were exchanged. It was a great performance. Ear Eater forever!

Poncho Peligroso’s Back!

                Many social media platforms missed Poncho during his vacation from the internet. Suddenly going from a tweet an hour to nothing is jarring to say the least. Writing a thesis paper isn’t the same as being the 2011 Poet Laureate. People expect to come to your presence on Facebook, on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Wordpress, or on Goodreads. 

                I remember where I was when I heard he was printing out his thesis. Everyone in the thread made specifically for online literary types grew excited. As we pictured his thesis, all hot and naked on the printer, unseemly images poured into our minds. We imagined his thesis as a being, a beautiful being with the gender we were attracted to, waiting for us. The thesis began discussing Frank Hinton’s poetry, it began discussing his poetry, and it began to subtly belittle critics of boykittens. Our eyes glazed over as his thesis did a little dance for us. Clearly that time spent practicing yoga paid off as it was infinitely flexible. 

                That time is over. We have him back to his rightful habitat not in some silly school learning things, but on here, on the internet, with us. A lot happened during his time away. First, in an attempt to garner him even more fame occurred in two deft swoops. We saw a Facebook fan page created in his honor, celebrating the 2011 Poet Laureate. Pictures were put up, celebrating him. Each time I saw an update I thought “Omar De Col, that macro fiend, is probably behind this page”. "Cutestboykitten" gave away the creator fairly quickly.  Of course this pales in comparison to the second, infinitely more epic leap to internet stardom.

                Google acknowledged Poncho’s status as the undisputed 2011 Poet Laureate. Wikipedia hadn’t gotten the memo. So we had to bring it to them. The first edit of his page proved to be effective. Eventually the article fell into some form of information anarchy. Reading the discussion page gave me the impression I was watching our gridlocked government decide how to screw people over by raising taxes or eliminating basic social services. After the article got deleted (though the supporters of Poncho’s Literary Activism were strong) the argument remains encased for all to remember in glossy internet amber. Perhaps one day we may extract that Wikipedia DNA to make a new page. 

                May 5^th officially announced Poncho had returned as the undisputed champion of the 2011 Poet Laureate Google bomb. For on that day, he released new poetry. It had been a while but finally I got new Poncho. “4 Bee Poems” is what I found on ‘AllWriteThen’ a twee name for a poetry blog. The poems themselves were great.

                Bees were the focus of each one. Poncho paid close attention to their smallness and sweetness rather than the stinger. In the first one, the bee transfers knowledge over to other bees. Realizing its own weakness it still manages to help others. The consecutive three go into even more affectionate territory, even a certain longing for affection of wanting love. For being a bee is not something we normally associate with kindness. More often we think about the pain they close instead of the care they have for flowers, for pollination. They are responsible for so much in agriculture. If you want to be nice to them, it would be real swell if you didn’t shriek and scream hysterically if they want to drink your Sunkist beverage. Let them. They have earned it.

                Twitter is a big part of Poncho’s appeal. His twitter tweets at some unfathomably fast rate. Over 12,000 tweets is something to be proud of, I think. Especially considering how many of them are so weird, so interesting, devoid of links, just thoughts. A poem of his called “Show Your Horse The Internet. What have you done” on the knitcore blog displays his skill of re-configuring the tweets of horse_ebooks and Google searches into a poem. Meaningless phrases are woven together to form a total whole. It feels sad, playful, weird and, like much of Poncho’s work, somewhat funny. 

                Reading new stuff from Poncho is a real treat. He seems to be in touch with his surroundings and his perspective on house plants and bees makes me happy. Too often we ignore what’s around us for what is considered important or relevant to our daily lives. Poncho’s work reminds us to pay attention to the little details.

Frank Hinton

               I have focused on Steve Roggenbuck’s latest endeavor, Internet Poetry on this blog before. While the whole site offers a plethora of material yanked from the internet’s general indifference, one piece got stuck in my head. That was Frank Hinton’s piece, which apparently is called “unrequested livejasmin.com pop-up”. I thought about it a lot and decided to find out a little more about this person.

                Frank Hinton keeps busy. Halifax, Nova Scotia doesn’t really offer a great deal of activities, excluding an airline (Air Canada Jazz) which elicits some of the angriest emotions I can muster out of my near-uniform polite attitude. I reckon Frank Hinton is the chief exporter of poetry and literature for the general Halifax metropolitan area.  Besides writing her own poetry, she’s also an editor and founder of the online literary journal Metazen. Metazen is probably one of the best places to publish literature online, since they tend to curate the work and apply such abnormal things like standards. Originally it started as a place to post her drunken writing. As someone who created a Facebook group for this sole purpose, it is reassuring to know some drunken thoughts transform themselves into full-bodied literary journals.

                Obviously she is a female and writes under a male pseudonym Frank who she refers to as “A sad man, a pathetic man”. How she explains it is her enjoyment of ambiguity. Living on a gender pendulum, it allows a greater amount of freedom than simply being thought of as a ‘male’ or ‘female’ writer. There are countless articles explaining how this kind of perception (either as a male or female writer) can create a certain expectation. By using an obvious pseudonym, it makes things more interesting. Her online persona is extremely shadowy, mysterious. We don’t really know much about her besides her writing. Keeping mysterious yet accessible makes the work more interesting, as I find it can be easier to write something when I know I’m anonymous. The pain of writing something with your actual name attached probably contributes to a great deal of dishonesty within literature, as if the writer is trying to impress you in some small way. Frank Hinton’s writing is direct painfully so at times. 

                She has a few poems lying around in odds and ends. Apparently she also has a chapbook called “I don’t respect female expression” coming out around the end of April from Safety Third Enterprises. But I haven’t read it. So I won’t go over it. Instead, I’ll go over her poems she’s had lying around, whatever I could find basically. Most of these I found on her Spartan-style Tumblr which you can access here. Though I won’t review every one of these, I do recommend reading all of them. 

                Her piece for Lamination Colony, called “How to be Me, an Instructional Video narrated by Frank Hinton” shows a certain playfulness. In here you learn how to hate people on a bus, chew off your fingernail in public (which is an actual skill) and how to avoid negative thinking upon waking up. Since she does have this on the internet, she explains how to post online in order to flame or remain anonymous (both good choices). Along with these apparent instructions is the final sentence which states “You were once a child and you had it all”. That’s probably one of my favorite lines of hers. Children get lucky with the amount of happiness they get. Then come teenage years they grow overly angst-ridden and depressed. Finally, in their twenties they begin trying to improve themselves through questionable practices of self-help, self-improvement and other endeavors of dubious merit. 

                Relationships get a lot of attention in her poetry. Every word she uses has a distinct meaning or conveys a particular meaning. In “I’d be a Barbie without him” she takes on a female persona. Frank becomes one of the antagonists in this story/poem. Jumping between ages, you see the evolving attitude and increasing knowledge of sexuality. Some of it is humorous, like at age 17 when she tried to return the rock to Glenn but Glenn didn’t live there anymore. Other instances show Frank as a 12 year old, then what I’d think was a first-time at 18, I could be wrong. Everything is in shadows here. Nothing really is fully explained, but as time progresses; certain numbness sets in followed by a plea at the end. 

                Part of my joy reading these are how well she describes various feelings about love. Love is a difficult thing to write about without falling into the extremes of anger, sadness, despair, happiness, coy, and so on. Frank Hinton avoids these. She writes things with an honesty that’s hard to find. Being honest could be funny or tragic, it depends on the circumstances and often her work can be both.  Her chapbook will explore these themes even further.

Omar De Col

                Omar De Col is some British poetry guy. When I look at his name, I think he could be a historical figure who was well known for collecting exotic insects. I don’t know why his name does this for me. Perhaps it’s the “De” which creates an unnecessary pause in my mind. Also, I want to call him Omar De LOL for when he does something funny.

                Most of what he does is genuinely funny. Even his Tumblr shows off his mix of honesty and humor. It gives off a feeling of sweetness and confidence in short concise sentences or phrases. Plus the name of it “Avant-Garde Bagpipe Solos” goes well with my fictitious genre “Polka Noise”. The explanation of his work is 

                “this a collection of thoughts/stories/poems inspired mostly by red bull, residual (post/pre-masturbation) horniness and boredom” 

                Most of Tumblr should have this as a warning. At least Omar had the good sense of stating the obvious. It’s this humor which makes his limited amount of work so enjoyable. Most of his poetry appears either on his Tumblr or on LetPeoplePoems, a sweet site which allows people to submit their poetry. His poem about a deaf pigeon was the first submission.

                “Re Frank Hinton” was based off of his internet affection for Frank Hinton. For those of you unaware of her work, Frank Hinton runs Metazen. I like her poetry. She lives in a cloud of smoke in a part of Canada which other Canadians consider really boring. Internet crushes are hard he tells us. Having a crush on an internet enigma like Frank Hinton is even harder. As an added addition, he had this one go viral on Steve Roggenbuck’s Facebook wall. While it went viral, various individuals mentioned new poetic ways of using social media. I told someone to get a Cherry Coke.

                Two of his other poems are even more absurd. “Right before I come” mentions 60s movies stars and why he can’t bring M&Ms to work. His Omar.com one on LetPeoplePoems is fantastic. Instead of it being pure text, he uses a screen-shot of his poem, similar to how Frank Hinton used in “unrequested livejasmin.com pop-up”. Unlike that one, he openly wanted to use the Omar.com site to branch out to every part of the Omar demographic. Plus, he’ll monetize it hard and bring about joy through social networking.

                Another one of his poems “so hawny” expresses his joy at being aroused sexually. Food items become objects of affection. The mention of marmalade helps me remember just how British he is because we don’t believe in that shit here in America. In America we fuck pies. By the end we get to the age old question of whether or not life is better having fucked a jar of peanut butter or simply leaving it alone. Personally, I feel it is better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all. He expresses similar feelings in the poem "long distance relationships" where sex is had over Skype. Omar is a dreamer.

                I’ve only been exposed to a little more than this from his Tumblr. Most of his Tumblr is made up of ridiculous images with even more ridiculous captions. Out of all of them, I enjoyed the Buddha statue the most. Omar is just beginning, but I want him to continue. Continue with this train of thought Omar De Col, I want to continue using your sweet name. Holy crap he’s also on twitter as “Holiecrap”. 

                PS: Let me know if you prefer to be called Omar De LOL

Internet Poetry

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