How Nice That I Am Not Afraid to Look So Unattractive on the Internet: Part Two

In my last entry, I was so excited to have our new computer up and running that I neglected to mention that my family would be arriving the next night for a visit. Consequently, for the next three days I was extremely busy playing beach volleyball with a certain fraternal ogre:

poking my fingers into the bronze palm-wounds of an enormous Jesus statue:

and eating whole chickens like a freaking Rex. My apologies. I had nothing to post this morning, either; luckily for everyone, Elegant Choice came to the rescue with this:

"Under the day's crust a half-eaten child
And further sores which eyesight shall reveal"

from "The Pied Piper"

I can't be the only person who wishes that half-eaten child-pies were included more often in works of art. Think of the statue possibilities; think of the tapestries! Also: if you're wondering, those blue lines illustrate the "future eyesight" that will eventually reveal some further sores--here depicted by a disembodied herp-plagued lip. God, he's such a genius.

This Should Stave Off Your Hunger for a Day or Two

Back! I spent most of my hiatus at the local Borders, trying to understand their "Books for Boys" and "Books for Girls" sections. Hint: the Harry Potter books are for girls, and the Little House on the Prairie books are for boys. Obviously.

I was unable to recover my indispensable notes, which mostly consisted of long cryptic columns like this:

IF RABIES TOOK HUMAN FORM

SALT FARM

COBRAS SPIT--MAYONNAISE?

JOWLY

SNARL, SNARL, MOO

so I have been like a dead-ownered dog for the last few days, but through many hours of painstaking reconstruction have managed to assemble a rough draft of the poem I was working on when the hard drive kicked it. However, many gems were no doubt lost. I'm glad I remembered that bit about the rabies, though. That one's going straight on the front cover.

It Is Finished

Our laptop died this morning, and took with it thirty pages of notes for my manuscript. I feel, as Elegant Choice would say, like bursting into animals.

I hope to return very soon. You will hear me coming; the trumpets of my periphrase will toot in your ears. In the meantime, please amuse yourself by reading a late Wallace Stevens poem over at Reginald Shepherd's blog, along with some handsomely bespectacled commentary. Perhaps I will turn to Wallace Stevens today to chop down my hundred-headed sadness. I need badly to be engulfed in a pair of afterliving arms.

I Am the Huge Deserter of Palms at the End of the Mind

Forgive me for absenting my talents so long, readers. Shortly after posting my last masterwork, I began planning the next, and realized that I hadn't taken a picture of myself wearing a costume for a long time. After a little rumination, I decided that a photo of me pretending to breastfeed my cat would illustrate the image "the wrong breast for a child to suck" nicely, but when it came time for Elegant Choice to take the picture, we discovered that our camera had at last given up its shitty ghost. I was submerged in grief for a day or two, but eventually collected myself and drew this instead:

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

from "The Painter"

Let me start by saying that I do recognize the difference between "crucified by" and "crucified on," but an entire mob of pigs, babyfaced dinos, and John Ashberys would have taken far too long to draw. Instead, here is a picture of me, a painter, being crucified variously on a pig, a dinosaur, and John Ashbery's beautiful face. (Since we are playing fast and loose with the English language today anyway, I see no reason not to call myself a painter--a world-renowned one, even.) There. Don't tell me that wasn't worth the wait.

I Wanted to Call Jesus The Glowing Smooth-Sexed Santa Lap of Knowingness Instead, to Ripen the Concept with Some Fanciness, but It Didn't Fit

What a marvel is ancient man!
Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious animal
And would be a mathematician.

from "How Much Longer Will I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine Sepulcher..."

Being that I am something of a gentleman scientist, I can say with some confidence that this is probably what ancient man looked like--I know that he had fairy ears, for starters, and that he drank water through groiny taproots. His brain was also a yeasty ferment of sophisticated ideas about math, represented here by the resplendent equation 4+4=JESUS, which wants for nothing in terms of symmetry and elegance. The rest of the illustration is fairly self-explanatory; if you're wondering what those tiny figures floating inside the bulbs could possibly be, I laugh at your infirmity of mind and inform you that they are of course tulip fetuses.

And Speaking of My Invisible Blogroll

Reb is on fire lately; I am not kidding. Mother fucking omelet jpegs, reb bumps on penises, chubby gruesome faces, and a gorgeous crumple-gloved Bedside Guide--all that and more. It's like fucked-up Christmas over there.

Brief Interview with John Ashbery...

over at the New York Times, accompanied by the most beatific author's photo I have ever seen. Let me give you a hint: blue pants, blue sweater, only two eyes like all the rest of us. Thanks for the link, Jilly!

You Were Warned

All beauty, resonance, integrity,
Exist by deprivation or logic
Of strange position. This being so,

We can only imagine a world in which a woman
Walks and wears her hair and knows
All that she does not know. Yet we know

What her breasts are. And we give fullness
To the dream.

from "Le Livre Est Sur La Table"

Do you see how I gave fullness to the dream, in the form of the endlessly adaptable Breast Cob and a few monstrously-woolled sheep? I have never given Breast Cob hands before, but I figured that they should probably be made of breasts as well, since my breasts for one are so fantastic for grasping. Also: titty-worsted! I feel that I should win some sort of award for that one.

Have No Fear...

I am hard at work on a drawing of some titty monsters, in whose milky mouths I have inserted one of Ashbery's finest lines, as well as a thought-provoking truism of my own. No one ever accused me of being unpredictable, except for a certain dude whose dick I once bit in a moment of sudden and violent enlightenment.

It Is Just What It Sounds Like, Unless You Don't Speak English, In Which Case I Would Like to Bomb You

Because those of us united in the noble purpose of asking other people to draw things for our own amusement must stick together (see also: Stacy Elaine, since hostages need even more amusement than regular people), I must direct your attention to a single-minded enterprise called Monkey Punch Dinosaur. Go draw Adam a picture! Not only is the man an internet emperor, but in the comments on the last entry, he reminds us that he is also the author of some poems that bristle with lasers.

Ashbuary: A Month of Secrets

Moosiluake strikes again, this time with an airborne and sentient man-loaf. He writes: "Although some of us are driven to seek an end to mystery, like David Lehman when he waxes nostalgic over the desire to, 'solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes,' (cocaine) or Whitman moaning and groaning over that 'maternal mystery, the seminal milk' (need I translate?), I think a little mystery is nice. Especially right around the holidays. Especially with a cookie and a glass of milk. Seminal milk.

In lieu of a proper name, I'm enclosing a photo of myself dressed up as one of Mr. Ashbery's poems. This photo was taken directly after the mugwumps emerged, tentatively, from the booby hatch. The line illustrated is, of course, 'For the loaf/of bread that turns in the night sky over Stockholm' in his 'The Gods of Fairness.'"

So what do we know about Moosiluake? We know that a) Moosiluake is almost a mountain in New Hampshire; b) it is always appropriate to make a joke about ninjas, especially when you are being secretive; c) Moosiluake may or may not own a copy of Your Name Here. What does it all mean? M., if you continue to deepen my mystery so aggressively, I will soon start to cry.

Look How It Nestles Between the Hocks!

...Anyway the cough drops
(a new brand) tasted pretty good--like catnip
or an orange slice that has lain on a girl's behind

--John Ashbery, "Redeemed Area"

Today's drawing comes courtesy of a self-proclaimed Secret Ninja named Moosiluake. Moosiluake writes: "Although I considered making the "redeemed area" directly visible in the attached photo, I wasn't sure if Blogger was ready for that kind of redemption. Also, doing an image search on Yahoo for that special redeemed area resulted in a number of results which I hope never, ever, ever to see again."

Look at that intelligent slice of orange--the woman is like a slot machine for it! This Secret Ninja seems to possess detailed and perhaps ill-gotten knowledge of all those things I love best, naked people and creative nicknames for genitalia being chief among them. Very mysterious, unless you are going to tell me that my love for those things in fact surfaces in my countenance like an obvious Nessie whenever I open my mouth to speak, in which case it is not very mysterious at all.

Attention!

This is the part where I challenge John Ashbery himself, if he is not too much of a coward, to come to this party dressed as my wizened, duplicate father--the wizened, duplicate father of us all! Failing that, I challenge the rest of you to come to this party dressed as John Ashbery dressed as my wizened, duplicate father, if that construction does not grip your balls too badly with the cold fist of confusion.

My father, by the way, when he was not dressed as a priest, usually appeared wearing only glasses, an enormous pair of white underwear, and a Breathe-Right strip. Duplicate that if you can!

With Ardor We Regard YOUR Paw!

I cannot think of a better way to get our feet wet in the swollen river that is John Ashbery than with this gymnastic display of poetic interpretation, courtesy of the thoughtful Ana. She writes: "I should like to help inaugurate the month of Ashbery with the attached rendering of the first stanza of Glazunoviana:

The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too?
The window giving on shade,
Is that here too?
And all the little helps,
My initials in the sky,
The hay of an arctic summer night?

It features Ashbery as a polar teddy with a red hat, killing, as it were, two birds with one stone. I have skipped the window, since I didn't have enough space. But you will notice his initials in the sky of the arctic summer night. Feeling bad about drawing such a dubious picture of the great poet, for whom I feel only ardor, I also include myself as a 'little help' aka the teddy's tag. With ardor I regard his paw."

Wonderful work, Ana--when the Lord comes down on his little cloud and tells me to start fattening my eyes for the slaughter, I will gorge them on this fluffy body until the knife is raised.

Now You See Where I Get It From

Talking to my mother just now on the phone, she said, I'm not going to send the comforter, unless they tell me that it'll take three weeks to get the dark pig. What? I think the dead-as-a-doornail Tennyson contest might just have itself a posthumous winner!

Back to your regularly scheduled Ashbery programming.

John Ashbery: Linkity Linkity

Poets.org Poems and Bio

Poems at Poemhunter

Poems, Interviews, and Photographs

Modern American Poetry Page

NPR: A conversation with John Ashbery

Jacket Interviews: 1985, 1988

Articles and Criticism

The Selected Poems

Also, check out the most hilarious Amazon review of all time, by a certain In One Ear Out Your Mother: "Ashbery taught me how to keep pace with the world, to saturate the atoms of life with an inward stare, yoking myself nakedly to the ebon flight of his lush written world. With Ashbery's deep intellect and dickety-slippity wit, his pretzelly stanzas and mind-torquing conceptual corkscrewing, I could go on forever relighting my own image, against steady palls of black pain." !!!

Now might be a good time to tell you that I saved up my money when I was a teenager to buy a copy of The Last Avant-Garde--this was the same year that I asked for a copy of Inventions of the March Hare for my birthday; I needed to get laid. My formal introduction to John Ashbery's poems had come earlier that year at the hands of Kenneth Koch, whom I met shortly before he died of leukemia and who was kind to me like whoa. Reading The Last Avant-Garde, I remember being deeply struck by how fantastic Ashbery looked in a pair of chinos, and how no man's mustache before or since had I so wanted to rip off his face and drown deeply in two pots of paint. Surely I was not alone in this?

We Shall Soon Give All Our Attention to You

Thanks to Ana, whose wish is law in this country, the poet we will be celebrating in January is none other than John Ashbery! It is certain that Wallace Stevens would approve, whose pairs of pants John Ashbery sometimes loves to wear. Also, it will be a lovely change to celebrate someone who is actually alive--may he live forever; may he stride like a deathless brontosaurus over this fat, fat land; may the fragrant baby of his face be bright with drool to the shining end, like so!

Hurrah! Mr. Ashbery, your party begins now.

Farewell, Tennyson, Here Are Some Brains

"I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought"

from The Two Voices

The minds I have drawn are anchored variously by the gloomy thoughts: "Corncobs feel pain but cannot scream," "My glue has horses in it," and "What if Jesus isn't watching over me because he is too busy getting blowjobs from little dolphins who believe he is offering them some new kind of delicious fish?" I will admit that this drawing is largely autobiographical, being as how all three of those concerns have troubled my own mind from time to time. Above the anchored minds leaps a carefree little dolphin, for whom the thought, "That fish was even more delicious than I dreamed it would be," is not an anchor but a buoy.

My deepest apologies to Tennyson, who got totally shafted by holiday insanity. Consider this the last official Tennyson drawing. Any remaining ideas I have must be buried inside of me like cold pets. I am, however, still trying to decide what should be done about the ill-fated Tennyson contest; I'm willing to keep it open longer, but I'm also willing to close up shop and award the sow medallion to Elegant Choice, who was the lone entrant. Here's what I'll do: drop me a note, either here in the comments or through email, if you would still like to enter a drawing, and I'll keep the contest open for you. If I don't get any notes, then I'll close it and hang the yellow pig around my husband's neck, if you know what I mean.

I will announce Ana's spectacular decision tomorrow! I am excited unto pissing for this next month, and I think you will be as well.

Double Woot!

What did I miss while I was away? Let's see: the moon was 100% full over at Dame Loudon the Velcro-Eyed for Loveliness's place, Reb robes her child in monkeys and bananas like a motherfucking jungle king,Whimsy correctly identifies me as one of the funniest women on the face of the earth, Stacy Elaine is taking more walks, Ana is an apparition in a Noel cravat, Ron is famous in San Marcos, Jilly puts classy collars on her birds, Harry believes that certain birds are classier than others, Emily is a menacing librarian, Backwards City wants us to book Screech, and last but not least, C. Dale admits to having several different kinds of Spidey sense.

WOOT!

This party is back the fuck in business.

No Internet...

till Wednesday, and how inauspicious, for my last post to have been one about a tender gay porn of my dreaming fantasy. I will return in full splendor in two days, wearing a crown of interpretive glory and trimmed robes of velvet euphemism.

Rumor also has it that the remarkable Ana has decided on our January poet, but I won't announce her decision until we have finished with poor neglected Tennyson, whom God does not love and consequently prevented me from lauding with the full balls-to-the-wall fervor he deserved.