The One on the Top Left Is Kafka, and the One on the Bottom Is Some Famous Dead Commie with His Snout Shot Full of Holes

The phrase in question is of course taken from the poem "Novices," in which context it is used to refer to authors, who are "'wonderful people, particularly those that/ write the most,'/ the masters of all languages, the supertadpoles of expression." My caricaturing skills do leave something to be desired, but I'll give you a hint: the one on the top right is totally Mark Twain! Anyway, on to business. Today's entry is an X-Treem Kulaburtiv F-Urt, for Elegant Choice contributed the facial configuration of one of the tadpoles. Excuse me, one of the supertadpoles. The super part is mostly attributable to the startling muscularity of their fully mature frog-legs. The expressions displayed by the supertadpoles are, in no particular order: Anguish: My Open Mouth Is Crammed Full of Red Ass; Indignation: This Tail-Tongue Is Not to Be Borne; Relish: Whose Would Not Salivate At the Thought of Licking Such a Double Eye; Weeping: How Do You Like Your Six-Nostrilled Cat-Pig Mr Death; Inscrutability: This Mustache Could Be Hiding Anything; and Reticence: You Can't Tell What Emotion My Face Is Showing Because This Mystique-Reeking Veil Obscures My Fleshy Lips. I'll give you a million dollars if you can guess which is the work of his small hands! Oh, you win, the man never passes up the chance to draw a princess.

Speaking of a million dollars, I want one of these so bad. Think how quickly I could produce new drawings if most of my time were not spent wrangling with with appalling inadequacies of the Paint program, not to mention a jerky mouse! Though I should probably figure out a way to buy a new camera first. You have no idea how much I wanted to superimpose an image of my own supernaturally-mobile face over one of the tadpole heads, but woe, it was impossible.

I Mean, Damn

In the Days of Prismatic Color

not in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam
   was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the refinement
   of early civilization art, but because
of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the

mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation
   of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
   longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band
of incandescence that was color keep its stripe: it also is one of

those things into which much that is peculiar can be
   read; complexity is not a crime, but carry
it to the point of murkiness
   and nothing is plain. Complexity,
moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of

granting itself to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
   bout as if to bewilder us with the dismal
fallacy that insistence
   is the measure of achievement and that all
truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-

ways has been--at the antipodes from the init-
   ial great truths. "Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
   was torpid in its lair." In the short-legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiae--we have the
                                                   classic

multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
   Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says,
   "I shall be there when the wave has gone by."

--Marianne Moore

Come on, what do I have to do to get one of you guys to dress up as Apollo Belvedere for me? Get totally naked, I am thinking, except for a rakish cardigan; grow a mustache and let a baby steal all your cows; record your sexy memories in a diary; turn all the crows black with your biting wit.

Time for Another Dashed-Off Mustachioed Blood Monster, This One Wearing a Question for Pants? Oh, I Think So

              Consistent with the
  formula--warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few
                                                    hairs--that

  is a mammal; there he sits in his own habitat,
      serge-clad, strong-shod.

--from "The Pangolin"

Warm blood? Check. No gills? Check. Two pairs of hands and a few hairs? Check and check. Strong-shod? Check. Serge-clad? Beyond your pitiful understanding, little ants of philosophy, and beyond your wildest dreams.

What This Party Needs Is Some Fetal Hobos

Magic bird, compound tongues, tramp baby swimming in amniotic seas--this one's got it all. The quote in question is taken, of course, from "Rescue with Yul Brynner," which boasts several other images ripe for interpretation: "like a grasshopper that did not/ know it missed the mower, a pygmy citizen;" "too slow a grower;" "elephant-borne dancer in silver spangled dress." Those will come later--the first, as soon as I determine whether grasshoppers have noses; the second, as soon as it seems decent to present another penis drawing; the third, as soon as I feel capable of placing my creative forceps on either side of a ballerina's face and tugging her forth from wrinkled gray loins.

Oh Yes And Please...

go bake a consumable for Sylvia Plath!

And Speaking of Whales

Sojourn in the Whale

Trying to open locked doors with a sword, threading
 the points of needles, planting shade trees
 upside down; swallowed by the opaqueness of one whom the
                                                      seas
love better than they love you, Ireland--

you have lived and lived on every kind of shortage.
 You have been compelled by hags to spin
 gold thread from straw and have heard men say:
"There is a feminine temperament in direct contrast to ours,

which makes her do these things. Circumscribed by a
 heritage of blindness and native
 incompetence, she will become wise and will be forced to give in.
Compelled by experience, she will turn back;

water seeks its own level":
 and you have smiled. "Water in motion is far
 from level." You have seen it, when obstacles happened to bar
the path, rise automatically.

--Marianne Moore

Note to Self: Marianne Moore Would Have Hated You, Probably; Screw a Tricorn Hat on Your Total Pea-Head and Get Back to Work!

Do you know, I never felt better in my life than when I was refusing to write poems "on principle"? I do not remember which principle exactly. I didn't write a single poem for six whole months, and I was happy like a pig snorting slop simultaneously up its nostrils and into its mouth. What I mean to say is that I should not have looked at my poetry word count today but I did, and discovered that I have only written 205 words in the last month and a half. I say more words to my cat in a single minute, since she likes for me to narrate all her activities and certain ones need elaborate description. Also, to make things worse, the 205 words are about string. As topics go, that one is super shitty! An intelligent person wouldn't have anything to say about string at all, except maybe when they discovered a whole huge tangle of it in the pillowy fish lips they were currently eating. Then they might write a book, and it would be remarkable, unlike the one I am writing which has no lips in it at all except for mine, which are ridiculous like a miniature clown's. A teacher even told me that once, that I should "be Pinocchio in a play"! What does that even mean? Also, what kind of play would that be? How would the whale look? Whoa, they could maybe dim all the lights and dangle huge glow-in-the-dark ribs from the ceiling, and then the whole audience would be in the whale! That would be great, and maybe make some booming indigestion noises from time to time. And I could maybe be perched on one of the ribs, bent over and dragging my wooden-boy lips all up and down it, because let some other fool play the puppet, I am busy being an intestinal parasite. Holy crap, I think I just talked myself out of my worst poetic disillusionment on record.

Hands Are a Particular Specialty of Mine

he let us know without offense
by his hands' denunciatory
upheaval, that he despised the fashion
of curing us with an ape

--from "Nothing Will Cure the Sick Lion but to Eat an Ape"

Regard that lion face: he is delirious, perhaps with fever. Behold the chomping muzzles of those apes. Notice those denunciatory disembodied hands. Remark on how the lone dangling ape appears to suffer from something best described as migratory hip-ass. Appreciate how I made the effort to include a subtle nod to a classic drawing of the past in the form of some groin-fangs, apey this time.

As for the sentiment expressed in the title, how I wish it were true--I wish it were true for humans, even. Then our scientists could engineer tiny apes that would delight either in being swallowed by colicky babies or in munching human flesh like so many twice-lipped leeches.

Mooruary!

Interviews and Criticism

Paris Review interview
Fantastic article by Dan Chiasson in The Believer
Marianne Moore at Find Articles
Article at Slate
Biography and criticism at Modern American Poetry

Poetry

Poems at Poemhunter
A few poems at RPO
Two poems

Coincidence: today is the 35th anniversary of her death. Richard Nixon made a statement, in which he alluded inappropriately to the kind of splashes she made. They were colorful and enchanting, apparently.

I Have No Idea What Grasshoppers Look Like, I Guess

Below, Richard saucily proposes that instead of celebrating Marianne Moore this month, we should celebrate Frederick Tuckerman, a "really bad 19th-c. American poet absurdly overrated by Yvor Winters." I take issue with this characterization! Any man who is the wellspring of such images as "the old grasshopper molasses-mouthed" deserves our respect as well as our cartoons, and so I set Marianne Moore aside for the moment and celebrate him today:

Sleep soundly, Frederick Tuckerman; I pray that sticky-lipped bugs are gnawing you.

So.

How do you feel about Marianne Moore--Ms. Mongoose Civique herself--for February? Nice, right? Who else could I choose, when her poems are so relentlessly animal-filled? She is after my own heart. It will be difficult, I think, but I'm up for the challenge, being as how I digesteth harde yron for breakfast and all.

CATSHADOW

Do we have time for one more example of my illuminative mastery before we declare the whompingly successful month of Ashbuary over and done with? Oh, I think so. Here's one for the ages:


Meanwhile there was one
Who all unseen came creeping at this scale of visions
Like the gigantic specter of a cat towering over tiny mice
About to adjourn the town meeting due to the shadow

from "The Pursuit of Happiness"

Finally, an illustration that needs no explanation whatsoever. You have your gigantic cat specter, your tiny mice with gavels, your wind-driven tongue rain. No need to thank me, I just thought I'd throw a bone to all the children who are reading, arriving here by search terms as various as "jokes about fingers," "animal breasts," "meow mix cake," and "two eyes joke." Little babies, I hope you enjoyed Ashbuary as much as I did. My most sincere thanks to the underwater Ana, the yet-elusive Moosiluake, and the obedient Elegant Choice for the rib-sticking submissions.

I'm considering several poets for February, but I'm having a difficult time settling on one. Maybe I'll open it up to a vote tomorrow.

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.

The Last Dream about Gay Porn I Will Ever Have in This Apartment

Last night I dreamed that I was watching gay porn, only it was a super tender one, and one of the men reached up and stroked the other man's mustache, and said, "On our first date, we didn't even make shiny cells together." Shiny cells! What an amazing euphemism for boning.

Happy Aftermath

Today I am covered in cat hair, either because a) I dried myself off with a towel that the cat had secretly sat on, or b) I am becoming a cat myself, which was totally my Christmas wish.

We’re moving tomorrow afternoon, so I won’t be posting any new drawings for the next few days. I’m considering keeping the Tennyson Pig Contest open for another week or two past the original deadline, since this month has been so disrupted. I’ll let you know. I'm also considering adding another prize, which might or might not be a gold-colored sow medallion. If this doesn't tempt people to enter, I don't know what will.

Quick, an Update Before My Fingers Grow Too Clumsy with Ham: Pig Contest Entry Number One

As of this minute, this is the first and only Tenny Tenny Alf Lord Alf Tenny Tenny Pig Contest submission I have received. It is a product of the mind of Elegant Choice, which is so fine that it delights in being freaked by ideas with some regularity and considerable roughness. I know I said I would display the entries all at once, but since I may not have a chance to post again before Christmas and had nothing else to post today anyway, I decided to throw caution to the wind--if I do receive more entries, I'll just post them as they come. This one is really too good to keep to myself any longer, though, so allow me to present to you Pig Contest Entry the First.
'O God-like isolation which art mine,
I can but count thee perfect gain,
What time I watch the darkening droves of swine
That range on yonder plain.

'In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin,
They graze and wallow, breed and sleep;
And oft some brainless devil enters in,
And drives them to the deep.'

from "The Palace of Art"

Here, Elegant Choice explained, was a picture of a brainless devil entering a swine. More literally, he added, here was a picture of President George W. Bush inserting himself abominably into Vice President Dick Cheney, and uttering a silver-tongued witticism as he did so. I found it to be extremely tastefully done, as well as a masterful illumination of the very lines that Tennyson, from beyond the bar, is at this moment thanking us for pressing into the service of the President and his pig-possessing cause. A round of applause for you, Elegant Choice, and I wish you the best of luck at judging. You're up against some tough competition.

When You Want Me, Sound Upon the Bugle-Horn

"I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!"

from Locksley Hall

This illustration is fairly literal: the beast on the left is experiencing some lower pleasure, while the beast on the right is experiencing some lower pain, both in the form of snakes attached to their wangs. As an afterthought, I threw in a few sheep with narrow foreheads that the beasts are expertly herding, but as far as I'm concerned they're just there for decoration. I made a half-hearted attempt to draw beasts of my own, but they were a total abortion, so when these guys came up on an image search I decided to run with them.

Allow me to offer my heartfelt apologies for the lack of updates--you will forgive me when I tell you that we're getting ready to move a few days after Christmas, because we are huge lunatics. Rather, Elegant Choice is a huge lunatic who drags me behind him like a rattling can. Also, remember that you still have eight days to submit Pig Entries, which could qualify you to win a hilarious prize and also to gain eternal esteem in my enormous eyes.

I Really Hope You Appreciate All These Sacrifices I Am Making, Part Two

This month's party is taking a strange toll on me. To be more specific, reading so much Tennyson is melting my own chimpy skills. Yesterday, for instance, I was working on a poem for my new manuscript Plow Me Deep, Plant Pumpkinheads when I ran into a snag: I wanted to use the word "sharpening" in the third line, but I would have preferred a word with one fewer syllable--I'm not writing in form, but the third syllable unbalanced the line. "Not a problem," I thought chimpily, triumphantly, "I can just use 'sharp'ning' instead." And basked in the glory of my resourcefulness for a full minute before I awoke in a reeking cold cell of talentlessness and idiocy.

O Take the Meaning, Lord

O my sons, my sons,

I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname
Stylites, among men; I, Simeon,
The watcher on the column till the end;
I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes;

from St. Simeon Stylites

Here is a picture of the sunshine baking a brain--St. Simeon's brain, to be specific, though I took no pains to make this information apparent in the drawing itself. I was far too busy perfecting my depiction of brain-steam and thinking of a suitable caption. My only regret is that I was not able to smear the baked brain with some kind of photographic frosting, but this proved to be beyond my capabilities.

The red-lipped consumables sitting on the table, right next to the eggshells and the WILD YEAST FOR BRAINS, are actually marzipan vaginas. Also, I hope you enjoy staring at the sun's genital rays as much as I do, since it is impossible to do so in real life without becoming blind, both because of the brightness and because God is punishing you for licentiousness. I did not intend to shove such a terrible abstract pornography into your eyes, but after I noticed it I decided to leave it in, as it strengthened the picture's genital theme.

REMINDER

You still have two weeks to submit your Tennyson contest entries. As of right now, the number of submissions stands at exactly zero, which makes me feel extremely unpopular. I'm not too worried about it, though, because as I previously warned, if no one submits anything at all, then I will enter THIS drawing and it will automatically win!

I’m Late to This Party, but Fuck It: Rebut This, You Crumble-Toothed Whore

I read Christopher Hitchens’ latest Vanity Fair article with great interest—I was hoping he might start talking about the moist cave of my mouth again, like he did a few months ago. Delightfully, "Why Women Aren't Funny" addresses the subject of my mouth in even further detail: curving naso-labial furrows, full horseshoes of lovely teeth, etc. On the whole, I found it full of arousing insights about my own condition. And since Mr. Hitchens used poetry so persuasively in his own article, I thought I would respond in kind.

The Children-Squirters Is So Grumpy

Me brain so soft like hammered infant,
Milky smelly, biscuit chompy;
Me face-vagina stretch with laughter,
BWA, BWA, BWA like noising goat!

You smart comediennes, me think
Your pussies sewed shut all the way
With silky pubes of crafty lesbos.
Paula Poundstone make me giggle,
Tie she wears make me want kisses.

Pretty husband gnaw me eat-hole,
Suck out all the funny knowledge,
All me jokes fall down me cleavage—
Rutty husband, scoop them out
With diggy penis shaped like trowel!

I tried to make the first letter of every line spell, “HAVE SEX WITH ME CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, I DON’T MIND ABOUT YOUR SWEATING” but failed at this in a number of ways. I was also unable to describe the euphemistic goat as being “slot-eyed—with lapping seas of golden water around those slits where Light goes in,” not wishing my credibility to be undermined by disparities in tone.

Back to Basics

A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the how,
Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, ‘Give,
Cram us with all,’ but count not me the herd!

from "The Golden Year"

I am aware that horseleeches are real things, and that daughters of horseleeches are also real things, but it was much more fun for me to reimagine the concept this way. Behold the luscious lips of her posterior and anterior suckers! Doesn't she look like she wants to be crammed with all?

It's interesting to note how horses have been a theme with all the poets we have celebrated. I am doing my best to carry on this tradition in my own way: as most of you know, I am hard at work on a manuscript tentatively titled Whinny with Both Pairs of Lips, O Ponies, which I hope to illustrate with drawings in the same tradition as the one shown above.

CONTEST!

If you've been following the comments, you probably took special note of Cuchulainn's confession that he holds in his possession a framed print of Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, and is willing to sacrifice this treasured possession to the Tennyson party as a grand prize. You've all proved to be too clever for my "Guess What Line I Am Depicting in This Sexual Drawing" contests, probably since the drawings I offered up in their service reeked so fully of precise meaning, so this time around things will be a bit different. After considerable deliberation, I chose a few lines of Tennyson's that I believe are bosomy with artistic possibilities; the person who submits the most articulate and inventive interpretation of these lines wins. Here is the excerpt I have chosen:

‘O God-like isolation which art mine,
I can but count thee perfect gain,
What time I watch the darkening droves of swine
That range on yonder plain.

‘In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin,
They graze and wallow, breed and sleep;
And oft some brainless devil enters in,
And drives them to the deep.’

from "The Palace of Art"

I will be accepting submissions all month long, and on the last day of the party I will post all of the entries and ask an impartial judge to pick the best. I badly want to cast Elegant Choice in this role, mainly so that I can see him wear the little wig of powdered sausages, but I will probably end up choosing someone who knows a bit more about art, considering that most of Elegant Choice's favorite paintings are of photorealistic cows. I am not kidding.

You have three weeks; get cracking! I expect great things. And if no one submits anything, then I will enter this drawing and it will automatically win.

Tennyson: The Lordening

'O boy, tho' thou art young and proud,
I see the place where thou wilt lie.

'The sands and yeasty surges mix
In caves about the dreary bay,
And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,
And in they heart the scrawl shall play.'

from "The Sailor Boy"

My inaugural Tennyson drawing depicts a sailor boy lying dead in the surf--you will have to suspend your disbelief a bit here, because the sailor boy in my picture is not an actual boy, but instead a superbly wrinkle-faced newborn doll. The limpets stick to his ribs, and the scrawl plays in his heart, as you can see from the totally bad handwriting I used to write FUN TIME large across the misplaced organ itself. Yeasty surges roil above him--you can tell they are yeasty because representations of the chemical composition of the fine product Monistat bob up and down between them, going quietly about their cunty work.

We Interrupt This Tennyson Party to Announce: Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes Loves Radish King

We love Radish King so much, we drew a picture of it. More specifically, of the lines:

You are a pea & thimble man
On weekends you perform
psychic surgery on children

from the poem "There Are Unclean Spirits." In my version, not only does the pea & thimble man perform psychic surgery on children, he performs it on his own children--his own tiny pea babies who are raised aloft with the power of his mind.

Happy Radish King Day, Rebecca! I wish it could have been a whole month, but Tennyson grows restless.

My God, Look at His Princely Beard--Men Don't Grow Them Like That Anymore

My introduction to the poems of Alfred Tennyson came at the hands of Lucy Maud Montogomery, who was given to portentously invoking "crossing the bar" as a euphemism for "dying of old age," and whose Emily books gave me the notion that real poets wore diaphanous gowns and acted like tranced-out manic-depressive seeresses when they weren't busy being total cockteases, an idea which held poisonous sway over my mind until I was at least twenty, and which the legacy of Alfred himself did little to dispel.

As I previously mentioned, I memorized a few Tennyson poems when I was a hot thirteen-year-old--I mean, I never hung a poster of "The Lady of Shalott" in my room or anything, but I probably would have if I had thought of it. Come to think of it, I never hung any posters on my walls at all, which is testament to the inborn poverty of imagination that plagues me to this very day. At any rate, Baron, your party begins now.

Biographical Resources

• Tennyson: An Overview
• The Tennyson Page
• Brief Biography
• More Biographical Trivia: "Tennyson suffered from extreme short-sightedness -- without a monocle he could not even see to eat"
• Tennyson Portraits and Illustrations--the number of Tennyson portraits floating around on the web means we have no excuse not to insert his floating grizzled head into every single picture we draw

Poems

• Selected Poems
• More Poems
• Speaking of Seers--Yet More Poems

Farewell, Hart Crane, Your Depths Were So Nice to Plumb

Hold it in a high wind. The fender curving over the
breastplate, and all in high gear. I watched to see the
river rise. The forests had all given out their streams
and tributaries. When would the bones of de Soto come
down in the wild rinse? And when would Ponce de Leon
remember Hammerfest?...

Thou art no more than Chinese to me, O Moon! A simian
chorus to you, and let your balls be nibbled by the flirt-
atious hauchinango.

from "Supplication to the Muses on a Trying Day"

What's that you say? I should have posted this picture of Ponce de Leon dreaming of Hammerfest (both the city and the sweet party that is the man himself) while huachinango nibble the balls of the moon, and a simian chorus sings aloud a masterpiece lyric--I should have posted this picture yesterday, in order to give Hart Crane a proper goodbye? Well, I couldn't, I was way too busy drilling these agates like a badass with my new flex shaft!


My God, I feel so full of power. In further heartening news, Tony Williams has decided that the poet we will be celebrating in December is none other than Alfred Tennyson--or, as I like to call him, Tenny Alf Lord Lord Tenny Tenny Alf Alf, because the Lord part confuses me so deeply. Stop reading my mind, Tony! How did you know that I had "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" memorized when I was a dewy-faced tween, in order that I might recite it silently to myself when I felt the black bile rising? I will be posting many links pertaining to Lord Son Tenny Tenny Fred Alf Alf tomorrow or the next day, so look forward to that; in the meantime, dozens of Tennyson's poems are available online, in case you want to get started on your costumes early. I am sad to see the Hart Crane party cease, as I feel I devoted some of my best work to him, but I am hopeful that I will receive a few more submissions in December, so that the constant stream of my monotonous obscenities may be interrupted from time to time with your own refreshing interpretations.

Garden Abstract

The apple on its bough is her desire,--
Shining suspension, mimic of the sun.
The bough has caught her breath up, and her voice,
Dumbly articulate in the slant and rise
Of branch on branch above her, blurs her eyes.
She is prisoner of the tree and its green fingers.

And so she comes to dream herself the tree,
The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,
Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,
Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.
She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope
Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.

Hart Crane, White Buildings

Tomorrow marks the last official day of our Hart Crane party, which has been splendid in all respects. I will be posting a farewell picture sometime during the day, and as soon as I hear from Tony Williams I will announce the poet we'll be celebrating in December. Fingers crossed for William Topaz McGonagall!

Strange Gratuity of Horses

Back at the erstwhile house
We shoveled and sweated; watched the ogre sun
Blister the mountain, stripped now, bare of palm,
Everything--and lick the grass, as black as patent
Leather, which the rimed white wind had glazed.

[...]

For I
Remember still that strange gratuity of horses
--One ours, and one, a stranger, creeping up with dawn
Out of the bamboo brake through howling, sheeted light
When the storm was dying. And Sarah saw them, too--
Sobbed, Yes, now--it's almost over. For they know;
The weather's in their noses.

from "Eternity," unpublished poem

The ellipsis indicates a strophe about steaming mules that I was forced to omit, because I had no room to squeeze them in. Anyway, here are some horses with weather in their nostrils; here also is an ogre sun licking the mountains. You probably thought I was going to give one of the horses a penis, didn't you, since that would have been so gratuitous! Well, I managed to restrain myself, since I figured we had had enough obscenity for one month. But it turned out I couldn't help it, and I drew the penis anyway. However, I ultimately made the decision to censor the offending part, but instead of writing CENSORED on the little bar I wrote PENIS, so you would know what it was. You're welcome!

I Am Feeling Some Power Bud in Me Right Now

The Moth That God Made Blind

Among cocoa-nut palms of a far oasis,
Conceived in the light of Arabian moons,
There are butterflies born in mosaic date-vases,
That emerge black and vermeil from yellow cocoons.

Some say that for sweetness they cannot see far,--
That their land is too gorgeous to free their eyes wide
To horizons which knife-like would only mar
Their joy with a barren and steely tide--

That they only can see when their moon limits vision,
Their mother, the Moon, marks a halo of light
On their own small oasis, ray-cut, an incision,
Where are set all the myriad jewelleries of night.

So they sleep in the shade of black palm-bark at noon,
Blind only in day, but remembering that soon
She will flush their hid wings in the evening to blaze
Countless rubies and tapers in the oasis' blue haze.

But over one moth's eyes were tissues at birth
Too multiplied even to center his gaze
On that circle of paradise cool in the night;--
Never came light through that honey-thick glaze.

And had not his pinions with signs mystical
And rings macrocosmic won envy as thrall,
They had scorned him, so humbly low, bound there and tied
At night like a grain of sand, futile and dried.

But once though, he learned of that span of his wings,--
The florescence, the power he felt bud at the time
When the others were blinded by all waking things;
And he ventured the desert,--his wings took the climb.

And lo, in that dawn he was pierroting over,--
Swinging in spirals round the fresh breasts of day.
The moat of the desert was melthing from clover
To yellow,--to crystal,--a sea of white spray--

Till the sun, he still gyrating, shot out all white,--
Though a black god to him in a dizzying night;--
And without one cloud-car in that wide meshless blue
The sun saw a ruby brightening ever, that flew.

Seething and rounding in long streams of light
The heat led the moth up in octopus arms:
The honey-wax eyes could find no alarm,
But they burned thinly blind like an orange peeled white.

And the torrid hum of great wings was his song
When below him he saw what his whole race had shunned--
Great horizons and systems and shores all along
Which blue tides of cool moons were slow shaken and sunned.

A little time only, for sight burned as deep
As his blindness before had frozen in Hell,
And his wings atom-withered,--gone,--left but a leap--
To the desert,--back,--down,--still lonely he fell.

I have hunted long years for a spark in the sand;--
My eyes have hugged beauty and winged life's brief spell.
These things I have:--a withered hand;--
Dim eyes;--a tongue that cannot tell.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to post in its entirety the worst poem ever written by Hart Crane, since this website is all about honesty. It's so awful, you guys--with the tissues and the pierroting and the fresh breasts of day! It makes me giggle like a baby, so it is a particular favorite of mine, and has exerted a huge influence on my own writing. In response, I have drawn a picture of God stabbing out the eyes of a moth with a realistic knife. The moon is depicted as a tiny statue squatting to give birth, and the sun is drawn directly opposite, gyrating and shooting out all white onto God's hand. Bonus points if you can spot the fresh breasts of day. Also, do you like how in my picture, it is both day and night at the same time? Do not apply your feeble intellects to the problem of how, just trust in my supreme artistry and encyclopedic knowledge of scientific phenomena.

P.S. Alas, the poem is so rich in insanities that I had no space to include the hot octopus made of light, which I would very much like to have done.

My Fingers Are Too Fat to Draw, So I Offer a Poem Instead

Paraphrase

Of a steady winking beat between
Systole, diastole spokes-of-a-wheel
One rushing from the bed at night
May find the record wedged in his soul.

Above the feet the clever sheets
Lie guard upon the integers of life:
For what skims in between uncurls the toe,
Involves the hands in purposeless repose.

But from its bracket how the tongue can tell
When systematic morn shall sometime flood
The pillow--how desperate is the light
That shall not rouse, how faint the crow's cavil

As, when stunned in that antarctic blaze,
Your head, unrocking to a pulse, already
Hollowed by air, posts a white paraphrase
Among bruised roses on the papered wall.

Hart Crane, White Buildings

Teat-Squeeze Redux

Euclid Avenue

To be or not to be--?

But so to be the denizen stingaree--
As stertorous as nations romanized may throw
Surveys by Maytimes slow...Hexameters
Suspending jockstraps for gangsters while the pil-

Bland (grim)aces Plutarch's perch. And angles
Break in folds of crepe that blackly drape
The broken door...Crouch so. Amend

Then; and clinch.

Sweep...
Clean is that cloven Hoof. Then reap
Strain, clasp oblivion as though Chance
Could absent all answer save the chosen rant.

Stop now, as never, never. Speak

As telegrams continue, write, strike
your scholarship (stop) through broken ribs; jail
(Stripe) answers Euclid. Einstein curves, but does not
Quail. Does Newton take the Eucharist on rail
Nor any boulevard no more? I say...

For there are statues, shapes your use
Repeals. Youse use. You're prevalent,--prevail!
Youse
Food once more and souse, like all me under sail.
My friends, I never thought we'd fail.

That dirty peacock's pride, once gory God's own story:
It didn't belong no more; no, never did glory
Walk on Euclid Avenue, as didn't Wm.
Bleached or blacked, whichever t'was. What milk
we've put in blasted pigs! I says...O, well--

But I say, what a swell chance, boys. No more
Cancers, jealousy, tenements or giblets! Death, my boys,
Nor blinkers either--

Four shots at who-knows-how--how

Many-it-was unsupervised

Grabbed right outa my mouth that final chew--
Right there on Euclid Avenue.

I'm on a roll with these squirting udders, you guys. At first I thought I would go a more conventional route with this one, but at the last minute decided to continue to explore the dangerously edgy theme I introduced yesterday. The pig, as you can see, is extremely blasted, and the disembodied squiggling teats of out-of-picture cows have decided to come to his rescue with their milk, which they spray forth with their inerrantly-aimed hooves.

Announcement!

I meant to post this a month ago, but I am so forgetful: when you aren't sending beautiful drawings to me, you should be sending them to Stacy Elaine and her kidnappers, who call themselves THE IMAGINATIVE ACTION REGIME, over at the Los Angeles Project. It is a neverending source of delight for me, and I mean to send the kidnappers something soon--you should too! What do they want? Your childlike solutions to adult problems, of course.

I'll Touch Your Children with MY Milk Wand!

"Out of the seagull cries and wind
On this strange shore I build
The virgin. They laugh to hear
How I endow her, standing
Hair mocked by the sea"

from "To Liberty," a fragment

Today is a holiday--I was finally able to pick up a copy of Hart's collected poems, which means that I can post entire strophes and poems now, instead of whatever measly few lines I was able to scrawl on a napkin before they hustled me out of the bookstore.

In this interpretation, I have cast the speaker of the poem as a devil-eyed cow. The cow is "building" a grilled cheese sandwich resembling the Virgin Mary with flamboyant streams of milk--the whole scene is reminiscent of those horrible Kraft commercials where the cow fairy touches children with her milk wand and makes their sandwiches fill up with cheese, except in my version, the cow is gripping her own udders between clumsy hooves and spraying milk directly on the Virgin's face. You will surely laugh to see how she endows her. On the same beach stands Cousin Itt, who stares philosophically across the water while the ocean taunts, "I'm fingering your girlfriend with an octopus RIGHT NOW!"

Thank God for Biblical Clip-Art

Gorillas die--and so do humanists--who keep
Comparisons clear for evolution's non-escape
And man the deathless target, of his own weak sheep...

from "I Have That Sure Enclitic," a fragment

I apologize for the sad delay; this masterpiece took me much longer than I was expecting, what with having to fuse so many disparate elements--gun, sheep, tombstones, Christopher Lambert--into a coherent piece of art. After all is said and done, I am quite pleased with the result. I think you will find the clip-art I used as a background extremely beautiful--I love the way the shepherd's hand has disappeared wholly into that sheep's hungry ass. You'd think this was an ingenious touch of mine, but I can assure you that it was present in the original drawing. Also, I have no idea why one of its hind legs tapers off bloodlessly at the knee.

As for my own subtle embroideries, I have depicted the sheep shooting lasers out of their eyes at the unkillable shepherd; one of the sheep has taken the further measure of arming itself with a gun, which will do it no good. You can tell the sheep are weak because they have lady-breasts and one of them is shouting, "Let me show you my little enclitic, Christopher Lambert!" I arrived at this version after a great deal of trial and error, having first given them parasols and trailing tampon strings between their legs.

Totally Worth the Undereye Rash, I Think You'll Agree

Invariably when wine redeems the sight,
Narrowing the mustard scansions of the eyes,
A leopard ranging always in the brow
Asserts a vision in the slumbering gaze.

from "The Wine Menagerie"

This is the best picture that Elegant Choice managed to take of me in the three seconds after I had applied large gobs of stone-ground mustard to my face and before that same mustard began to burn so, so badly. So badly. So badly that I hardly had the strength to Photoshop a gangling bald man tattooed like a jungle cat onto my forehead--I persevered, though, and I'm so glad I did. I hope to God you people appreciate my daily sacrifices.

There Is a Line You Must Not Cross, but Round These Parts We Generally Ignore It

Cuchulainn has posted a brain-bending interpretation of the last line of "Voyages I" over at his non-blog--go look!

Ana Makes Habitable My Heart with Furniture and Houseplants of Pure Joy

I have been full of moody lousiness for the past few days, which has prevented me from giving birth to any more delicious drawings, but this morning Ana swooped into my inbox with a timely piece of art and rescued me from my doldrums. She writes: "I have attempted an artistic rendering of the first stanza of 'At Melville’s Tomb', albeit with a slightly contemporary, political air. The lines are as follows:

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

In this particular rendering, D. Rumsfeld is the mythical He (Melville won’t mind); he observes the dice of drowned men’s bones (i.e. the vote) as they bequeath the Senate unto the wave, emblematic of Freedom. As he watches, the numbers gleaned from those selfsame dice beat to Playboy upon a dusty shore.

I hope you won’t object to the small liberties taken in the interpretation of Crane’s poem."

Object? Hardly. I wallow in small liberties of interpretation like so many hippos, as you have almost certainly learned by now. I delight in the many layers of this particular contribution: the looming head and crooked finger of the bygone bastard himself, the metaphorical significance of the dice and their numbers, and the obligatory high-minded sexual euphemism. The numbers are beating...off! Well-played, Ana. The hippos of my earlier metaphorical wallowing now tromp in the squealing mud of your brain-power and bask in the rays of your wit.

What This Hart Crane Party Really Needs: Part Two

Where the cedar leaf divides the sky
I heard the sea.
In sapphire arenas of the hills
I was promised an improved infancy.

from "Passage"

Infancy is pretty delightful in the first place, I think we can all agree--what with the continual rubbing of ointments and the angelic hairlessness--but the one thing that might make it slightly nicer is extra breasts. At first I just drew a regular baby rolling in the sapphire hills, but then I realized that I could add another dimension of poignancy if I used Babyfaced Dino instead, whose turbulent friendship with the character Breast Cob is a constant reminder to him that his infancy was a poverty of merely two. The dino body rollicks with anticipation, and the fat-legged baby face screams with excitement at the promise of more.

What This Hart Crane Party Really Needs Is Some Half-Naked Women

Cuchulainn writes: "Here's an ice-breaking eyesore for the "I Heart Hart" party. As you know, I tend to wax pedantic, so you'll surely want to compress the introduction of this masterpiece into your own, pithy words. It's pretty self-explanatory, but here goes:

It is a violent scene, from the first movement of Hart Crane's 'Porphyro in Akron'. The setting is a street in downtown Akron, Ohio, and in this Old World collision, the Greek immigrant is represented by Elizabeth Stamatina Fey, whose heritage is Greek, and about whom I often have somewhat classically Greek thoughts. The Swede is model Victoria Silvstedt, conjuring that memory of her beloved Fjords that dangles within her ample bosom like a locket.

Rising from the street grating, miasma-like, is hip-hop diva Pink. She looks perhaps pensive or impatient, and is imploring us with her formidable, concentrated brainwaves to Get This Party Started.

PORPHYRO IN AKRON

I.

Greeting the dawn,

A shift of rubber workers presses down

South Main.

With the stubbornness of muddy water

It dwindles at each cross-line

Until you feel the weight of many cars

North-bound, and East and West,

Absorbing and conveying weariness, ---

Rumbling over the hills.

Akron, "high place", ---

A bunch of smoke-ridden hills

Among rolling Ohio hills.

The dark-skinned Greeks grin at each other

In the streets and alleys.

The Greek grins and fights with the Swede, ---

And the Fjords and the Aegean are remembered.

The plough, the sword,

The trowel, ---and the monkey wrench!

O City, your axles need not the oil of song.

I will whisper words to myself

And put them in my pockets.

I will go and pitch quoits with old men

In the dust of a road."

To which I responded: "You know how sometimes when you have been making out too long, your teeth start to feel like they are being zapped with joyousness or whatever? That's happening to me right now."

Bless you, Cuchulainn. This party could not have asked for a more ingenious or sweet-smelling foot to start out on.

Crane: His Thoughts Can Kill

Biography:

Modern American Poetry

Poems:

Modern American Poetry

Oldpoetry

Academy of American Poets

The Complete Poems

Articles:

New Yorker

New Criterion

New Yorks Times Archives

Washington Post (In Which a Certain Fucker Asserts That Hart Crane Was a Better Poet Than Wallace Stevens--You Fucking Wish, Merle)

We Will Make Our Meek Adjustments

Cuchulainn has spoken: Hart Crane wants a party! I think this is a truly excellent choice; I have been revisiting the man's work over the past few days and I have a thousand ideas for costumes, drawings, and cartoons. It's already the 3rd, so we had better behave like very fast animals in order to make up for lost time. Hart Crane, your party begins NOW.

As of this very minute, I am accepting Hart Crane submissions at happybirthdaywallace at yahoo dot com, since I see no reason to get a new email address each month. I will post your contributions as they come, starting with a few of my own--and possibly Cuchulainn's, too, if he desires to be a trailblazer. I'll also be posting a ton of Hart Crane links and resources as soon as I can--there has been a great deal of revived interest in him lately, due to the recent publication of his poems and letters by Library of America, so there's a lot to sift through. Note: I was previously unaware of how completely awesome-looking he was. No wonder Cleveland wanted a statue of him looking like a stony dandy!

We Do Not Prove the Existence of the Poem: Day Infinity

Here is a picture of Wallace Stevens giving a total blowjob to the word "weather," as described in the eleventh section of "A Primitive Like an Orb":

Here, then, is an abstraction given head,
A giant on the horizon, given arms,
A massive body and long legs, stretched out,
A definition with an illustration, not
Too exactly labelled, a large among the smalls
Of it, a close, parental magnitude,
At the centre on the horizon, concentrum, grave
And prodigious person, patron of origins.

Do you like his frilled shirt? I do. I wanted to make this drawing extra-classy because the last technical day of the Wallace Stevens Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes party was two days ago, and I wanted to award our hero one last eyeful of my sumptuous art to propel him through the next hundred years of bored afterliving.

This party is far too majestic to let die, so I have decided that we should devote the rest of our lives to creating artistic desecrapretations of the poems we love. Together we will pick a different poet each month to massage with our collected talents, beginning with three poets that will be chosen by our prizewinners. That's right, my geniuses, I am awarding you Intangible Prizes of Imperial Choice--Cuchulainn will pick a poet for November, Tony will pick a poet for December, and Ana will pick a poet for January. I will, of course, continue to welcome any Wallace Stevens submissions I receive as long as our eternal party here lasts, since we have only managed to scratch the surface of his euphemistic brilliance in the past few weeks, and also because I am kind of disappointed that I never got to dress up like a silentious porpoise.

I anxiously await the decisions of Cuchulainn, Tony, and Ana. I trust the judgment of each of these people implicitly, and though I will be rooting very strongly for James Whitcomb Riley to be the second mastermind to receive my nuanced treatments, I will be delighted to accept whichever poets they choose. More news as it comes, little partygoers--I hope you will stay all night and well into the morning.

HAPPY PONDEROUS AUTUMNAL HALLOWALLACE

Hallowallace! That is what Ana, who is rich in cleverness, named it. She writes: "alright. i thought before October ran out i HAD to contribute in some fashion--here is a PONDEROUS, AUTUMNAL HALLOWALLACE. yes, i'm yelling. with joy!" As did I when I laid my eyes on her creation. I was sadly unable to post this yesterday, seeing as how I was attending many dozens of frightening parties with my wealthy and attractive friends*, but Wallace does not mind, seeing as how he is dead and the concept of days and lateness are so silly to him now. The quote "inanimate in an inert savoir" is taken from "The Plain Sense of Things," which I will reproduce here in its entirety because I love it so much and it is so appropriate for the bygone scary holiday.

The Plain Sense of Things

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.

We have not come to the end of the imagination yet, though, my friends. I will make a surprising announcement later today**, when I also announce what prizes I will be awarding the three geniuses who won the contests. Be full of anticipation!

*This is untrue.
**And by "later today," I mean "tomorrow," because my ultimate drawing is not quite finished yet. I think you'll find it worth the wait, though. Extra apologies to my three geniuses who have been waiting for news of their prizes!