Mr. lain Marshall ate with hot sauce the inner organs of fruits and vegetables

Didn't realize it was Bloomsday today. Which works out, since my plans were to bumble around Ypsi for various foods and drinks anyway. I've already eaten an indulgent breakfast and checked out someones butt, so I'm off to a good start. Actually, I've never been one for holidays, even literary (maybe especially literary) ones. (Actually, not holidays, but I do have a bizarre obsession with eating things that are in books that I like). Also, if I were celebrating Bloomsday, I'd hope I wouldn't be doing so as Leopold Bloom. Blech. Or anyone else in that book for that matter. Maybe I'll read a bit of it today though, it's been a couple years.

"Give her real immoral pleasure pondorosity ornithology wherret bobsled": a spam email title I just read.

Been so scatter brained lately. Consuming slightly less "poetry" lately, a shit ton more gangsta rap (Wu-Tang Clan, N.W.A., O.D.B., Ice Cube, Tupac, Biggie, some Dr. Dre. Also, newer Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Mos Def, Eminem/D12). I've been interested in gangsta rap for a while, but lately I've been thinking about it in comparison with everything various people on the Harriet blog complain that poetry "should" be. For instance, that poetry should do more with rhyme, and meter/rhythm constructions. Gangsta rap does it. That poetry should appeal to a wider audience. Gangsta rap does. That poetry should do more with the lyrical "I". Much gangsta rap does (and much more interestingly than most lyric poetry). Martin Earl recently argued that poetry needs to be cathartic. Gangsta rap is. Gangsta rap also accomplishes this while being a thoroughly "postmodern" art movement. It uses appropriation, insincerity, chaos, nonsense, self-referentiality, explosion of the lyrical "I", suspicion of "normal" syntax, etc. It's often wildly political but slow to back any political movement. I'd argue that a large reason that middle class white America is aware of the conditions of the lower classes is because of gangsta rap. And of course, it has some problematic elements (as does most any interesting art).

I'm also reading Kathy Acker's My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her use of the play script format is very exciting, and is really energizing my desire to make poems.

Our noise band (Miss America: the Movie) is screening our soundtrack for The Titanic tonight. It's at 8:00 at Theresa's house. If you know who that is and where that is, you can probably come. If not, sorry, I'd rather have coordinated a larger venue too. Hopefully we'll do something similar to this soon.