Ben Fama

LUPE’S DIAMONDS She had other nieces at least eight but mine was an expensive gift to never lose They were jagged freckles of light My aunts said let her wear her hair down no importa burnt red lipstick and diamond specks How I suffered from feeling blanched in a world inhabited by amber women who would never let me run around like a wetback in the snake high grass with heavy dust in the shoes my cousins and I hopped like grease shed our skin and listened for rattles: Have you seen my white son-in-law? who went to the drugstore for me The smell of the river is very old and my back is slight from the liberty of it When I suffered my aunt bought me diamonds two flecks of cartwheeling light to never lose and when I lost them in the river I got a second chance ________________________________________________________ [...]

MY SOLIDARITY We meet in a reflective trench and you are skeptical but then you begin to feel my solidarity like a short-haired snake between your legs. The snake starts to hustle, overweening the lip of pants. Let’s you and I never be cops to each other. Because we study elephant lore, and in all the annals of elephant adventures, there was only one cop. And he was shit. Elephant stories are like pop songs, one of the earliest forms of experiential autonomy. Yes their appearance is in the form of money, but they go into our mouths and we sing them beautifully and when our lives are ruined we sing them again at karaoke. And karaoke is one of the world’s greatest displays of total solidarity. Almond waves come out of my phone. Marzipan insurrection not just televised but broadcast. If you want to know the status of my [...]

The Hills A wolf whistle sounds. Street level shot of an apartment complex at night, windows lit. “Heidi and Spencer’s Apartment, Hollywood, CA” say white letters at the bottom of the screen. Shot of Heidi’s torso in a room with white walls. She has on a black, low-cut halter dress with russet trim. As she pivots her body, the tip of her bleached hair appears on her tanned shoulders. She lifts one hand to her face. Her face is out of the shot. Spencer appears to be sitting, back to the camera. He is in the left hand corner of the screen. All that can be seen of him is his torso and the back of his curly blonde head. He is wearing a white t-shirt and is out of focus. Heidi is in focus. Heidi walks across the room, back to Spencer. “That looks good,” says Spencer. “Those the [...]

I wanna know which friend will die young, so I can spend more time with them now by Rachel Glaser you hurt my feelings so I lie and say, I do wanna fuck my roommate I say, We’ve pushed our beds so they share a wall dirty dishes are inevitable when you were young and bumped your head on the table your father would make a show of hitting the table when you bumped your knee in the doorway your father would kick the doorway I wanna know which friend will die so I can surprise my other friends we climb into the car, lick the cd pick the mountain with the most views L e t ’s t r y p r i m a l s c r e a m t h e r a p y S c r e a m a s l o [...]

An extremely subjective best & worst of 2010 so far… Best Chapbook: by (Octopus Books) Some images from the original archive are unavailable. Best Full Length: by Ben Mirov Other Full Lengths of Note: Paul Killebrew – (Canarium Books) Dottie Lasky – (Wave) Kevin Varrone – (UDP) Aaron Kunin – (Fence) Most Overrated: Most Underrated: by Carlos Oquendo de Amat Best Book You Haven’t Read: by Rachel Glaser A Forthcoming Book You’ll Want To Know About: Natalie Lyalin – (UDP) Related posts: “While I was masturbating, more rainforest disappeared” a brief and not recent internet roundup “Waltz with Sticks” by Genevieve Burger-Weiser NOTES ON NOISE Briefly remembering

(To sum up our tryptych of posts for Dorothea Lasky, I present a brief and delicious interview) It seems like some of the best writing that’s happening right now is coming out of the Amherst/ Northampton area. I’m thinking of Natalie Lyalin, Heather Christle, Emily Pettit. Matthew Zapruder went to school there. So did you. What’s the secret? My instinct is to add to that list with the large number of great poets, writers, musicians, and artists who have come out of there also. But I am not sure where I would stop with this list. So, I will just shake my head and say yes, I agree. That area is a generative space. Of course, I think so because I went to MFA school at UMass-Amherst (all of these people went to UMass, if not for MFA, then for undergrad.) The MFA program there is wonderful, it just generates. [...]

Dorothea Lasky’s made huge waves when debuted at this years AWP. The newest book on ‘s Dossier imprint, Lasky lays out, in 19 quick pages, a theory of poetry that reaches back through High Romanticism into a more hermetic time. Illustrated beautiful throughout by , Lasky’s theory pushes against the limits set out by conceptual writing, striding toward a more cosmic and otherwordly approach to artistic creation. There’s a lineage of deep thought coming from poets back from Blake to Spicer’s ideas of poetic dictaction and Barbara Guest’s short collection of writing on art, Forces of Imagination. I was graced with the wondrous task of editing this book, and I present to you a soundbytey narrated version of the greater text, so you can get a flavor of what’s happening here. <> “I once heard a scholar use the term “project” as he introduced another poet at a reading. He [...]

See more about Dottie Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT Get it at while the ink is still wet. Available at the UDP portion of the “table X publishing commune.” Related Posts Book Review: Map of the Folded World (John Gallaher)

<> Concerning all the recent discussions about memory, recitation, etc, I thought I would try it in my own way. I should disclose that I never recite my own poems from memory at readings. I think it is corny, weird, it makes me uncomfortable, and frankly, to spend that much time memorizing your own work is kind of sick. <> I want to rebel against my own ideas. <> I tried to write a poem entirely in my head and memorize it. I would never write it down. All editing would take place in my head. Line for line. The entire building and reconstruction could only exist abstractly. No writing as an aid. I would memorize the final poem. I would recite the poem and that is how it could live. <> This is how it went: First I had a few lines, but I could only get at it [...]

Ben Luzzatto’s THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, ABRIDGED (UDP, 2010) is one of those rare artifacts that transfers its own actual magic—and it is real magic—until the possessed begins to lift a bit toward the sky. Ugly Duckling Presse has been summed up quite well as “a publishing collective specializing in experimental poetry and new editions of forgotten textual artist, producing lovely, cheeky books by authors you’ve probably never heard of but your grandchildren will likely read in college…a nesting ground for swans of the avant-garde poetry scene.” It’s true that I do feel personally attached to many titles UDP has produced (such as or ). THEORY is the most recent in its Dossier Series, which produced the wonderfully heady though deadly pretentious , and soon will bring out Dottie Lasky’s . When I first held this particular book though, I do what I do with most books, hold it open [...]

With the creation of one of the high achievements of mankind, Twin Peaks, David Lynch made a world so ecstatic it demanded its own reality. I’ve been really thinking about Julee Cruise and Twin Peaks SO MUCH lately. What makes it so good? Where did this music come from? Who is Julee Cruise *really*!? Why is this music so appropriate after dark? Lynch obviously takes a lot of cues from Kenneth Anger, particularly Anger’s bike films Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos. With these, Kenneth Anger added simple bubble gum pop songs over ritual cruelty and raw sexuality, (not only inventing music videos,) but also exposing basic desires as a violent, cold thing. David Lynch uses Julee Cruise in his work the same way, but also in a new way. Lynch and Badalamenti wrote the songs that she recorded for the soundtrack, which are pretty much 60′s pop songs with [...]

Sunday evening I encountered this artifact created out of the weekend’s leftovers. I had been showing family around who had never been nyc before. That meant three miserable days of walking in the rain while forcing myself to be cheerful. This stream or river or rainbow or spittle-barf of umbrellas was an affirmation to me of whats most at stake in being conscious, (which could be described very quickly, I guess, as a reaction). Whoever made this left no trace of themselves nor stuck around to explain. Less is almost always more. I love you, whoever made this, for that. Related posts: better late SONNETS by Bernadette Mayer A Preface to a Blog: Auguries of Experience Accident and Inspiration: Waking up from a Comma