Here Comes the Beatnik Cowboy

No, not Neil Cassady. I'm talking about a website, a website where they put up three of my poems. Thanks to Chris Butler for accepting them.

A Story about a Chicken Foot, and Nothing but a Chicken Foot

Finally another short story. This one's called The Chicken Foot. The genesis of this one started with a lecture by William S. Burroughs I listened to a couple years ago. During a lecture to a writing class, Burroughs discussed the Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs. I decided to write a variation on the story based on his ideas about it. Hope you all like it. Thanks to Roxana Nastase for giving it a home at Scarlet Leaf Review.

On the Rusk and Poets Fighting Poets

Since I'm tired and trying to write another novel, I haven't been doing much submitting to anything. Occasionally something slips through though. I'm in Issue Four of On the Rusk. Click around and you'll find me. Oh, and here's an account of a brawl between poets by Charles Simic. Everybody was fighting everybody in '68! One time I tried to stop a fight like Ginsberg did in this piece. More Franciscan and less Buddhist though. I ended up getting maced by Irish Catholic cops.

Not Waving but Drowning in My Own Fears

In honor of National Poetry Month here's a poem that I wrote. You can't see it here. You have to go to Drown in My Own Fears.  In terms of genesis, this one I think I can explain. I was inspired by the Wichita Vortex Sutra. I obviously expanded on a theme form there, sort of the same way the classical composers would work off one another's opuses. It might have been a cut-up. I'm not sure. It's been a while and I've written a hell of a lot of poetry since then. Roughly 3,500 pages. Anyway, read what I've linked to and enjoy it, or be disgusted, either way be MOVED by it people.

The Online Empire of My Presence Is Expanding

Getting published in other people's websites is pretty much all I'm good for anyways.

Poem up at Dead Beats.

Poem in the last edition of Guerrilla Pamphlets.

A Ginger Piglet of a Poem

Here a Lee! There a Lee! Everywhere a Nar-do-lil-li!

I have a poem up at Ginger Piglet. Take a break from your Independence Day activities to read it. Richard Henry Lee commands you to! In honor of freedom, you can read this essay by William S. Burroughs about his experiences with Scientology. 

The Adventures of Pizarro Delacroix

A poem so good, it was published again at Reprint. 

A song so good it makes me nostalgic for the NYU food court. Ah Upstein. Ah Humanity. 

See if you can pass this test: Westminster Dog name or a line from Ginsberg's Howl?

Poetry In the Brooklyner and Other News

Hello all, some updates from the very sedate files of Mr. Nardolilli:

I have three poems up in the Brooklyner. Read one of them here, another here, and the last one in this place.

Here's a link to a project centered on the life of little known counterculture figure Shig Murao that presents his life and work. He was the one who was actually arrested for selling Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Unfortunately his role was not depicted in the recent film based on the famous censorship trial, even though he was a defendant along with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (whose last name the spellchecker recognizes, boy is Google Chrome one hep cat!). I reviewed the film when it first came out a year ago.  Besides Howl, Shig was involved with City Lights bookstore, the San Francisco renaissance, and was an early zine publisher. In addition he was also a survivor of the Japanese internment and Allen Ginsberg lived out of his closet. A pretty interesting life all around. 

Oh, and I was nominated for a Pushcart for a poem in my poetry chapbook.

May So Far

I am a featured poet at Scribble Therapy.

I am in this edition of Kerouac's Dog Magazine (you can pay pounds now to read me)

I have another post up at my anti-Manchild project. Today I received an email and it turns out my first task might come to pass. More details will follow.

Also, I had a weird dream last night where I overdosed on beer and bacon, then shaved off my mustache in a gastropub.

Break Out the Bongo Drums!

I have five, count 'em (in case I'm wrong) FIVE poems up at The Beatnik.

New Poems for a New Year

Here's to 2011 and to the wreck of 2010, which is a gondola sinking to the bottom of the sea. Here are some works of mine that have recently been published:

A poem based on Langston Hughes at Beltway Poetry Quarterly

Some vespers o' mine at Finding the Beat

And a poem at NAP, in case you're feeling tired from all the festivities, I know that I am

Late October Poems

I have a few more poems on the interwebs you should check out. Here are the links so you don't have to google my name and search for all my online bounties. I have a poem up at Eye of the Needle in honor of Jack Kerouac's death (the site has a picture of the house I failed to see). I also have work up at Poemwriters, three poems to be exact: here, here, and here. The picture above is in honor of Jack. When I saw his scroll exhibit at the NY Public Library I wanted to do something similar, so created a poem that I cut up in bits and pieces and rearranged on the second floor of Broome Street.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity”

I recently read an attempt to create a Howl for my generation. I do not make the allusion myself, the author set it up so, with a single word title meant to juxtaposition with Ginsberg's poem. So comparisons can be made, the point of the poem in the first place. Doing so, one sees that it has its moments but it is no reincarnation, only a parody. However, it was not as good a parody as reading The Waste Land by Orson Welles. "Tweet" does not make it new, as another poet known for his use of homages would say.

I think it may have suffered from the formating of the website. Such a work needs space for the words to breathe. But mostly, it falls flat not in its diagnosing of the problem, but in its referencing. Instead of Ginsberg's use of his friend's adventures and his own intellectual endeavors as a source for an epic, Miller's work reads like a laundry list. It is in need of eyeball kicks and more skillful use in condensing.

These sorts of things have been written before. I remember reading a different one that was about the yuppies. A direction adaptation and twisting worked in this case because it was meant to comment on hos a generation had sold out, or at least refused to carry the flame of challenging assumptions. A Howl for my generation, to be taken seriously, requires a different sort of indignation and rage. It must tell the tale of us not destroying ourselves, but our being witnesses the self-destruction of everything around us. It must deal with how our birthright has been lost. I think it is fitting to consider ourselves a sort of Generation Esau.

Above all, the interesting thing is how Howl, a poem that was as free as any verse could be at the time, has now become its own form. Poems come from it, they have the same structure and make the same stops. A series of expectations is built into the nature of the references, how they are voiced, made, and changed, if indeed they are changed. The process starts right at the beginning. What minds did the author see, and how were they destroyed?

You Won't Get Immunity From This Virus!

All of you looking for a little break from the incessant coverage of a certain golfer's problems, can check out issue #5 of Media Virus Magazine, not to be confused with the book. My featured work is the poem "Insomnia As a Material Condition." While we are on viral themes, here's a random line generator for all you who think language itself is a virus.

RIP Jack Kerouac

Today' blog post is in honor of the King of the Beats, Jack Kerouac. Forty years ago, yesterday, he drank some whiskey for breakfast and then ate a can of tuna fish. A few minutes later he was rushed to hospital for coughing up blood. He died shortly thereafter. It was an inglorious end to a life filled with wandering and writing in search of an ever elusive beatific vision.

Here is Kerouac at his height, riding the sensation that was On the Road:



And shortly before he died, on Firing Line with William F. Buckley, jr.

The Old Pond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb1mKVsaXss

East meets West!

West meats East!

Est wheats Mast!

Messed eats Wast!