who gives a rat's ass its 100 kilowatt glow endowed by its electrocutor w/ certain ukuleleable frights between the palm trees rising perpendicular on the power grid. among these are pink flats buried in the closets of pink flats. we hold these somnambulant cocktails are big sippers that palm callouses and daytime trenchfoot bestow nite-time cable hijackers w/ R. Hoodian splendor that the spa's edge marks both domains, - the lip- liner mime's fabrications, & the wage climbers foothold above the bottomless summer crevasse; that everyone's near the beach, a stones throw from a cast, a cell phone call from the deal, and so here and there, this and that, are created, that proper tee times be established, that palming, that distinctions between public and private
Accourding to Shawn Walker: Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:00:09 -0500 (EST) From: swalker@dept.english.upenn.edu (Shawn Walker) Hey, Mike. I like reading your poems because they reming me of you. "No, really." I remember the song "Africa" and it's band.\ turnover as splashes. they have been called. the mystery of what did it fishes I can hear you saying, with a knowing wink over the wall of sanctity, "they have been called." I'm not much of a fan of discussions of voice, but I can say I like it when a likeable voice is present, and then you can tell why people fall in love with poetry, especially when they are reclusive. It is not unpleasant to let your voice into my head while reading your poems, as it is not unpleasant to have a conversation with you. This is not the case with all "voices." Sometimes we like them because they take over and rip us apart. Sometimes we stop reading poetry because they do that. I admire your unassuming humor and attentiveness. Your documentary breeze is something to admire. You/we're right in there with the palm trees. I wonder what Florida looks like give or take a few hundred years/readings. Shawn
Accourding to Mike Magee: Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:00:09 -0500 From: mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Shawn, thanks for your response! I don't want to preclude discussion by interrupting "authorially" but you brought up 2 issues which interest me alot: 1) "voice" which, as a poetic term I don't like much either but as a musical term I like more - as in "voicing" in jazz: in simplest terms, doubling, omitting, or adding (unexpectedly) notes to a chord. Thelonious Monk called it "using notes differently." So, I think about an eccentric, too-insistent repetition of sounds (for istance in these poems there are a lot of "r" sounds I think) which might foreground the physicality of words the way Monk foregrounds the piano itself (i.e. he's not just "playing music" he's hitting on little black and white keys); and 2) the Florida issue: "I wonder what Florida looks like give or take a few hundred years/readings." I wonder too but I try not to let it get in the way of the poem while I'm writing it. This is gonna sound stupid maybe but while I'm writing I try to cultivate an attitude of, like, "well, if its good enough someone will footnote it." Of course I don't actually *believe* this but it gets the poem written and then I can see what I have and decide. It also occurs to me that there's a benefit to writing insuch a way that the poem will resist "universalization" - I don't want some Harold Bloom type to say "Mike Magee speaks for all of us" -- yikes!! I sure don't. But to say, "this is how Florida ca. 1998 was mediating and being mediated by a particularly interesting, attentive consciousness and this is the language of that exchange, 'the genuine article'" -- that would be nice. Or, equally nice: "there's enough going on here and enough open-endedness that we can keep reading it in the direction of our own concerns." Something like that. -m.