Poetry Comics

Mahendra Singh on The The!

2012-01-30T14:05:00.000-08:00

There's a new Poetry Comics installment up on The The, featuring Mahendra Singh!

The Stag Upon the Vine
(V; 15)

A hunted Stag concealed in vines,
in this verdant tropic havoc
grown riotous thick by fecund luck
till hounds and men lose heart, resigns
the chase and he’s free again
to devour the vine, all decency defy
till they hear him, hounds and men
they return and set on him to die
a just punishment, he now knows too late
forget me, he cries, yet remember my fate
then falls and the pack falls upon him
stoic he dies while huntsmen join in
forsake gratitude for greed, the egotist’s whim:
betray thy saviour and revel in thy sin

Le Cerf et la Vigne
(V; 15)

Un cerf, à la faveur d’une vigne fort haute,
Et telle qu’on en voit en de certains climats,
S’étant mis à couvert et sauvé du trépas,
Les veneurs, pour ce coup, croyaient leurs chiens en faute;
Ils les rappellent donc. Le cerf, hors de danger,
Broute sa bienfaitrice : ingratitude extrême !
On l’entend, on retourne, on le fait déloger :
Il vient mourir en ce lieu même.
« J’ai mérité, dit-il, ce juste châtiment :
Profitez-en, ingrats. » Il tombe en ce moment.
La meute en fait curée : il lui fut inutile
De pleurer aux veneurs à sa mort arrivés.
Vraie image de ceux qui profanent l’asile
Qui les a conservés.

New Poem on InDigest

2012-01-23T15:12:00.000-08:00

My poem “You Were Lost in the Delta Quadrant” is up on the InDigest podcast! Last year I also made this tiny video of part of this poem. Which I shall place here:

Music Video

2012-01-19T06:25:00.000-08:00

I made this song with Ben Pease and Guy Pettit. And then tried to make a music video to go with it.

I Draw Horses

2012-01-17T15:23:00.000-08:00

Guess What?

2012-01-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to be using this blog again until the new one gets renovated.

2011-11-13T19:53:00.001-08:00

from a longer piece

2011-06-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

In case you're still not looking at poetrycomics.com.....here's a piece of a longer thing I'm doing.

NEWS

2011-06-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

Item: Well, I wrote some prose. A book review. And you can read it on The The. It's about a good chapbook. this is how my review will make you feel:

Item: The two new Monk Books Chapbooks are available online at monk-books.com. I'm just so damned proud to put out books of good poetry. Ben Pease and Bernadette Mayer, and Mark Strand. Three kick-ass poets who I would totally be stuck on a desert island with. The books are going to be worth millions one day, and be listed on the back of the New York Times Book Review at the rare book auctions right beside Beatrix Potter.

*Joe Weil, Ben Pease, Simone Kearney with Wichman Cometh

Top: Ben Fama, Levi Rubeck, Bianca Stone, Alina Gregorian, Ben Pease reading at Dixon Place

Below: Bernadette Mayer reaches for cane while preparing to stun crowd with her poems from The Formal Field of Kissing.

BOOK TRAILER FOR MONK!!!

2011-05-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

I made a movie from the forthcoming chapbook from MONK BOOKS. Ben Pease's WICHMAN COMETH. Below you will see the cover to his book, as well as the cover for the forthcoming chapbook by Bernadette Matey THE FORMAL FIELD OF KISSING.

ENVISION: TONIGHT! POETRY COMICS READING!

2011-05-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

TONIGHT AT 7PM

WORD

126 Franklin Street

Brooklyn, NY

Poets Mónica de la Torre, Bianca Stone, and Sara Wintz

and cartoonists Sarah Glidden, Lisa Hanawalt, and Julia Wertz

will read to benefit Project ENVISION Williamsburg, a local coalition of activists working to prevent sexual assaults before they occur.

Suggested Donation $5 at the door

Mónica de la Torre's poetry books in English are Talk Shows (Switchback, 2007) and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008). She is also author of two poetry books in Spanish published in Mexico City: Acúfenos (Taller Ditoria, 2006) and Sociedad Anónima (Bonobos/UNAM, 2010). As a translator and editor of Latin American poetry in translation, her most recent project is the anthology of post-Latino writing Malditos latinos, malditos sudacas: Poesía hispanoamericana Made in USA (Billar de Lucrecia, 2010). She is a 2009 NYFA poetry fellow and senior editor at BOMB Magazine.

Sarah Glidden's first full-length comic book, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, was published by Vertigo in November 2010. She is now at work on her second non-fiction comic book, tentatively titled Stumbling Towards Damascus, which is about journalists reporting on Iraqi refugees in Syria (among other things). Her work has also appeared in Syncopated: An Anthology of Non-Fiction Picto-Essays and I Saw You: Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections. www.smallnoises.com

Lisa Hanawalt lives in Greenpoint and does illustrations + funnies for publications like the NY Times, McSweeney’s, Vice Magazine, and Chronicle Books. She’s best known for her comic book series I Want You. www.lisahanawalt.com

Bianca Stone is a poet and visual artist. She curates the Ladder Reading Series and is editor of the press Monk Books. Her publications include Crazyhorse, The Green Mountain Review, Agriculture Reader, and Conduit. She is the author of the chapbook Someone Else’s Wedding Vows from Argos Books. Her blog is called Poetry Comics http://whoisthatsupposedtobe.blogspot.com/. She lives in Brooklyn.

Julia Wertz is the cartoonist of the unfortunately titled Fart Party vol 1 & 2 and Drinking at the Movies. Originally from the Bay Area, she lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her work can be seen at juliawertz.com

Sara Wintz's writing has appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Jacket, 6X6, Physical Poets and on Ceptuetics. Her first book, WALKING ACROSS A FIELD WE ARE FOCUSED ON AT THIS TIME NOW, will be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2012.

POETRYCOMICS.COM

2011-05-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

Dearest 43 Followers,

I'm pleased to announce that a brand new Poetry Comics website has been erected in the ether, and I hope to lead all 43 of you into it. I feel almost ashamed to announce this here....This blogspot is like a railroad apartment in Bushwick: long and narrow and dark in the middle, five flights up--but once decorated with love and personal joie de vivre, it's a real home to be proud of. So it's with a bit of a heavy heart that I announce to there is now a massive studio space with French windows and free Bellini's on the veranda that will also be showcasing this hybrid blog. And it's called poetrycomics.com.

However, being the nostalgic hoarder that I am, I will be doing my posts on each blog for a while. Plus, the new site is still being touched up, so it's not entirely done. ANYWAY, if you haven't already, please take a look and comment and spread the word.

To reminisce for a moment...I started this blog about four (five?) years ago when I first moved to NYC to attend NYU's MFA program in creative writing. I called the blog WHO IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE because there was a time when people would say that a lot when they looked at what I was drawing. It annoyed the hell out of me. This was all before I was really thinking about my poetry and art coming together to create the monster it is now. I would go on here and bitch about people accosting me in parks about smoking or whatever--(so much has happened in the past few years it really astounds me). I hope that Poetry Comics continues to evolve and grow and incite ideas in the readers that come here. I want to keep exploring different ways in which poetry and art can push against their own conventions and forms, to collaborate, and keep an eye always on the cultural climate we stroll through with our $5 umbrellas and rubber boots.

So thank you so so much for following this blog, and I look forward to the future together.

<3 Bianca

Harpies is How I Feel

2011-04-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

THIS PICTURE HOW I FEEL WHEN I LISTEN TO LEMONADE BY COCOROSIE

I WANT TO PLAY THE PIANO I WANT TO PLAY THE DRUMS I WANT TO
LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE COMPUTER AND I WISH I HADN'T SOLD

MY SYNTHESIZER AT A YARD SALE YEARS AGO

OR SOLD MY STUDDED BELTS

I WISH I HADN'T SOLD MY FIRST SKATEBOARD

Loaded Bicycle: a New Online Journal

2011-04-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

New poetry comics and those Anne Carson collaborations in the new literary magazine edited by Martin Rock called Loaded Bicycle . There's a hidden poetry comic within the art section, which I will post a bit of it here. Happy easter egg hungering.

2011-04-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

Ms. Mabel at the Pharmacy

I’m 77 years old with a head full of white hair

so they should look at me and know

I’m not making meth.

I have lived all these years

in practicality.

My shoes are sensible. The wind

stirs me

no more or less

than anyone else.

I am filled with the light

of Jesus Christ. I am peeling

the aluminum

off a cream filled egg.

A Few Things Here

2011-04-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

...including two drafts of images of mine from Anne Carson's translation of Antigone--but these are just little shadows behind the real project--they keep me going between actually going---

Also check out one of my poems from POST ROAD magazine, seen here on the Guest Folio. And buy the magazine because it has Adam Fitzgerald, Simone Kearney, Allison Power, Will Dowd, and Stuart Krimko. I happen to know they're all totally amazing poets.

The last thing is that this is a totally bad-ass recording of the CocoRosie song, Lemonade. True poets and artists--I can't get enough of this--if only I could be as cool as this Bianca. //////////////

I spent a really long time on crosshatching these pants.

My attempt at porch architecture.....and it looks like Darth Vader is brooding on the top step.

from a longer piece

2011-03-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Poems and Drawings on Lyre Lyre

2011-03-11T06:25:00.000-08:00

Check out two poems on Lyre Lyre as well as three of my cake drawings, from the old cake series. Make sure also to check out Ben Pease's art, as well as poems by Douglas Piccinnini and Lauren Hunter, and many (many) more....I'm posting a cake below. Soon ( or not so soon) I shall have drawn 100 Birthday Cakes.

MONK BOOKS DEBUT

2011-03-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well, happily my friend Adam Fitzgerald and I have started a small chapbook press called MONK BOOKS. Our first title, Mystery and Solitude in Topeka, by Mark Strand, is here. Tonight we celebrate with a small reading and mingling at 192 Books 190 10th Ave, New York, NY, 10011 New York, NY. 7:00.

http://monk-books.com/

2011-02-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

a part of a poetry comic that didn't make the final cut lands its own gig

2011-02-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

I was half way through making this poetry comic, and as I was cutting up the poem, I realized I didn't much care for the lines (this is a good exercise in editing). I changed the poem for the comic, but this image ended up not fitting so well with the others and the new poem.

Poetry Comic Collaboration with Anne Carson

2011-01-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

Poetry Comics Takes the Stage

2011-01-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

To remind you one last time of the amazing online mag Paperbag, here's some images from the reading at Pete's Candy Store. Also, here's an old poetry comics collaboration from 2008 I did with Levi Rubeck.

Me with the Poetry Comics slide show beginning....

from "Tree Opera"

Me reading with Ben Pease from his poem "Chateau Wichman" with his images projected behind.

COUCH

2011-01-14T08:03:00.000-08:00

Someone eats the heat right out of my

hand. Thus the winter populates us.

Blue is only a perception evoked by light. A spectrum

dominated by energy with a wavelength the size of a few nanometers—

Fragments from the poem Atlas.

2011-01-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

A Piece of the Poinsettias

2011-01-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

Snippet of a Play

2011-01-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

*text from Anne Carson's Antigone

December Poets on The The: A Month In Review

2011-01-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

Before Adam Fitzgerald begins his month of January as Poem Of The Week editor on THE THE Poetry Blog, be sure to take another look at the four amazing poets I showcased in December. My aim was to provide a wide range--as much as one can with four people--while remaining within my personal aesthetic. I started the month out with two of my favorite young up-and-coming poets. I was so pleased to begin with the unflaggingly talented Emily Pettit. Her poems are surprising and strange, but what I find so gratifying about them is their interspersed moments of the speaker's bold awareness of self, almost vulnerability. Pettit weaves in and out of a flat direct tone, and soaring lyricalness, they're clean without being neat, and wild without loosing their way. Her debut full length title (greatly anticipated) Goat In The Snow is forthcoming from Birds LLC. Next we have M.A. Vizsolyi, a fellow NYU graduate, whose work has always blown me away with its poignant sensuality, humor and downright original raw talent. It was no surprise that his manuscript The Lamp with Wings: Love Sonnets, won The National Poetry Series. Look for his book this fall. His poems make you want to read them over and over again.

The illustrious Sharon Olds was good enough to custom write a poem for the blog with her Ode To The THE. It's a poem of grammatical curiosity and, ultimately, grammatical love. She has a beautiful fascination with the literal written word, and complex preoccupation with language, all rendered here with her poet-god flare and wonderfully strange wit. Keep and eye out for many Olds-odes in the coming year. Next there's the indomitable voice of Mark Bibbins, whose poem begins: "A dead CEO admonishes/ me to do/what I love, which he can’t see me/doing." A fierce and fiery poem that still manages to bathe me in a soft purple glow that only Bibbins could pull-off. I love his line breaks. And finally Matthew Rohrer's [Do you get any reception here?] which I think is a perfect follower for Bibbins' poem. Rohrer poems have such an ease about them that it makes you want to run into the other room and write a poem about running into the other room--which is a poor way of saying I think Rohrer shows us that no subject is to small, no moment too brief--he makes such gorgeous poems with a seeming flick of the wrist. They are indeed "Bits of information like a glorious blanket over the sky."

*Photos: Michael Vizolyi; Sharon Olds.

Paperbag No. 2

2010-12-31T13:30:00.000-08:00

Happily, the new issue of the online magazine PAPERBAG is here! A beautiful showcase of poems, artwork, video, audio and more.

Check out my bran-spanking new full-length poetry comic Tree Opera, and make sure to pause for a long period of time over Ben Pease's excerpt from Chateau Wichman, a Blockbuster in Verse, which include Ben's amazing computer-Paint-collageish-artwork images, which are subtle and gorgeous.

Check out the Paperbag site all the way through, as there are many easter eggs of interest, including Instructions For Folding, offering readers a chance to collaborate with the amazing Anne Carson and Robert Currie. (You'll have to go check it out for more details!)

(image excerpt from Tree Opera)

SINGLE WHITE WICHMAN LOOKING FOR A GROUP OF WOMEN TO MAKE A MAN OUT OF ME, SO AS TO BE REMEMBERED FOR THE AGES. CANDLELIGHT MAKES ME NAUSEOUS, MOONLIGHT I CAN BEAR.
(From Ben Pease's Chateau Wichman)

a poem in pencil and ink and charcoal

2010-12-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

2010-12-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Toad Talks At Great Length

2010-12-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

I opened my book Poetry Comics by Dave Morice

and out fell these napkins on which I scrawled on night at Cafe Loup over a year ago.

Self Portrait with Poem Fragment

2010-12-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

1-DIMENSIONAL SLICES OF A 2-DIMENSIONAL MEMBRANE

VIBRATING IN 11-DIMENSIONAL SPACE.

I hung these pants on the wall because I want to jump into them

like a gazelle. Wouldn’t it be something if strands of the universe

were good for you? I want you to unravel perpetually and enter in

at the mouth. A light, sinning at the rim of a black dome with

oscillating lines, filling our faces with a steady silver glow—

2010-11-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

(1487)

emily dickinson

The Savior must have been
A docile Gentleman—
To come so far so cold a Day
For little Fellowmen—

The Road to Bethlehem
Since He and I were Boys
Was leveled, but for that 'twould be
A rugged Billion Miles—

Argos Books Release Party

2010-11-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

Someone Else's Wedding Vows

by Bianca Stone
&

This Landscape

by Paige Ackerson-Kiely & Adie Russell

918 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Friday the 19th 7:30pm

TheThe Poetry Blog

2010-11-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

The time has come to plug the blog I contribute for, The The. It's so great doing artwork and buttons for them, like the little icon of a book in the tab window, and here on facebook. So make sure to follow the blog, there's so many great things going on there!

Here's a poetry comic I did for them recently:

Beginning of "Other Forms"

2010-11-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

My Poetry Comic Reading in Burlington, VT Oct 27

2010-10-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

Painted Word Poetry Series

Bianca Stone & Thomas Heise

Burlington, Vermont/The Fleming Museum

61 Colchester Avenue
Burlington, VT

Wednesday, October 27 · 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Hosted by the amazing Major Jackson

I'm doing a slide show of my poetry comics and reading a few poems if you're in Vermont. That means good beer and Burlington food afterward.

Sleep

2010-10-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

A Good Week For Poetry

2010-09-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 30th, 7pm

The New Salon: Poets in Conversation

Matthew Zapruder (with Deborah Landau)

at the NYU Creative Writing House 58 West 10th Street

Friday, 1st 8pm

S U P E R M A C H I N E

Outpost 1014 Fulton St. Brooklyn, NY

Bianca Stone

William Hood

Dan Nohejl

Andrew Gorin

Saturday, Oct 2nd 7pm

304 Ainslie St.

Brooklyn, NY

The Madeleine Poems Book Launch

by the amazing Paul Legault!

Football Season

2010-09-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

Certain American customs have been known to enthrall me. I love the absurdity of graduations, the strangeness of birthday cakes, and of course, the overblown custom of weddings. I find great pleasure in BBQs with small piles of sliced white onions and sweating primary-color bottles of condiments. And the past year it's been football.

Football comes with fall, my favorite season. And with football comes drinking beer with Ben in a dark bar in Brooklyn filled with Redskin fans and free hot dogs and burgers in the back lot, getting a mini lesson on tactics and sport history. I am the last person to be an expert on the game, (viz. me constantly asking "what just happened") but I find it thrilling to watch and learn about. There's truely something amazing about the physiques--superhuman. Complete with masks and spandex.

Here's a kinda cool link to a billion football terms like Eligible Receiver, and Holding, or Hot Dog (A player who shows off by displaying flamboyant antics instead of going about his duties in a buisnesslike fashion).

With a line from my poem "Even Moon" published in Conduit this past year, here is the first drawing of the season. The kick-off, if you will. (It was a big drawing so a lot got cut off and the scan kinda sucks.)

Chapbook!

2010-09-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well, happily I announce that my first official poetry chapbook Someone Else's Wedding Vows is coming out October 1st from Argos Books. You can even pre-order it!

(cover design by Levi Rubeck/////art by me)

Readings:

S U P E R M A C H I N E Oct. 1st

Crowd Reading Series Oct 2nd

2010-09-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

from//monsieur//poem//fragments

2010-08-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

*

Getting to know a city
means learning to relate to its streets and buildings
in an intimate way
says an opinion piece

I wake up and you and your teal shirt
are gone

there are times
when I don’t leave the house
when all day I paint
one rose red
like a great wound on a piece of paper

*

I have turned again
to the dung beetle
mooring across the field
turned again to the great Russian novel
at dawn I was convinced
I had given up a promising life as a tap dancer
we do not hold each other
and think of the assassin constructing
in the human ego
we listen briefly to the man screaming on the street
outside the window
and think we are safe

Antigone's Thinking Afternoon

2010-08-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

by Anne Carson & Bianca Stone

Image for Janice-Katie Story

2010-08-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

The lovely Kathryn Regina is curating a show August 4th in Chicago at the Rec Room. Below the flier is the image I did for one of the amazing Janice-Katie stories by Stacey Levine.

Antigone Collaboration Fragment

2010-07-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

...from Antigone

translation by Anne Carson.

Art by Bianca Stone & Anne Carson

Mission III

2010-07-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

Mission III

I found a white hair on your head
now I can feel the rain coming
I feel it in my left knee
behind the charcoal briquettes monsieur
the ageless current of a storm
beginning
we are not alive in the imaginary
structures of living
no longer one-man missioning
around the cerulean earth
in a dark pod you imagine yourself
dressed entirely in tinfoil
the apartment shudders down romantically
cats know how to handle heat
which sends us into a small
panic and the hours mean hardly
anything when our love is stored
in a cool dry place

Don't Miss This Poetry Reading/Recitation/by Ben Pease

2010-07-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Chateau Wichman

by Ben Pease

a recitation

July 20th, 8pm
Legion Bar

The first half of Ben Pease's long poem, "Chateau Wichman" (pronounced Witch-man) will be performed live at Legion Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it's really an amazing piece. A"Lyrically-charged "Blockbuster in Verse" that centers around the escapades of The Wichman, a lazily tragic man transformed into a mythological celebrity by a mysterious group known only as the sage editors." Below is one of the many images from "Chateau Wichman."

***

Christina Roussos, who brought Gertrude Stein's "Mexico. A Play" to the stage last year, will be doing the same for The Wichman. The first half of the piece will be performed as part of Toy Box Theatre's Pub Theatre program this coming Tuesday at Legion Bar in Williamsburg.

Space is limited so please arrive before 8.

***image by Ben Pease***

If you walk by my poem......

2010-07-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

This is a really amazing website, isReads, where they post poems in public places in a few cities around the US. If you go to the website you can see all the poems and pictures of them up and about.

My little Haiku was up. Also one by the infamous Tao Lin.

San Diego Poetry-Comics Panel

2010-07-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

This coming week at the San Diego Women Writer's Conference (July 7-9) I'm going to be on a panel talking about my poetry comics, blogging and book-making.

Today I spent a lot of time with staples and tape and glue, trying to get some fresh chapbooks together to sell. I have only a vague idea of what I might be saying and doing. Will I be hitting the beach? Unlikely. But I might stroll along it brooding and reading something stormy and French. Look for me there.

Info on our panel is on July 7, 10:45 a.m

Marina Room A

Fourth Way: Young Women Taking Hybrid Poetics Beyond the Page: A Performance Panel

Annie Bacon presents an excerpt from her opera, which blends poetry, storytelling, theater, and

acoustic folk music.

Bianca Stone will discuss her blog- and zine-based poetry comics.

Amber West will present a current collaboration with puppeteer Kirsten Kammermeyer that blends

ekphrastic poetry based on visual art with toy theater.

So if you're in the area and want to check out the conference, it looks really wonderful, there are all kinds of readings and talks going on, which you can browse here.

Ironically, Comic-Con is in San Diego this year. I wish these two events overlapped!

Seven Good Things

2010-06-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

1. Adam Fitzgerald does a beautiful, astute review of James Schuyler's "Other Flowers", writing "his delicate splashes of color tended to stain the body more than the mind’s eye." You can read it here on the Best American Poetry Blog

2. Here is a great list of minor characters in the Peanuts. Who can resist such characters as
"Shut Up and Leave Me Alone," which is all this nameless, faceless kid ever said whenever Charlie Brown tried to be friendly with him? Or my favorite "555 95472" for short his name was "5". 5 was given a numerical name by his father, who was upset over the preponderance of numbers in people's lives, although when questioned, 5 clarified that this was not his father's way of protesting, it was his way of "giving in."

3. This is great. Shakespeare's last will and testament. For a poem once I used the fact that he only left his second best bed to his wife!

"Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture; Item I gyve and bequeath to my saied daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bole."

4. Ben Pease's in-depth interviews with poets on Scattered Rhymes
are insightful, funny, and wonderful to listen to.
His most recent one is with my friend, and brilliant poet Solmaz Sharif.

Scattered Rhymes presents poets an opportunity to read their work aloud and talk about it in as much detail as they care to share. The format allows insight into the poetic practice not in an attempt to wash away the mysterious veneer from the form but to find all the more reasons to celebrate and cherish it. Take a listen. Tell your friends.

5. Okay, I can't seem to convince my friends of this, but I think this is such a beautiful version of Ne Me Quitte Pas Jacques Brel (recorded in 1959). This video has a rough translation of the words. Which I'm so glad to know.

If you go away on this summer's day,
Then you might as well take the sun away
All the birds that flew in the summer sky
When our love was new and our hearts were high
When the day was young and the nights were long
And the moon stood still for the night bird's song
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

6. STAR TREK TNG (watch it if you know what's good for you)

7. Anne Carson's new book in a box "Nox" which is a sad, beautiful collage for her brother. What I love so much about this book, besides the poetry of the language, the use of collage, the information it give you, is that Carson shows us the capabilities of expressing loss and love. When I opened it I was struck by its originality, no one has the guts anymore to do what they want to do, or to take risks. They mill around in the safe zones, in the expected, in what they know works. Carson is so unwaveringly brilliant, in that she see that in artistic expression one medium is rarely enough.

You have to sit down and really absorb "Nox", beginning to end.

New Poems/Drawings in Conduit

2010-06-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

The new Conduit Magazine is out. 

I have two poems 

and a drawings for Mary Jo Bang's Dante translation. 

Here's my image for the Dante translation. I didn't even realize it was a "Bodies in Motion" issue of the magazine, featuring sports. It all worked out very well.

This Is My Report

2010-06-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Someone Will Have to Tell You

2010-05-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

(an excerpt)

.........

Pangram Biographies

2010-05-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

2010-05-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

May 11th 7:30 pm

John Ashbery, Deborah Landau & Matthew Zapruder

Dixon Place
161 Chrystie Street

hosted by

Bianca Stone & Adam Fitzgerald

The Ordinary Man

2010-05-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

The ordinary man is looking at a Greek mountain

9 Things

2010-04-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

1. cover for death panel

2. reordering the manuscript for the third time on the day it's due.

3. eating shredded wheat and listening to the BBC

4. throwing a ball of paper at Commander Riker

5. feeling depressed about the oil spill

6. having coffee with mom

7. sending out manuscript

8. missing my brother

9. relating to this O'Hara poem ending:

oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

This-Isn't-a-Poetry-Comic-Bianca-Stone // a Poetry Comic by Bianca Stone

2010-04-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'm working on my poetry manuscript with sudden, acute fervor. There is always a few items at work with artists in this state. Ego, self-loathing, feeling of inevitability of failure and abominable determination.

I've been drawing and writing since I could spew two words out in some sort of coherent order, and develop my interphalangeal articulations and reconcile my first metacarpal with the fine tipped pen. Here I am at 26, pulling it together, honing my skill, putting it out there, and generally trying to make a living at my impulses...

Late into the night I have been grilling my poems and brushing hair of the new MS like a little sister.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop on Graham and Grand street. My feet are cold and people keep opening the door right by me. I'm hungover slightly because Simone and I were up all night talking about poetry and I was (to Ben's chagrin), a shouting, complaining madwoman, swearing there was no such thing as good contemporary fiction, and that I made myself sick.

Why am I saying this? You are not even here.

For my post of THE THE poetry blog this week, I touch on the feeling of going mad among the personality.

click this

Haiku with Harpy

2010-04-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

A car alarm at dawn.

O dark head

surrounded by yellow birds.

Book Launch For Colin Cheney and Kimiko Hahn

2010-04-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

It's A Pleasure To See The World Like This

2010-04-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

The Poem & The Cake

2010-04-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

I was going down a river lulled

by the 21^st century. I was staring

out of my compound eye

with monochromatic vision.

I was turning in the folio. I was eating.

I was ultramarine with flaming ideas.

I took your picture

without any flash.

I take your dark picture with me.

Only the European dog

behind the wall

knows. And the rooms

are narrow, but the self

humongous, trembling

over a pile of dust

throwing a tantrum

that carries into the dawn.

Where is the family name?

Like a ruby

in a locked box; like a leaf

in a box of Japanese beetles.

If I break enough plates

someone will come—I have seen

the low planets differing; the marvelous

flicker of your sex—

The ancient clouds move

over the alcoholic sky.

I have seen the grey beards

of Northern Florida.

Swam with the sea cow.

I have listened to brief troubles

of the old, black cat.

I saw someone fuming

toward the abyss, drawing back.

And I, who was half asleep

for my one earthquake—

now merely fragments waking up

looking for the centre of the earth.

Not at all like the cultivated

sweetness of an evolved apple,

but one lone blue M&M

on the subway stairs.

Our love is one tendon.

One outpost. Our love

is a helicopter following us home

landing softly outside our window

waiting for us to undress.

"To the Poem"

2010-03-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

New poetry comic

by Ben Pease & Bianca Stone

THE THE

poetry blog.

(click The The above to see it!)

It's Frank O'Hara's "To the Poem". I love the contrasting images and to see how each of us chose to represent the lines. I've been on an El Greco of Toledo kick and so a lot of my drawings have a religious tone.

This one below is after a pensive Magdalene. Ben also did a version of Magdalene, which you can see here.

The The & The The Flawed Poet

2010-03-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

There are several things to think about in this post. 1.) is the above flawed poem of mine, which is only a few lines from a flawed poem, pasted onto a flawed collage, and scanned on a flawed computer by a flawed person. 2.) is THE THE:

THE THE is a blog that you should read. I contribute on Mondays. But you should read it because so does Adam Fitzgerald, Ben Pease, Alina Gregorian, Simone Kearney, Allison Power, David Shapiro, Joe Weil (to name a few) in whose brilliant shadows I doodle and brood.

How I Live

2010-03-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

Anterior Aspect Cake

2010-03-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

Electrical Wires

2010-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Super Bowl Poetry Comic

2010-02-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Flock of Faces

2010-01-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++

It's Like

2010-01-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

I Wanted To Say....

2010-01-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Little Red Haired Girl

2009-12-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

Last Year's Lonesome Holiday Poem

2009-12-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

I wrote this last year around Christmas time and the next post will be the sequal...

Verse/Chorus Reading This Thusday!

2009-12-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

Poetry/Music Reading 

Pete's Candy Store 709 Lorimer Street

Dec 3, 7pm

Bianca Stone

Danielle Beuteaux

Becky Ferreira

Matt Everett

Cloud Chamber

Singing Pig

2009-11-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

Poem Ipomoea Batatas

2009-11-19T13:13:00.000-08:00

First Part of a new Poetry Comic.

Ladder Poetry Reading Series: Christian Hawkey & Dara Wier

2009-11-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 17th 7:30 at Dixon Place

the Ladder Poetry Reading Series

currated by Adam Fitzgerald and Bianca Stone

Christian Hawkey and Dara Wier

A Day On Jupiter Lasts Only Nine Hours & Fifty Minutes

2009-11-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

it's almost my birthday and I don't think I've drawn 100 birthday cakes yet.

A Poetry Comic In Pax Americana

2009-11-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Please check out this excellent new issue of PAX AMERICANA, the first publication of one of my poetry comics. The poem is called "The Secret Intimacies of Insects." The work in this issue is great. Make sure to check out Sampson Starkweather's poems.

++ Editors include the insanely talented writers, Ben Mirov & Greg Santos ++

Zine Artwork

2009-11-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

These are two drawings I did for my new friend Jarrod Shanahan's zine, DEATH PANEL, of which the preface states: "Boredom seeps from the monstrosity of this work, but it is this very boredom which constitutes its significance." instructing the reader to embark on its contents as one would a book of prayer. Tread heavily here. With excellent art work by Mikey Flynn, Pearse McGrath, and Douglas, accompanying the entertaining and original prose contained within, I find it refreshing to see that there are still some people out there who are keeping the zine alive. It's worth pausing over the versatility of the zine and its encouragement towards collaboration.

Poets Also Play Guitar Sometimes (Show at 1087!)

2009-10-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm playing music on Sunday, October 25th 8pm in Bushwick at 1087, which is right above "Goodbye Blue Monday" at 1087 Broadway (Brooklyn) with BLOODY FOR ME and MOUNTAIN MAN.

Take the J Train to Kosciuszko.

Monday Night Football Games Aren't As Cool as Seeing Poetry, Probably

2009-10-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm reading tonight with Mark Bibbins, whose book, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, I'm loving very much.

It's probably going to be a lot like Monday night football (insert football/poetry pun here). And feel free to paint my number on your belly and hoot in the front row with a hot dog in hand.

Cornelia Street Cafe at 29 Cornelia Street 6pm

(Downstairs) 7$ cover includes a free drink

Ambiguous Beginnings and Fumbles

2009-10-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Possible harmful items on the desk:

1. typewriter ribbon

2. glass in picture frame of Charlie Brown in Therapy

3. thumb tack

4. Oxford Book of American Poetry

5. blue scissors

6. many dried pens

7. The world almanac

8. the idea of stargazer lilies

9. the idea of mirrors

10. the idea of my stomach

11. my sleep-talking problem

12. ¾’s of a deck of cards

13. major policy failure for contemporary liberalism

14. the NY Times sports section (?!)

15. ambiguous beginnings of poems

16. scent of October 5, 2009

17. fumble in the end zone

18. picture of cabbages

19. hint of man

20. hint of cigarette

21. I’ll have a cigarette

22. exact-o knife

23. crayons

24. cold black coffee

25. murmuring stomach

26. almost noon

27. papers with notes on them

28. cold/flu relief

29. thin typewriter keys

30. moody Pandora station

31. Dissected bird picture

300 g for my friends

2009-10-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

It weighs on average 250 g to 300 g in females

and 300 g to 350 g in males

Collaborative Success for Opus Vulgata

2009-10-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

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A Writer Needs a Lot of Rest

2009-10-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

Collaboration: Opus Vulgata!

2009-09-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

My good friends Levi Rubeck, Paul Hlava, Alina Gregorian and I are performing our collaborative what-not-poem-opus thing at Dixon Place this Thursday night in a multi-media performance.

Ticket Sales (only costs 24 quarters).

Thursday, October 1, 2009
7:30pm (we are up first)
Dixon Place
161 Chrystie Street
New York, NY

So, I'm sure you're all as curious as we are about how this is going to turn out...All you really need to know is we're all relatively brilliant, and absolutely good looking, and we put on a good show.

See you there.

Amen.

Fashionable Birthday Cake

2009-09-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Valley Candle

My candle burned alone in an immense valley.

Beams of the huge night coverged upon it,

Until the wind blew.

Then beams of the huge night

Converged upon its image,

Until the wind blew.

--Wallace Stevens

The Hamlet Cake

2009-09-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Where are your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

HTML Ingredients for Pan Cake

2009-09-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

Computer cake in traditional baking pan.

Every time I made cakes as a kid it would be in a pan like this, and was inevitably disappointing. Not only that, but before I learned really about baking I wouldn't read the instructions in The Joy of Cooking. I would just read down the list of ingredients and throw them all in. So the cake usually had a thick skin that you had to kind of rip at with a knife and fork, the inside sugary doughy rubber. In a rush to cover it all up I would ice it before it was ready, which made the icing melt and look thin, like the cake was sweating.

Once I made a corn bread that was inedible and pale white. Maybe I used cornstarch instead of cornmeal....or baking powder instead of soda.

On another note, it just took me half an hour to try and spell ingredients...

2009-08-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

Ten Awesome Things

1. I was at a comics panal at Union Pool recently, with three great young untradtional artist, and I had the great pleasure of meeting Lisa Hanawalt. Her comics are great, and she too loves to make lists.

2. Alina's blog. She always adds little abstract art with her posts, which are meditative and striking. Not to mention the poetry....

3. Uncommon nouns for bird groups: very cool for poems.
(thanks Ben!)

4. Ben Pease's kick-ass Paintjob Cutups! (This is one below, called I'm Perfect the Way I Am)

5. This ending of the John Ashbery poem Your Name Here:

Things got real quiet in the oubliette.

I was still reading Jean-Christophe. I'll never finish the darn thing.

Now is the time for you to go out into the light

and congradulate whoever is left in our city. People who survived

the eclipse. But I was totally taken with you, always have been.

Light a candle in my wreath, I'll be yours forever and will kiss you.

6. Christian Hawkey's book Citizen Of

7. This website devoted to Captain Haddock's (the raging drunk from Tintin) Curses and Exclamations.

8. Octopus Books

9. Cake

10. STEVEN GAMMELL. One of the most amazing artists of our time. You might remember his artwork from those infamous "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" books. Totally creepy pictures!

Contemplative Red and White Cake

2009-08-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

let them eat poetry

2009-08-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

News From

America

The body is 90% horror. We only use half our brains

and that half is for legitimizing hostility.

This body is crooked. It drank too much

It comes undone like a cassette.

My niece’s 3^rd birthday party raged on.
Twenty pink balloons rubbed the ceiling.

The cake was hallucinatory. It was understood

that I would hover around it all evening.

My mother is dating one of the smartest people in the world.

Who it turns out is icky.

He speaks many languages. They watch trees shake

over the edge of the river.

He wants to French kiss her wherever they go.

She lets him go and he ascends.

I walk beside the ghosts of my dog and cat.

Take myself into the mountains. Burn

under a quarter-full moon.

The octopus in me opened his strange mouth

like James Tate

disappearing in a cloud of ink.

100 Birthday Cakes

2009-08-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going to draw 100 birthday cakes.

a poem

2009-08-23T10:39:00.001-07:00

Carol

I came upon a little cabin
out in the forest. The beds
had all been slept in. It is
the dutiful hunter
who spends a lot of time
sitting in trees
I envy. Not the detective
touching other people’s things.
I think it is my birthday today.
Lay down like a pleisaur fossil
in the bed. All my old lovers
are working overtime.
They’re putting in a pipeline.
They’re going to have pity
run straight into my stomach.
Outside a devilish man sings.
I lean out the window
I sing the little devil in.
I take one of the cigarettes
out of the ashtray
and look it over.
There is a sadness
is smoking a stranger’s cigarette.
Out here in the darkest forest
I must speak to what is here.
It is snowing outside.
The cabin is steaming up.
Everything’s handsome.
The cat’s seersucker fleece.
List what I have found
among the bed sheets—
a woman’s sock. A book of poems.
The yellow moon of a toenail.
Follow me, I say to the smoke
I am the only person in this house.
I’ve created a robot that speaks
only of my mistakes.
He reiterates my old letters to you.
I put him out in the snow.
It is a wild snow. The gymnist
trees bend and straighten, stick
their green asses into the river.
The little cabin shakes in the wind.
I can hear the robot outside saying
embarrassing things
This is now the pageant.
Enter Linis with his dirty blanket.
Enter angels with their bullhorns.
And behold the wide, frozen river
in the 9th circle of Hell, where on it
skates the polymorphic confessors
in their tight snowsuits.
And I can see the blind snowman
with my mother’s hat on his head
and crumbs on his face—
I follow him into the darkness.
There is a great, white tree bent
in the field. The storm risen
into oblivion. I walk
through the vestibule
of a plowed path.
I seek the latitude of the field.
There the tree is bent.
Look on its impotent limbs modestly.
I’m taking notes on what I find:
Someone has been sleeping in my bed,
Someone has broken my little chair.
Someone has bombed my city.
I feel unprofessional, one bear
eating from three bowls,
my head in the oven,
waking up suddenly
in the night to look
willowy at the slim ghost,
remembering a voice.

Poetry Reading for Enlarged Hearts

2009-08-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm reading at the I Had It Bad reading series at Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street, Wednesday, August 19 (tomorrow) 8pm.

The series is based around love, and the "embarrassing mechanisms of the human heart." So I did some heart drawings today.

Here's a poem I might read:

____________________

Our Bodies, Ourselves

Fruit is healthy. Running in one place with a drowning look
is healthy.

What we did all those years, swallowing each other
without chewing properly, lounging and weeping into one another
until our bellies hung down past our red knees--

that was something else entirely.

You are the hottest one for years of night

2009-08-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Matthea Harvey & Poetry Comic Insights

2009-08-09T13:20:00.001-07:00

Matthea Harvey is really amazing. She has constantly been an advocate for poetry and comics, and even teaches a whole class on it at Sarah Lawrence. Besides her poetry, she has has been working on some amazing projects such as OF LAMB: A collaboration with Amy jean Porter, and this animated poem on Poetry foundation:
Shiver & You Have Weather : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation

She recently sent me a package of poetry comic stuff that she has been accumulating. One is from Dr. Chevalier Jackson's Foreign Body Collection; things taken out of bodies, like tiny Cupie dolls and battleships from two-year-old throats. It's really incredible. The images are somewhere between photo and drawing diagram. Safety pins and bent jumbled nails and buttons. I love the semi-detached fascination in the blurbs below the images of things pulled out of people's bodies. i.e. "This battleship was extracted from the esophagus of a two year old female with child's size esophageal speculum and laryngeal forceps." It's the middle ground between science/medicine and poetry/art that I find enthralling and that clearly Harvey does too. There's a grotesqueness but also a humanness in that.

She also sent a sample of Saseo Ono (1905-1954) picture diaries. Strange and immediate, I love the small notes beside each image, such as: "After drinking sake, my first painting of the year. (Tiger means 'drunk") in the afternoon I saw a beautiful woman in Asakusa." His art, with an excellent 30's twinge (an innovative time for cartoonists I feel) has a refreshing mix between east and west traditions. It's incredibly inspiring.

2009-08-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

Ten Things To Reconsider

1. Judas

2. The policies of good apples

3. Introversion

4. Lucy's anger

5. Confessional poets

6. Being able to drink wine in parks

7. Bat City Review

8. Psychoanalysis

9. Books on tape

10. Not taking out loans