Thursday, June 28, 2007

check it out...

head over to the damn fine arts blog What To Wear During An Orange Alert and check out an interview with the ex- and future poet justin.barrett, who is on an atheistic retreat deep in the heart of the aborignal outback.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

oh.my.

*mildly altered on 7.13 as I've decided I didn't need to be an asshole to the other Mr. Cunningham, whom I don't know, have never met, and have no ill-intention towards. my stance on over-wrought academic MFA crap remains unchanged.*

um, please don't ever confuse this guy with me. the name thing is goddamn hilarious.

anyway, to compare and contrast, here is a new one I wrote for my sister and her man, on the occasion of their tattooed, rock and roll union:

without harmony, no music

sunlight
races down
Southern streets.

it cuts across fractured glass
and illuminates
some of the
dark spaces.

it
shines on
rosewood fret boards and pearl inlay,
brightens color and ink,
clears a space for music to breathe,
makes a home for vibration and song.

light and shadow, daylight
and stars,
roses, iron and the right
combination of
high and low notes
working together.

without harmony,
no music.

when you seek
the perfect note,
you endure hours
of mistakes,
you court dissonance and
discord;

this is the price of hope.

it takes patience
and time to
wade thru a
masquerade of noise,
to navigate the
endless static.

and in the end,
it takes
a cacophony of
strings bending and breaking
until
finally

you hear the note.

you hear the chord.

you hear the symphony.

you hear music.



cunningham
07

Monday, June 18, 2007

holy shit...

Sunday, June 10, 2007

stuff...

just got the new issues of Adrian Manning's dandy Concrete Meat Sheet, a finely printed single sheet broadside from the U.K. featuring some damn fine poets. one of the issues is a single poet issue featuring some of my poesy, including some poems from Flowers In The Shadow Of The Storm. check it out.

also, Kaveh Akbar, future greatest poet in human history, sent me this essay on "poetic ambition;" it's a good read by a certain Poet Laureate and covers the topic of small poems writ as anecdotal journal entries for the purposes of publication as success versus the idea of writing Great Poems For Eternity and striving to become better writers.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

more self-indulgence...

too much. things like this are silly, and don't make a damn difference, but are still pretty cool anyway: you can pick up Flowers from Amazon. and you can also write a review that makes me look bad.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

bottle...

if you would like to behold a true wonder of the small press, one of the finest publications around, head over to Bottle of Smoke Press and pick up a copy of BOTTLE #5, Bill Robert's all-broadside "magazine." it features fantastic letterpress printing as well as some dandy writing ta boot from such folks as David Barker, justin.barrett, S.A. Griffin, Tom Kryss, Anne Mennebroker, Charles Bukowski and Hosho McCreesh among others. it's worth the cover price and then some.

Monday, June 04, 2007

vitamins, toothpaste, dog food, oh my...

>