Rene Magritte Pipe Song

     "People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image. No doubt they sense this mystery, but they wish to get rid of it. They are afraid. By asking, 'what does this mean?' they express a wish that everything is understandable. But if one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things."
                                           -Rene Magritte

     PageBoy Magazine promises not to ask. We will only ask other things. Such as:
What is that little black square next to the mirror?; and,

Ceci n'est pas une pipe
ceci n'est pas une pipe
ceci n'est pas
ceci n'est pas
ceci n'est pas une
                             pipe?

Rimbaud vs. Baudelaire / Elevator Music VII

 

Rimbaud vs. Baudelaire

"an oscillation between representational reference and compositional game"
          -Marjorie Perloff in The Poetics of Indeterminacy
     Striking this balance seems to me to be what, ahem, great poetry is all about. At least from the half of the world (read: the world) represented by a statement such as "In the reaction of Rimbaud to Baudelaire, lies the germ of half the subsequent history of French poetry [read: all poetry]." (Charles Tomlinson)
     That's why Pageboy Magazine only publishes great poetry... duh?

My Life (with haiku), She Said

they cannot kill large barnyard fowl
but you can, you can kill us
and if you can kill us
then you can kill a Jupiter or several

I'm then there was her
oh shit! what do we do now?
No, I don't love you

that pretty much is the all of it
so far (lot tea dough)

Skoog

     PageBoy sent emissaries to the Ed Skoog reading last Saturday night. The reading, evidently, was exceptional for two things: a wine glass that was kicked across the tile floor without breaking. and the development of a new word, 'skoog.'
     skoog n. 1. one who is self-deprecating or undervalues their work almost to the point of obsessiveness. 2. a very large man who makes up words and may be prone to soiling his underwear and discussing it in public. 3. v. enbourgeois. - adj. skoogy.
          Usage: The speech was good, but the speaker was such a skoog that it was difficult to take her seriously.

Mother of Us All / Elevator Music VI

 

 

     We are gathering speed, moving toward our next issue. Studying Charles Bernstein (all that I am is my work), Gilbert Sorrentino (those lovely girls dreamt leaning on our arms), Juliana Spahr (Fuck you aloha I love you), and Gertrude Stein - always Gertrude Stein, who increasingly seems to be the mother of us all, in the way Dostoevsky said we all come from Gogol's overcoat (bet it's stinky under there.)
     The next issue of PageBoy is due out this June. Send us your work if you have it, send us your have it if you work. Until then here's more elevator music:

something drapes the walls
and I must watch it
as if it were drip, or droop
the way it moves
to keep from thinking of it
aplomb in the midst of chaos
the broken sky, the fissured child
the pear trees about to shoot

I'm anxious for spring this year
not as I usually am
but this year to see
if it too will pull off its blossoms
and say no! I'm not happy
I need to leave this leaving

and whether I will object
arguing for its worth, for its beauty
the essence of which crawls between us

or if I will watch quietly
in disbelief
as it gathers its shoots
its daffodils and rain
and walks out
closing the door with a click
that is as cold and insufferable
as any winter ever was

An, uh... Other Reading

     So not all the readings one goes to will be as stimulating as the Madueno reading mentioned below. Case in point:
     Tuuli and I went to see what turned out to be a very Byron affair (as in Cape rather than Lord), complete with interpretive Butoh dancers, a Buddha gong, and conga drums. Tuuli (she's 4) loved it!
     Tuuli's favorite parts: the dancers and the San Pellegrino Limonata.
     My favorite parts: watching Tuuli with her 'smart face' on (wide eyes, open mouth) as she watched the dancers, and the harpist's harp song drowned out irreverently by an amateur gong gonger's exceedingly ambitious improvisations.
     Still, walking home through the park, Tuuli and I sang harp song, harp song / little bitty Buddha gong endlessly, and that, I guess, was worth it.

Madueno Reading

     Pageboy Magazine has made a resolution to go to as many readings as we possibly can. One that recently stood out was Amalio Madueno, who is a lovely mix of formal and free, Spanish and English, Native and American, comedy and tragedy. A self-proclaimed descendant of the black mountain school, his work seems to extend those boundaries, all boundaries in fact - border poetics at its best.
     We are currently courting him for the next issue of PageBoy. In the mean time, check him out.

Elevator Music V

 

from Toward A Poetics

what's worse than a cornfield?
a cornfield cut, threshed and

cleaned of corn. a dog runs through it.
concerning art: be careful.

be careful in all things, I tell her
over and over again and over and over

I hear myself telling myself,
ridding myself the husks and dust

that clog the air no matter the precaution.
be careful not to heed too well

the advice of others, else be thrown into the well.
you will never be so cold as when

you find yourself in a field in Indiana,
doubting the corn and the ground you stand on.

concerning art: be careless in all things.