SIX

This is my poetry editor picture for The Arava Review.

What if we could TiVo our lives? Pause, rewind, stop, fast forward but we could never change the past and it goes by too fast for us to influence the future? On some level it would mean that we have the power to replay over and over those moments of first love, first kiss as well as those moments when we were being asshole and would much rather forget. I am not thinking of this in the sense of that silly Adam Sandler movie where he could fast forward through all the unpleasant part of his lives. I am thinking more that there is an objective actual documentation of all events so that they are not tainted by selective memory and our biased autofocus. I am thinking more in terms of what if we are exercising so much control over our present and linger over our past that we forget our future….Or this is just an early morning blurry eyed rant…

I know that it will take us some time to sort out the structure of Six but I thought that maybe a random post such as this would at least get us start talking and help us find our form.

Anthologies are collections of things people like. I have put together an anthology of what surrounds me. Here are eight from the collection. Oh it’s called Johnny knows it’s June and I’m guessing after this teaser I’ll have a publisher.

1. Ode to the Midwest by Kevin Young. This is the first poem I read of Mr. Young. The rhythm in the line I want to see what the sun sees before it tells the snow to go made me want to be a poet.
2. Facing it by Yusef Komunyakaa. The power in this poem is the complete lack of bitterness towards those who have not served. What Mr. Komunyakaa asks of us is to face it alongside him.
3. Having Dinner by Grace Paley. Read this out loud (preferably in a NY Jewish accent with a lot of hand waving and facial expressions). You’ll laugh.
4. Dayton, O., the 50’s & 60’s by C.S. Giscombe. I thought of this poem while watching Inglorious Bastards.
5. Breathless Every scene is perfect but my favorite is in her apt which is so tiny and glamorous and at sixteen was all I wanted out of life. That and to call out on a Paris street in the 1950’s  New York Herald Tribune!
6. The Lover by Marguerite Duras. This book is one long poem and could be the only poem you’d ever need.
7. Rothchild Avenue, Tel Aviv. Is wide and tree lined, is the crooked backbone of the city, is where I meet my friend Ellen for coffee, is one of the streets that leads you to the sea.
8. Chavellas Restaurant, Brooklyn. One night in August my sister and I ran into her friends at Chavellas. I thought one of them looked like Kanye. They thought I looked like Chloe Sevigny. Then we moved some tables around and ate the most amazing tacos for 3$.

does this count…?

Hooray! Josh you are the man. Thanks to you and Charlie for putting this together. Here is my sophisticated image and link.

this is where you can amaze us all with you r insights and wisdom. a useful way to organize things is to use the categories when creating a post(found on the right and side of the add new post page). i would play around with adding a new post with a link and image. wordpress will walk you through most things. you can delete and modify anything so don’t worry, just don’t delete others posts, we all have the ability to though! when options in the add new post page are unnecessary to mess with, leave as default, but if you are curious click it and see what happens, that is how i figured all this out.

This is officially the first post for SIX!