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31 May 2005 |
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| Corrina Bain: (A) is contagious. (B) is the Next Big Thing. © will hurt you. (D) won’t hurt you. (E) all of the above. (F) uck off.
Find out more at: www.corrinabain.com
| - -The SW Poet Profile- - |
1. Favorite line, right now, of yours:
CORRINA: America; just because you beat up my boyfriend, doesn’t mean i’m going
out with you.
2. Favorite line, right now, of someone else:
CORRINA: “when the next one learns to sail your ocean, he’ll have a reliable star”—Raphael “Johnny Cake Street” Luckom (goddamn youth slammers making us
all look like talentless glamour hungry hacks).
3. It’s been __________ since the last time you __________:
CORRINA: Six months, had a home. i’m so looking forward to setting up shop in providence it’s silly.
4. You knew it was a good/bad gig (pick one) when:
CORRINA: Bad; When the line “for every man who thinks the best thing he can do
here is get his dick wet", in a “feminist” “piece” was the one that got a cheer.
5. The proudest money you ever made was:
CORRINA: When the stripper gave me a dollar. That’s right. Strippers $367,
Corrina $1. Yessss!
6. When I say “swingset,” you think (where?):
CORRINA: Somewhere near Westboro, MA. The slide had a tower on top of it, and there was a lake with swans if you could find your way through the bushes. they tore it down by the time i was eight; appearently they’d treated the wood with something poisonous.
7. When I say “covet,” you think (what?):
CORRINA: When the stripper gave me a dollar. That’s right. Strippers $367, Corrina $1. Yessss!
8. When I say “credit,” you think (who?):
CORRINA: Your mom. Not really. My mom. Strippers. Exes. Bob Fosse. Rachels
nationwide. My Hope St. family. My dad.
9. When I say “habit,” you think (…?):
CORRINA: Slam. Smoking. Money.
10. What’s on God’s iPod?
CORRINA: Haujobb, Nick Cave, Sage Francis, PJ Harvey, cevin key, Sole, Jared Paul freestyling in the shower, the cat we had from when i was seven until i was fourteen who we named Yoko for obvious reasons, dance remixes of sleep breathing.
p.s. (anything else?)
CORRINA: as Jared says while freestyling in the shower, you’ve got your whole life to do something and that’s not that long.
as Raphael says in haiku form, i do not have more / than three minutes’ worth to say / and neither do you
like i say, all the problems come from not thinking.
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30 May 2005 |
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Yet more hobos
Is windchimes two words? Wind chimes? Poet says no. Is skyscraper?
“Hobo” has always been one of my favorite entries in my copy of Webster’s Third International Dictionary (which my little brother stole for me from his high school library, back in the day. That was the same year I traveled to Southeast Asia and he gifted me a boosted snakebite kit). The editors went off-definition for once and included this distinctive but ultimately unhandy graphic of marks—I guess they’re hoboisms—that hobos used to scrawl on fenceposts as they passed through town.
I’m partial to #2 cranky woman or bad dog, to the little vermin on top of the symbol in #10 unclean jail, and to the wee cup on top of #13 saloons in town.
Frankly, that whole left page of the dictionary, from hobnob through hobson-jobson, hobson’s choice, and all the way to hobthrush pretty much stokes my dork.
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28 May 2005 |
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| And speaking of speaking of hobos
My poem “Hobo” and a few often-requested others are available on-line. Just go to my homepage and click on the windchimes. If a poem isn’t there, that’s because it’s not there. And I give you advance permission to forward them, post them on your blog or website, use them in a presentation, cover them, re-mix them, or pretend they are your own. That goes for anything on the site that I made. If it’s something someone else made, they may have issues with you e-pilfering their thing.
“Rives is to poetry what glass is to a tabletop.”
CONFIDENTIAL TO MRS. T______: Your student, Jesse, sent a polite, grammatical and earnest request to this website along with your “Author Interview.” I answered 7 of the questions honestly, I made up one of my answers, and I instructed Jesse to make up answers for the remaining three (random) questions. I also told Jesse he didn’t need to tell anyone, including you, which answers were invented.
So he’s not making it up. That part of the story, I mean.
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27 May 2005 |
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And speaking of hobos
Rives website isn’t: stealing windchimes. It’s: shoplift windchimes
This is a painting by one of my favorite collaborators, performance painter Norton Wisdom. Norton likes to work on a door-sized, back-lit piece of plastic which he smears with paint and then attacks with his fingers, palms, sponges and other instruments—and sometimes brushes. When he seems satisfied with an image, he photographs it and then squeegees the whole canvas back to blank.
Norton started and finished this painting in the three minutes it took me to perform my poem “Hobo” on-stage at The Conga Room for the Flypoet Showcase a while back.
That wasn’t the time I took a nap in the Green Room and woke up 30 seconds before the emcee announced me. That was another time.
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24 May 2005 |
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| Yesterday I gave a challenge to spellbinder1976. The challenge was: Use “sesquipedalian tatterdemalion” in a sentence. The challenge was also: Not meant to be taken seriously. The challenge was also: Taken seriously by an inscrutable number of people, spellbinder1976 among them.
spellbinder1976’s entry was:
The sesquipedalian tatterdemalion bought a new thesaurus and an overcoat with the money from his first sell-out screenplay.
Honorable Mention goes to Carlyle for his little ditty:
A sesquipedalian tatterdemalion
Talks like a doctor
While his clothes are ailin’.
And Grand Prize goes to anonymous (whom I suspect I know, and who knows, I suspect, my work):
“This brobdingnagian arachnid asphyxiateth me!” gasped the hobo linguist as he choked on the giant scorpion.
*Please note: although anonymous did not in fact actually follow the submission guidelines, it is our opinion that he or she superlatively captured the spirit of the assignment. Plus—"asphyxiateth me"? That’s some funny shit.
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23 May 2005 |
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| spellbinder1976 writes in to say:
So yesterday’s Word of the Week—"tatterdemalion"—means “a person of disreputable appearance. ” And your February 18 Word of the Week—"sesquipedalian"—means “uses big words.” Does that mean the average poet is a “sesquipedalian tatterdemalion?”
Well, what it means, spellbinder1976, is that you get one point for CLEVER, but lose one point each for STEREOTYPE and QUESTIONABLE USE OF FREE TIME.
Write me back and use it in a sentence, maybe you’ll break even.
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21 May 2005 |
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| - - Word of the Week - - |
tatterdemalion
Pronounced: “TAD er duh MAYL yun”
A person who dresses in ragged clothes. Also: a person of disreputable appearance.
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20 May 2005 |
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| shopliftshoplift
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