Poetry
32 Lbs.of Head
(second poem), 2003
Inconsistency in the morning
Totally wanting about the earth
The short shadows foretell a short day
How quickly the light fades
Random locations
Action, action, and anger
Waving a flag of one ilk or another
A decision must now be made
Quantitatively quoting quirks
Strangely heavy behind the sea
A last gasp, a fare thee well
And off to a new beginning
Formulating fragments
Work, death, and death
And more work and sex and taxes
Saturday morning cartoons
Cloistered Conditions
Is Bugs speaking to me?
Or have I been alone too long?
The monster gets a haircut
Singing in the shower
Be watchful. The day shall flee
A change in the weather
And the dogs come back too soon
Wandering the known
Why does the city shrink?
My throat is raw with singing
Watery tombs soon evaporate
Sequestering sobriety
Drink, noise, and drunk
Will it take that long?
My puppet waves goodbye
32 lbs. of Head is an ongoing experiment between four artists: China Blue, Richard Humann, Suzan Dionne, and David Opdyke. It developed as a result of an interest in the spontaneity, interaction and consequent fluidity of meaning involved in a collaboration. By operating collaboratively, 32 lbs. of Head tackles their projects from a point of view which is necessarily multiple and often cacophonous. Previous projects include sound installations and exhibitions, as well as a round-table discussion published in New York Arts Magazine.
Contributor
(a collective)
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head.
By Kathleen LangjahrMAY 2020 | ArtSeen
As COVID-19 continues to proliferate throughout New York City, forcing all art institutions to remain closed to the public, museums and galleries have been scrambling to convert their programming to an online-only format. A standout example of this adaptation is P.P.O.W.’s current presentation, Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head.
Run Me To Earth
By Joseph PeschelFEB 2020 | Books
Paul Yoon’s new novel, his second, Run Me to Earth, takes place during the Laotian Civil War. While the Vietnam War rages on, Laos is engaged in a civil war between the Soviet-supported, communist Pathet Lao and the American-backed Royal Lao Government throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.
four from field recordings of mind in morning
By Hank LazerJUL-AUG 2021 | Poetry
Hank Lazer’s poems in the Brooklyn Rail are from his forthcoming book field recordings of mind in morning (BlazeVOX), which will include links to musical improvisations with composer and banjo player Holland Hopson. Lazer has published thirty-one books of poetry, including COVID 19 SUTRAS (2020, Lavender Ink), Slowly Becoming Awake (N32) (2019, Dos Madres Press), Poems That Look Just Like Poems (2019, PURH – one volume in English, one in French), Evidence of Being Here: Beginning in Havana (N27), (2018, Negative Capability Press), and Thinking in Jewish (N20) (2017, Lavender Ink). In 2015, Lazer received Alabama’s most prestigious literary prize, the Harper Lee Award, for lifetime achievement in literature.
Interspecies Futures, Veiled Taxonomies, and Lights, Tunnels, Passages, and Shadows
at Center for Book Arts
By Amber Jamilla Musser
JUNE 2021 | Art Books
All three exhibitions manifest theorist Donna Haraway’s concept of sympoiesis and use the forms of the book to enlarge what constitutes knowledge and being together. In these profound (and profoundly different) engagements with sensing, we realize that the book not only contains knowledge, but also invites ethics—how can and should humans engage?
