Hankering for some poetry? I just bought a new collection a few days ago: Thicket, by Melanie Janisse-Barlow.
Yours truly has a few collections available as pretty downloads right here at yoursilentface.
Pure Pop was released in 2007 by the wonderful folks at Revelator Press. Here it is in its original format! You can still find other downloadable titles at revelatorpress.blogspot.com.
“Pure Pop is just that—a little bit of Coke, a little bit of homage to the Pops of the New York School, and a lot of heart. Tim Lane’s gracefully fluent lyrics are celebratory, immediate, full of feeling, and full of life. Without falling into sloppy sentimentality or clunky derivation, Lane conjures his own world while stealing fire from the masters.”
Lisa Jarnot / author of Black Dog Songs and Ring of Fire and more
Pure Pop delivers all of the delicious, unmitigated pleasure implied in its title. Tim Lane’s poems, jubilant and experientially engaged, prove that joy too is serious stuff.
“WTF” is a long poem that I began writing in the spring of 2008, and finished late spring 2009. It is modeled after Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman's collaborative poem, "Memorial Day."
”WTF” fell short of its intended scope primarily because I had to take a six month hiatus halfway through it for medical reasons. At one point, finishing the poem seemed out of the question.
I will note that I was inspired and excited about the undertaking of this project, but I do feel that circumstances definitely affected and altered the final third of the poem.
Nonetheless, I believe it is one of my most significant writings.
The poem was finally performed at a house party that Maggie and Ben Stritz Calnin hosted specifically for the reading of the poem. The performance involved costume props and a slide show, facilitated by Angela Vasquez-Giroux (who unknowingly collaborated on the poem).
I will always be grateful to Boog who designed, printed and provided copies of the poem (the original cover is above) for the party, which was a hell of a lot of fun.
”WTF” was originally dedicated to the following: for Sheila, Jackie, Zach...Doug Czinder...Angela...especially for Bill Butler. All of these individuals helped me get through a tough time, which in turn helped me finish the poem.
The Personal Poems is a correspondence between two poets (Tom Bourguignon and myself) stretching from 2005 to 2006. The title of the collection is a nod to both Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan, in that order. In 1959, FOH wrote a poem entitled “Personal Poem.” After Ted Berrigan moved to NYC in the early 60s, he became friends with O’Hara and wrote his own FOH-inspired poems (Personal Poem, Personal Poem #2, Personal Poem #7, Personal Poem #9).
If you are not familiar with FOH’s poetry, it is worth mentioning that the immediacy of his poems is a well-known signature of his work. The immediacy of Berrigan’s “takes” on O’Hara’s style is equally seductive and engaging.
Tom and I realized that “Personal Poem” by FOH and Berrigan’s later poems were a great model for a correspondence—for a manuscript with an epistolary format. The idea of keeping in touch through poems that adopted a letter-writing flavor allowed us to experiment and generate a fair number of poems.
Tom was in NYC; I was in Lansing, Michigan. He was going to school, and separated from his love by distance. I was an aspiring artist, raising kids and holding down part-time work.
It was an enjoyable, productive collaboration.
_
Personal poem, Sep. 25, 2005, eight forty-three
at night, in the Staten Island Ferry terminal, waiting
for the nine-thirty ferry home. My fiancée
hit the ignore button on her cell when I called,
and as I sit here wondering why I continue
to write
the poem of my day which, in this moment,
consists in pigeons wandering through the terminal,
but the floors are mopped & waxed & there’s no food
for them, I think my mind is mopped &
waxed, too, & as for what I should do about it
I’m not too certain. Being a thousand miles from
Gail is too much—my mind is tired from keeping
myself busy so I won’t realize how lonely I am & how
miserable I am without her around.
Little things creep
up, tomorrow’s reading, that worries me; teaching
Tuesday at the hospital; getting my poem revised &
my Old English done. Do things get done in the
world, anymore? I think, the older I get, the
less I get done per day. I guess I hope I live
a long time—
____
Sunday, September 11th, 2005, we get up
& take the kids downtown for a brunch that
doesn’t suck, or so I lie to myself after
Sheila returns an omelet laced with hair,
such a brave girl, sincere, much braver
than I, who would’ve left it untouched
& paid full price
Outside the sky blue & above us inspires
the windows of buildings which’ve seen
brighter Sundays after football games
during which the home fans tore up
the turf, we must get back to passion
like that, to supreme hatred or effluent
love, forgetting what day it is amidst
discussions of corporate greed with an
eleven-year-old & I still haven’t made it
back to New York, undiscovered &
hungry
