Poets That I Read

Sylvia Plath
Charles Bukowski
Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
William S. Burroughs
Philip Larkin
Dylan Thomas
Arthur Rimbaud
Guillaume Apollinaire
Frank O' Hara
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
Brion Gysin
Heathcote Williams
John Sinclair
Ted Berrigan
John Giorno
Harris Schiff
D.H. Lawrence
Wilfred Owen
Siegfried Sassoon
Keneth Rexroth
W.S. Merwin
Geoffrey Hill
Elenor Ross Taylor
Joe Dunthorne

Why I Believe Infinite Jest To Be Following Me

David Foster Wallace has only recently come into my literary life, and has already become very important in adapting my style. I now have Infinite Jest, though only having read 25 pages of 981, I have notice his name has popped up a number of times before even knowing who he is.

My friend from Uni is a fan of DFW, and lent me Oblivion to read, which is by DFW. In this is a story called Incarnations of Burned Children which we studied for one class last October, while we were in Wales.

Before this, August 2009, I downloaded some e-books to read because I didn't have any money to buy any new ones. I found this website to get them for free, so I was getting the usual stuff I liked to read, plus some random names I thought I should give a go. One being - yes, that's right - David Foster Wallace. I'd only read some of this before Uni and did not remember the name.

But, further back when I was in University in Preston, my tutor in Creative Writing had Infinite Jest. I recently told her I had Infinite Jest and was about to start reading it, and she said she'd had it on her shelf for years (inc. the years she taught me) but never read it.

And now, flicking through Generation X by Douglas Coupland, which I bought before I even started Uni, I notice in the back it has advertised a number of books published by Abacus. One of which being Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Although books cannot follow people, I've come to the conclusion that this one does. I should start reading it soon, but it's the biggest book I've had to read. (I've only read 300 pages of 933 of Ulysses).

Between the Buttons - between Bob Dylan - and Beckett

How do I show this album is better than Bob Dylan? I can't. But out of all the music I listen to, and I listen to a lot of music, it's the only album I like above Dylan. I'm a huge Dylan fan, I like Bringing it all Back Home, blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, The Times They are A Changin', and Bob Dylan LP. But I have to talk about something for a presentation in uni next wed, and I want to talk about music and it's effect upon my writing, but I can't stick to one thing with Dylan. So I thought I'd choose the only album that I'd consider calling my favourite album. And that's Between the Buttons by the Rolling Stones.

I can't talk in front of people. I hate it. I'm just not a speaker. I have to do it, tho, as compulsary for my course. I'm not looking forward to it.

My short story, Death of a Clown, was destroyed. Criticised to death. I hated it. I actually had high hopes for it, more than the last one I submitted. Seems that whenever I write something that I like, it's not good enough. I'm not going to write shit just so that it's accepted.

But I know how to fix it. I've been reading Beckett and Pinter like I was supposed to. I don't think I'll re-write it as a play, but there'll be more focus to it. I remember my tutor in my last University told me my main problem was lack of focus, and I think I let myself down by reverting back into that lack of focus again. Don't know why I did that.

If you read Beckett:
Eh Joe
play

thought is sin, realisation is pity

Pancake Philosophy

latent pancake reality / am i a pancake? .. or aren't i? - if pancake is not here yet, surely i should be a pancake...

Favourite translation Norwegian

Mann stiljaktar annen kvinne

translates roughly "Man stalks another woman" or "Man stalks other woman"

Vox Dei

This is the poem I wrote recently, when I omitted 'E'. I also found the poem Vox Dei, not sure if it's on this blog, but the thing is that it's different than what I have on my computer. What I must have done is typed up half of it then forgotten it and when I came back to it I wrote something completely different just to get it finished. So I'll have to work on the poem since the original ending is quite good.

Vox Dei is latin for "The Word of God." The first half was taken from notes written in December, the second half was written all at once in January. The orignal one must have been written all at once in December.




Vox Dei


At last I am in bed, like a bed I am like a bed,
Undercovers where the warmth hums thru square mechanic lungs,
And I am just thinking – not even moving to
Move to write nor breathing to move to breathe, I am still!
I am Medusa's eyes, bearing down on me pricks like
The stabs of a pin cushion, and the
Taste of her eyes, look at me! Cannot see me –
Sees others ready for her – Not I done just yet –
At last O sweet death! I am concrete at last!
Lights blue green pink in front, she in front lights
Up blue then green then pink I go red black metal
Shines – or shone with wet ice as ice thawed and I
Sweat and shake from ice the last nervous leaf on a bare
Tree planted in concrete – even down here where
The shadows play in salt and ice and cold hum of rain burn
Thru skin until your thawed body naked flesh falls off
In fleshy clumps of muscle and skin into your hand –
You bony thing – peel off clothes, shed skin, you
Bony thing, you dance and cry like a mad siren,
You dance and cry in the street all covered in madness;
In the words: vox dei, vox dei,
Pulls hairs from arms all calm as Bhai Taru Singh will sing
And dance in bones, like horrific mobile – bearing down pricks like
This into skin, you wear your skin so snug and tight,
A woman of marble, eyes of a lioness –
Stabs like a cushion of pins and, where she cannot see,
The sin the sin the sin!
Ever down here where concrete tree planted blue green
Red pink in front pink taste body naked flesh pink
Red, pink thawed body ready for her eyes!
And me, Baba Budha wise, covered in madness –
It's like she never ends,
The possibility of ending her
Ends in endless possibility
Of ending ...

Excerpt from 'Dharma Bums' - On Poets

'They were all meeting in the bar and getting high. But as they stood and sat around I saw that he was the only one who didn't look like a poet, though poet he was indeed. The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel-looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Rheinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin. And all the other hopeful poets were standing around, in various costumes, worn-at-the-sleeves corduroy jackets, scuffly shoes, books sticking out of their pockets. But Japhy was in rough workingman's clothes he'd bought secondhand in Goodwill stores to serve him on mountain climbs and hike and for sitting in the open at night, for campfires, for hitchhiking up and down the coast.'

(Kerouac, The Dharma Bums p.13)


I read this while sitting on the train going to work. I really like the different images of poets and the difference between the upper-class intellectual and the scruffy working class poet.

Tired - American Poet - And Short Story Thoughts

Been dead tired recently, that's with getting up around 5am almost everyday for work. Only working the mornings, but it's killing me. End up sleeping thru the day and feeling far too tired to write - and if I read then I'll fall back asleep. Must have some sort of iron deficiency or something. Not that tired right now, little bit of coffee helped.

Just read some Robert Pinsky, an American poet. Really good. Going to start writing more, as in simple notes because I don't even do that anymore, I'm too lazy to be a writer. Saw a girl at the train station today (she looked like a porcelain doll) and she had this little note book, writing stuff. I wondered what she was writing, and then I thought why don't I write while I'm out and about? I'm thinking up stuff all the time, but it'd just come out crap on paper. Even a mate at work had a notebook, noting down bits of comedy becuase he does stand-up. I thought about writing comedy, thought of some stuff, never wrote it down.

Not done anything on that short story. Don't want to. I just wanted to put it on here. I think I like it, but not sure. It's not religious or anti-religious (I'm neither), but it's just interesting to use religion, and mix it with the narrator's thoughts on socialibility. I know most parts don't add up, doesn't matter as it's a first draft. The last bit with him turning into a robot was strange because I was just writing off the top of my head, describing the metallic taste turning him metallic. It has a funny social-sexual theme going on; the final words were meant to be funny, though. Like, he's becomes a social robot and so does everyone else with socialising and drinking alcohol and taking drugs, and disregarding religion for whatever reason, and they just say to get him up. Whatever, it was a little like my christmas eve.

Some Notes on Discarded Songs

Here are some notes I can't find anything to do with:

"Here's to you
The one I never knew

Hope I find
A way back into your life

I like the way
You find your way into my world

I love the way
You hide yourself from my world."


Yeah, it rhymes, it was pieces of a song I imagined while laying in bed, but most of the time I'm way too lazy to get up and write it down. With this, I was tapping my foot to this imaginary beat and singing this song in my head, I sat up and wrote it down, but all I got was this. I sounded better in my head, there was music and everything.

I wrote pieces of songs on some paper at work. I don't know why I'm trying songs, because I know I can't do it.

"Where has the time gone/ We're waking up so slowly/ Waking up horizontally/Freedom."

"You think about leaving your life for another life."

"The parfume environment smells exactly like chocolate/ But vinegar or coffee."
(I was working with parfumes)

"Growing old at the table."

Anti-Racism - And A Jacket Too Small

A Quick note: Coming home from work I'd bought Wall-e on dvd and some hair gel and as I got to the train station I found myself in the middle of an anti-bnp rally. They're those racist nationalists who hide behind a political party, so you can see I'm already against them, and I found myself wanting to join in. But it was cold, I didn't know anyone there, and there was about 50 policemen around and I had a knife in my pocket from work, which isn't the most unincriminating piece of evidence and reason to arrest me. So I was on my way, and got some leaflets off some guys who rather angrily protests "Stop the bnp" as I took a leaflet as if he was converting me away from racism.

I felt like saying, "Hey, guy, I've got the t-shirt," you know?

As the quick note goes on, I bought a jacket off the internet, thinking i'd be hip in doing that. I'm only 23 and i'm hardly down with the times. For the second time I got the wrong size. The first one was too big, now this one is too small. They're going to think I'm pulling some scam here, yeah, I'm buying jackets and sending them back illegaly. But I want my jacket!

Got Frank Turner tickets for january. These are replacement tickets (because he cancelled last time) but I've just bought some anyway! damn, I keep spending money when I should be saving. Mental Note: Stop Spending Money.

Notes in a List

1. Staring into space is tiresome...

2. Laugh 'till you cry. Hahahahahaha!

3. Saturday the weirdos come out. Sunday seems kind of illegal.

4. Read plays as well as novels.

5. Memorise jokes. Especially other people's jokes.

6. Smoke in Winter. All the cool kids do it.

7. Give your alter ego a name. Mines Mikey. I knew a friend whose was Pedro.

8. Play around with music.

9. Don't buy shit.

10. Steal edible things.

11. If you (or have been) in a place where you can't see for the smoke, you're in the right place.

12. Smell drugs before you take them.

13. Act like the person you look up to.

14. If you haven't a person to look up to, then get one.

15. Learn to speed read.

16. Tell lies. It's like reading a story.

17. Make up back stories for people you see in the street.

18. If you wake up drunk somewhere with green hair and eye liner, lie back down.

19. All the spirituality you may need from yoga is to sit cross-legged.

20. By all means, break all rules.