Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue

Decalogue Three, Cinematography: Piotr Sobocinski. "No, mine."

Decalogue Two, Cinematography: Edward Klosinski. "I can touch the table."

Decalogue One, Cinematography: Wieslaw Zdort.

The Decalogue: I'm finally watching this (the first three) after a few too many tries. The filming is beautiful. The shadows are odd and real. I love the recovering man in Decalogue Two saying "I can touch the table." I can't remember if his hands actually make it all the way there. Three is really weird and awesome: on Christmas Eve, two people visit a morgue to view a legless corpse and find naked drunks being hosed down in an alcohol treatment center looking for a lost man who isn't lost. They try to die by driving too fast with seatbelts unfastened, but they make it through the night. Decalogue One is slower, with a young boy and a talking computer. Oh and moral dilemmas. We know them too well.

Great Jones Street

reading Great Jones Street, Don DeLillo, 1973.

"...It's a gesture. We need gestures today. People's stomachs are shrinking with fear. We need to wear each other's underwear. I issue this edict. Wear each other's underwear. It's a gesture of faith in each other. It's the end of fear."

A book's a good hiding place.

Masocriticism

"These provocative, inventive, and at times outrageous essays on literary theory, philosophy, and cultural criticism describe, in their form and content, the end of criticism, even while performing the endlessness of that endgame. In a sense, the book deconstructs all forms of critique and criticism, including deconstruction, and including its own self. That the book is so painfully aware of the futility of its own enterprise, even while pursuing it relentlessly and with such critical rigor, is what makes this a book of masocriticism as well as about masocriticism."

I ordered and finally received Paul Mann's Masocriticism, which is rather hard to find. Paul Mann, author of The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde, led the first poetry workshop I took. It was so "painfully aware of the futility of its own enterprise," as to not cause harm. I think that's about the best thing one can say about an undergraduate level poetry workshop. I loved it and I didn't take any more.

Goats & Sheep

On Wednesday we took my class to a farm. They got to feel lots of animals and hear animal and bird sounds. The wind in the eucalyptus trees sounded pretty amazing. Do you think it's because the leaves are long and narrow? In two more weeks, I'll be off for the summer. Then I'll be a full time poet and slacker.

Lily Brown, Sharon Osmond, Andrew Kenower, Adam Watkins

Back Room Live
Saturday Night
May 26th 7pm
Mc Nally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave

Oakland, CA 94618

Andrew Kenower was born in New Jersey. He recently co-founded Trafficker Press and a website of poetry recordings dubbed A Voice Box.

Lily Brown was born in Boston, MA and has lived in California for three years. She is about to complete her MFA at Saint Mary's College. Her poems have appeared in recent issues of Fence, Octopus and Typo, and are forthcoming in Tarpaulin Sky and Cannibal. Her chapbook, The Renaissance Sheet, was recently published by Octopus Books.

Adam Watkins graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Finance and subsequently moved to Chicago where his corporate fate awaited him. After a year in the cubicles, he left the Midwest for the St. Mary's MFA Program. Adam has been nominated for the Best New Poets Anthology and his work can be found in the Spring 2007 issue of Dislocate.

Sharon Lynn Osmond lives inside a sentient Oakland garden with her husband, Dennis, and her calico cat, Bone-Crusher. Before entering St. Mary's MFA program in poetry, she was a professional garden designer and landscape contractor, obsessed with plants and their
lovely Latin names. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Eleven-Eleven, Five Fingers Review, Xantippe, and Bird Dog. Her review of cloudlife, a collection of poems by Stefanie Marlis appears in Poetry Southeast, and her interview with Forrest Gander is featured in this issue of MARY Magazine. She was the lucky recipient last year of the Agnes Butler Scholarship for Excellence in Poetry.

False Ode

Video Awesome, for you B.

Thesis was stolen or lost and paid for

I found out my thesis was checked out from the St. Mary's library, "lost," and paid for.

Number One