QuickMuse is a new site where well known poets battle it out in a fifteen minute race to pen the most compelling text inspired by a thought provoking quote about art. The live event is archived so you can watch each keystroke beside a ticking clock and then discuss the race and poetry in the site’s forum.
It’s fun to watch the pauses, deletions, misspellings and bursts of text that come from great poets writing against the clock.
QuickMuse has lassoed some high quality poets. The first contest, or agon as the Greeks called them, was between Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon and Thylias Moss, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship and the Whiting Award. The second agon, held last week, pitted former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky against the prolific author Julianna Baggott. This Wednessday will see Marge Piercy write race the clock and Jonathan Galassi. On June 27th, New Republic poetry edtior Glyn Maxwell and Thylias Moss will square off. Then on July 12, it’s Carol Muske-Dukes and Kevin Young. All live events happen at 9:30 PM EST and are then archived on the website.
QuckMuse was created by Ken Gordon, a poetry enthusiast and the editor of JBooks.com, a site about Jewish literature.
There isn’t a business here, but I love this service. Allowing users to watch the creative process real time, including deletions, etc., is really cool.
This is possibly one of the most artistically aesthetically designed sites in the history of the Web – no animations or hi tech flash – just CSS done with EXTREME STYLISHNESS – and to boot – it loads fast
WOW!
The Ballad of TechCrunch
There once was a blog called TechCrunch
Read at dinner, breakfast and lunch
By a guy named Mike
He’s a bit of a tyke
But it’s one of the best of the bunch
Its subject is Web two-point-oh
It’s difficult to tell, don’t you know?
Who will succeed, who will fail
It’s an interesting (long) tail
Will your business online really grow?
There’s some hype, and some reasonable news
If a mental filter, you use
Hey that was like Yoda
This verse’s nearly over
I’m getting the 2.0 blues
So what is this new Web “two”?
It’s caused quite a hullabaloo
RSS, blogs and wikis
Could make one feel sicky
But Ajax’ll make it brand new
Now you think I’d take all the credit
For this rhyme, as you have reddit
In the sprit of the age
Feel free to take the page
And give it a great big edit
Cos I hear that the masses are king
They can mash, mix and fix on a whim
Is it sticky, your wiki?
Is your flickr no sticker?
Get the users to to tag everything!
Here’s a gratuitous plug for Crisscross
(It’s mine, and I am the boss)
News and social networks
With a few extra perks
You probably don’t give a toss
But let’s get back to Mike at this blog
One year old! Phew, what a slog
Giving interesting peeks
To 59,000 geeks
He’s made it, he’s now the top dog
The entrepreneurs life is a bet
Working well after the sun has set
If your plan isn’t found
What’s that sound?
Your business plan went down the toilet
So PR is something you need
Or your cash will certainlty bleed
Mike’s soooo your man
So send him your plan
It goes out on his RSS feed
Then VCs will call by the dozen
And your baby they’ll all be lovin’
If you keep it sweet
You’ll get a term sheet
Don’t spend it on a whole lot of nuthin’
So when will this end, you ask
Web 2.0, or this rhyme so vast?
It’ll all end in tears
And, for a few, cheers
And a listing, on the NASDAQ
So thank you for showing a sign
And inspiring this wee rhyme
What ends in “-unch”?
Hell yeah, Techcrunch!
Thank you Mike, for taking the time
Is the web actually at its best when there is no business reason? Is this what those running a web business need to remember? And can anyone better Mark’s TechCrunch poem?
Just an improvisation written non stop. Spelling not corrected.
Mark and Sean, thanks for the poetry! I’ll make sure Mike seems them.
Except for Thylias Moss what do the standard pack of academic poets know about battles of words. I admired many of their first books, but have they grown, showed something more. (I think Ms. Moss is the most powerful poet writing in America today.
Can academic big book published poets stand an improvise on their feet with a microphone in hand to a large audience and make it more than a reality soup. Can they dance in words, make music not of an instrument, but from vowels and line breaks.
Academic poets have had their run. It is time for emagazines and ebooks to be considered. Over the last ten years (my first site 1996) has drawn thousands of repeat readers. No, I sold no books, but I have the poems and the statistical records.
Some who were 19 then are 29 now. It is time that the challenge be extended to poets epoets and fiction writers.
FRiGG magazine may be one of the best electronic literary magazine over the last three years. Go take a look. http://friggmagazine.com
This century (and I was raised in the last) will be remembered for the first wave of new literature on the net.
I was pubished in print in the 70s, a runner up for a push cart, but I didn’t play the academic game. I challenge any academic poet to true improvisation live with a large audience and I know who will pick up the marbles.
Sean Farragher
And then their is the fine tunning, which you would not see except I can’t.
I am going replace the word “timpani,” which I thought worked musically as music with the word, “rage.” Yes, that works better. Rage is the end of the technocrat crunch.
one last busted bump stops it all to the tune of bi-sexual rage.
Lessons in how a poet thinks. Read Yeats’s Visions and Revisions.
One book that every novice poet should look at. Also, Pounds edit
of T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland.”
When you create poetry, you create a circle. Tie the loops together
when it breaks into a square.
CHALLENGE TOPIC OF A POEM.
Write about the Geology of Geometry????
The Love Song of Feldspar
Sung to non-Euclidian Waltz
Geology holds the hands of history.
Geometry is the art of pyramids not
as tombs but a collection of numbers
in the objective world. We fall down
inside of the plane flown plenitude
to Paris beyond where Pythagoras
waits for flat rocks to be thrown
danced by rivers as music drawn
in empty shells inscribed with mica
and schist and gabbros and golden
quartz with feldspar that lists most
stones alive in the core of mountains
while great Manitou, Jesus & Einstein
count the undeveloped dimensions
within the backyard where pigeons
claw at the triangular wire fences.
Returned home we miss every origin.
Play the dance game again, she screams
as her body curved into its own breast.
we follow her other courses spittooned
with jewels left when glaciers passed
through hills as blind ice and razors carved
thigh and hands with frailty broken
down and we slaves without special
dispensation from Popes we stain maps
and right telescope to project our rumba
as we nimble, quick again my land done
forever as the rise and run, in spheres
as stands of live oak on the rim of sun
to bleat with sheep and wear the last
red pearls forged by clams with iron
masks and swords drawn as soldiers
race truth from Tigris and Euphrates
when we forget oil and land behind
the odd out house for nothing not
even excrement is safe from steam
when the fires twist open the waste
land and the rain doesn’t fall ever
again while history maps geology
as a background song for triclinic
crystals drawn out of balance for man.
Thank you, Sean for your comments. I am very much interested in a poetry of movement –I like the dymanic qualities of your pieces here. I’d like to invite you to take a look at my work that is outside the realm of print objects. These pieces are avilable for free experience and also free download if desired. Visual and sonic pieces, including a sonic form of “Cosmic Bullets” from my second Quick Muse outing. Please go to the iTunes music store and search for Limited Fork or Thylias Moss –all three of my podcasts will come up in the search: Limited Fork, Limited Fork Music, and Limited Fork Video Anthology.
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