#gillian conoley

[deermouth]

Or all is forever created and creaturely— a multiverse without a manual in which someone who is not you, but an exact replica of you, is holding a book in a room or a public space or a mode of transport that is not where you are, but is an exact replica of where you are, on an earth which is not the earth but an exact replica of the earth on which you stand as if on an uninhabited plain, and it is not a distancing to compare not a photo not an image and there doesn't seem to be direction though there is wind, there is no time but the light remains.

From “[Schools of Thought]”, Gillian Conoley

[joncronshawauthor]

The Ray Bradbury Challenge: Day 682

The Ray Bradbury Challenge: Day 682

Short story: Five Red Poppies by Douglas Shirley, listened to through Librivox.

Poem: In the Next, Next World by Gillian Conoley, listened to on the PoetryNow podcast, from July 2018. Recommended.

Essay: We Don’t No Education – Plato’s Meno, listened to on the History of Philosophy podcast, from February 2011. Recommended.

What is the Ray Bradbury Challenge?

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[processes]

PREPARING ONE’S CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THE AVATAR

GILLIAN CONOLEY

Was a rare sun      its sudden mouths,      shrugs and voices.

A birth      a sleep      a forgetting      a God

or scientist or brain. Or when in mind       or on a freeway       a red/orange sign

drops down says

do not neglect,      nor demonize the demons.       The lice are feasting.

Drafts, computations,       clean for more space,        rid unnecessary surfaces

bottled water       Augua pura, sabor perfecto.

Avatar, avataristic       just a brief, lettristic shuffle       avatar chiefly Hindi,

manifestation of a diety or released soul in bodily form

on earth (are you? maybe, don’t flatter me) from the Sanskrit

ava “down” + tar “to cross,”

and atavistic origin 19th century (in your dreams) from the Latin

atavus “forefather” via French

atavisme. Frankenstein bewildered       at his limp  or rising member

still a little angry re: parlor game his cheek tingles nuzzles and buries

itself in verdant marl. World welcomes more world in sun

the young muscled       amputee in basketball shorts       heading cheerfully,

quickly to the ferry.                    Don’t stir

                                                     the trash

                                                     writes Sappho,

It’s you and I in pursuit counter-pursuit

in the long epiphany of having a face. Was it 16th century——

to simulate rain——water spray was released over mechanical dolls

sent flying near the masterpieces—— Or was that you who were tired

of not being

and so began calling for help?

If I were a mothering belly

would I

heave or contract out your tangled, wires tissues a silkworm

cocoon, put your head at my feet and we’ll pretend.

You would not think it is this young Russian

who wants us all to live forever. Walking earth down

to basalt, shale, slate.

Sea-roaring is the blood

in sparrows if the Holy Ghost

a ting, ting in bell tower.

Maritime, lorikeet, sleet. Dimitri Itskov

(pale yellow Borelli blazer,

rose-gold watch, 32, a mild mannered, internet billionaire)

is non-plussed, sweet of face

which someone

(David Hanson, of Hanson Robotics) in Plano, Texas,

is duplicating, carefully

paused above a tiny haired brush for the eyelids in the Times.

36 motors to reproduce facial expressions and voice.

“No more world hunger,” says Dimitry Itskov. At least for you. While the others are always

hungry. So some refrigerators will have to stay, some sent to dump

in silver or white array—— look in, look away.

— — — — — —

how to figure when to leave the body

summer’s blue jay calling caw caw caw quick diving down to peck

the calico/tortoise mix, who waits so stoic, still. Only

to pounce later. Do you play cat or bird? Blue jays lift and spin

the clean sheet on the line, turn

into a tumescent sub-group, the organs of our fancy . . .

                Felonies and phantoms

       of DNA like sharp notes

                cleared of choir

while floats a

yellow post-it, postage size, cropped fabric/memory of my dead

father’s blue/grey wet plaid swim trunks—— a flash——

they burled hand-rest at the end of the burnt stairway——

           Time to clean, to clean and polish, the figures and friends

are coming over, the ones     who read, command     and trail us,

hello canary,     hello reptile,

parrot     brother     sister     and oh wow,     is that you celebrity?     and child.

               If you don’t see them now you

          will soon—no turning back—

they are mostly atavistic,     powerful in what

they get us to look like, do and say.     At least you—still in production—don’t

have to sleep next to them,     or wake up and wing it—

               The wind bellows and rattles the house. 

          Ice, ice drops another cube.     Tiny tinny birdsong.

Wild red fox     purple zinnia     stone pelican     raven.

The celebrities scrub themselves down to the shine.

My mother who is now speaking

in sentences of no more than four words

reclines on the armchair

to watch

like a bony glamorous cheetah,     an unwrinkled sleeve     stilled

in the complementary then analagous

color theory of the room, the 

debris box they are taking away

a week from Friday.     One of the figures

has died.     And jumped into the debris box.

One of the figures     trailing the friends.     Delete, clean.

Old sound of empty chimney when wind dips down

into sudden clang.     Is that you again—uniting, hiding, expansive in

the silence     after sound?     OK,     I will give you my childhood

neighbor who sat in the backyard painting her china plates,

her dyed black hair     done up in a knot—

Breasts loose in a housedress. Her wondrous teats

fallen over her waist     above the astonishingly small petals

she is painting on the plates     with tiny-haired brushes.

The rotting garage behind her.     And what’s this?

Cloudy afterimage of myself and cousin     in her upstairs bed her

funeral night?   Cool, old, dark, empty house.

Fooling around in the riverbank’s low grasses

the day before? The same 

cousin, at least.

                                                            Blue palette extending

                              beyond sky over windless     sidewalks that tilt and buckle

at most tree-rooted spots. I know this way

     like I have trudged it all along

every new street.     Immortality,     if you are coming,     you are

     the last figure off the boat.     I am the one     who gently pushes the boat

away, and wishes you well,     the friends and figures slowly extinguishing

               then enlivening     the word love,     and the love in gone and ever.

[omnidawn]

Gillian Conoley Reading

On November 8th Omnidawn Poet Gillian Conoley will be reading with Maxine Chernoff at Moe's Books! Gillian Conoley was awarded the 2017 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her eighth poetry collection, Peace, was named an Academy of American Poets Standout Book for 2014 and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. 

With Omnidawn, Gillian Conoley published Peace (2014) and The Plot Genie (2009). 

Moe's Books will have multiple readings this month with various poets, you can find more readings here: http://www.moesbooks.com/events/#nov8

[omnidawn]

Check out this great write up by Sonoma State University about Gillian Conoley's recent acceptance of the 2017 Shelley Award! 

"The list of poets who have won this award are the ones that would show up on a syllabus for an American poetry class in the 20th and 21st century," says Thaine Stearns, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. "With this award, Gillian becomes part of the canon of American poets in a way that is recognizable."

Click here to read more! 

[omnidawn]

Wonderful news: 

Gillian Conoley has won the Poetry Society of America's 2017 Shelley Memorial Award!

https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/awards/frost_and_shelley/shelley_winners/2017/ 

[skankypossum]

Berkeley's Univ. Press Books: Hoa Nguyen and Gillian Conoley Read Sunday March 6, 2016

Berkeley’s Univ. Press Books: Hoa Nguyen and Gillian Conoley Read Sunday March 6, 2016

“University Press Books is very excited to welcome Hoa Nguyen and Gillian Conoley for a reading of their poems this coming Sunday, the 6th of March. If weather permits, the reading will be held on our garden patio, and refreshments will be served!” from Facebook event here. I hope weather permits!  

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[inebriateofink-blog]

I threw out everything that didn’t give me a spark and hung all the whites on the table. Greens and deep dirt browns and grays. The sensory titillations of the day entered each limb’s phantom collapse and gait, tremor are you there? See until you are gone and there is only what you are seeing. Just trying that meant yesterday. What to do today. Falls the shadow.

Gillian Conoley, “Sinking into the Leopard Pillow”