bill considine Tag

There is a poem I wrote in the early spring that describes the moment of meeting, and attraction, as... cellular intelligence, as when my electrons got all jumpy-like from first you walked in the room recognized yours like an overdue reunion refugees from the counties of each other  and I bring that up now because, metaphorically, our Exit Strata electrons have been getting all jumpy-like a hell of a lot recently. Far beyond a one-to-one connection, this piece posits a theory of interpersonal co-evolution that I've been tossing around lately -- one that suggests that we instinctively recognize our creationary comrades: those who will make our world and life a better place, who will inspire us, challenge us, and help us evolve. This electromagnetic impulse, lets say - the biological inclination to draw this person or these people into your self or your environment - becomes/grows into "love" with WORK: because even chemical reactions require catalysts, and require the appropriate conditions for full realization. We come to love those people who bring this original impulse into being -- through the ultimately selfless act of commitment to another person or group of people. We appreciate and feel in our very bodies how awesome it is that these people stay with us, and give of themselves and their energy again and again. So we're going to start out with a big hearty THANK YOU. Oh man. We love you people. We love our contributors, the people who come to our events, the people who write us email, the people who chat with us at our tables -- and we get all jumpy for you. You know why? Because you make us believe in what we're doing, and you show us that YOU believe in what we're doing. You let us know that it supports and inspires you. That it is encouraging and enabling and growing your work and your connections and your community. And because altogether, we're feeling like we've, well, LEVELLED UP. To a new Strata. Let's hear it for 2012! Did you know it's the United Nations' Year of Cooperatives? I think that "country of eachother" those lines channel an understanding of is, in fact, the collaborative, cooperative future we are building here together.

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and sometimes, when no one is watching I pick up sticks and place them in my pocket so they can feel like they belong to something again.
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But let's stay grounded ... At plains and prairies' end, sharp mountains loom, obscured by residueof fire. Many dim gray columns of smoke rise, slanted like sunbeams, reversing, it seems, the old image of radiant grace, a sign to score the acrid skies.
3 as I cut, the pane of glass was simple until I came across a second hand I cannot say for sure why I found it repulsive longing and apathy became synonymous- but still like an angel without a synthesizer 4 like lips whistling with more wind than melody the note held in fingers blurring fresh ink with sweat stained shirts my old roommate’s collar colored yellow yolks run down the sandwich, down my hand shaking trying to light a match to light a cigarette ashes and coffee grounds augured over mornings spent trying to find the right word, to say what I want to hear glaciers falling down mountains 5 the air is aggressive not to be moved within but to rub against, to slide skin on skin on humid skin until these damp curtains all zippered buttoned tied show themselves remnants of an obsolete notion: solitude and summer are dissimilar to the point of mutual exclusivity   (1: Tishon, from Sometimes; 2: Bill Considine, from Continent of Fire; 3: Lancelot Runge, from The Hell Out; 4: Ben Wiessner, from Slow Dancing Answers, Banter; 5. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, from Kinsey Report)
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HO! TRIBE! April 1st brought us poetry month, and on that day of inauguration and celebration many members of this community came together for POTLATCH 2012 to share and co-create. (Photos, updates, and CoCo content to come -- follow link above for gallery). We read, we shared, we sang, we broke bread, we laughed, and we felt -- well, I'll speak for myself -- I felt in my very cells a shift towards what can be possible when a community commits to themselves and each other, and the work we make individually and together. The elation, the purity of relaxation into common purpose, the love and mutual respect has carried on not only from this event but from this week's posts, kicking off Exit Strata's wholehearted effort to serve as a platform for this love-in and value creation via virtual space. 

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Elinor Nauen: An Appreciation
Bill Considine
Elinor Nauen has written a remarkable book, So Late Into the Night, from Rain Mountain Press (2011). The book is a long poem in 8-line rhyming stanzas, the ottava rima of Byron's Don Juan, with some medieval variations and half-hidden games.
Perhaps you'd like to hear more of Byron - My master, my love, my poet, my guy - And the traits that draw me to him: iron- Y, for one, as modern as any high- Tech gadget, and as assured. The siren Allure of sympathy, thrills and sex. Why He's not everyone's fave poet I don't Get. He isn't for anyone who won't Admit humor and human narrative To the pantheon of poetic purpose.Ms. Nauen too has the range and fluid speed of Byron's verse, the humor and... the plain-enough diction, Smart allusions and dead-on depiction In his characters and types. The poem is autobiography, a life in full with frank insights. It's the voice of a poet, a woman, a wife, a devoted friend, a child of the prairies and an East Village artist. She muses deeply and turns flippant. She has fun, and that's one of the joys of the poem. The form is in masterful hands and knows it and shows it. She plays with words, for laughs and for the Word. At times the tone is instructive; she means to share what she's learned, as well as what she's loved.
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