Your Drum

PUNK HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHS THE INTERIORS OF THE OTHER AMERICA

"Punk house" a book of photographs of varied living environments by Abby Banks is Outsider Art, inside. The book documents the way some have chosen to live, to play music, pursue their art, philosophy and perhaps, to avoid the commercialism of America and the brain drain of strip malls, Walmarts, and the hundred and one homogenized sights along any route USA all to a punk music soundtrack.

"The “punk house” may come in any number of forms. The most common type is often where a large group of like-minded punks cram into a house usually intended to accommodate two or three people, resulting in low rent and, thus, extended hours of leisure for the residents to pursue their true interests."

"Punk House features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists’ studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces. In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors." Link

NY Times Review: Link

Via Cool Hunting: Link

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE: HERE ARE 50 WRITING TOOLS

Writers write. It is a lonely craft. Start at the same time everyday. Let nothing get in the way of the time start. Set daily page goals. Three pages a day is a good average. Get the first draft down. It doesn't matter what it looks or sounds like. It can be one long vomit. Do not censor yourself. Let it go. Later, second and third draft, you can polish. Don't keep going back to the beginning. Get the first draft down.

Here are 50 writing tools: Link

SHARON OLDS WOULD STILL HAVE TO REFUSE AN INVITATION FROM LAURA BUSH, HOW SAD WE HAVE ONLY ESCALATED DEATH

The poet Sharon Olds turned down an invitation from Laura Bush to attend the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., in Sept. 2005.

In reading her refusal to attend the festival, it is sad that Sharon would still have to refuse the invitation for the same reasons, two years later. It is unfortunate the war continues with more death and more death and yes, there are still clean linens, so safe, from the stain of blood which flows so easily over Iraq.

The winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University sent her "regrets" by way of a letter that was also published in The Nation.

"I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness -- as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing -- against this undeclared and devastating war," writes Olds.

"But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration. ... So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it." More: The Nation

Sharon Olds reads her poetry and is interviewed: Best American Poetry On The Air

Bio: Poets.org

Poems: Poethunter

ELIZABETH HAND WRITES FOR A "GENERATION LOSS"

I like a look back on what went wrong, what should have happened, what was taken, what was left behind. A hindsight on a generation. Ellizabeth Hand was part of the punk scene and writes from her understanding of how music scenes and culturial landscapes come and go, sometimes leaving the wreakage of time.

"Elizabeth Hand, feminist author, critic, and "lapsed Catholic," whose work deals with moral issues, sex, and death, published her first story in 1988 and first novel, Winterlong, in 1990." Link

"Hand (Mortal Love) explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller. Cass "Scary" Neary, a self-destructive photographer, enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame snapping shots of the punk scene's most squalid moments. Now forgotten and aging gracelessly, Cass gets a shot at rehabilitation when a friend assigns her to interview Aphrodite Kamestos, a photographer from the fringe of the '60s counterculture, whose morbid vision influenced Cass herself." Amazon

Via: Boing Boing

ROBIN SLICK DOES HOUSTON AT THE ROMANTIC TIMES BOOKLOVERS CONVENTION

Don't miss it, if your a hundred miles near Houston, April 28th, between 11 and 2:00, at the Marriot, you want to get your literary mind over to the RT Booklovers Convention.

Robin Slick will be signing books or whatever and she'll be giving out candy and you won't have to say "Trick or Treat."

And in goody bags will be fantastic jewelry just for showing up.

Wow. Robin and her girlfriends will be waiting around almost like the Bunny Range, but it's a book signing and there are hundreds of writers. You know, neurotic romance writers. Spilling their guts out about love, sex and of course, romance. What could be better.

Ask Robin for a magnet. I put them all over my fridge.

Robin's book is steamy and steamier: "What happens when a frustrated American artist-turned-soccer-mom and her overconfident and charming British cyber-lover plan a three-day tryst of erotic depravity at a hotel in New York City? " Amazon

Check out Robin's Blog: In Her Own Write

Info about the RT Bookfair is about half way down the post.

KURT VONNEGUT'S 2003 INTERVIEW ABOUT IRAQ, C STUDENTS AND PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITIES RUNNING THE GOV'T AND CORPORATE AMERICA

Kurt Vonnegut who just passed at 84, gave an interview to Joe Bleifuss in 2003 about the war in Iraq and the current political and corporate state of an America run by mediocrity and psychopathic personalities who have no conscience about what they are doing to America - that means you and me.

"You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?"

kurt:

"One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.

What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint." More: In These Times

DOC POMUS'S BIOGRAPHY EXPLORES A TIN PAN ALLEY LEGEND

Lonely Avenue is a biography of Doc Pomus, a hipster legend of songwriting and raconteur.

Born in Brooklyn, crippled by polio, Doc Pomous listened to the radio as a youngster. Doc enjoyed many musical idioms, but it was when he discovered the blues, jazz and rhythm and blues that he knew the music of his bones - recordings far removed from his life in Brooklyn.

Doc, first introduction to the public was as a singer and then, later as a songwriter with a thousand songs -"This magic moment", "Save The last Dance", "Teenager In Love" and "Little Sister" were a few of the tunes Doc penned.

The incredible journey is written in "Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus." For a review: Pop Matters

Doc Pomus Website: Link

THE SECRET: IS IT THE REAL DEAL?

Aline Pottier

The secret has gained much popularity with its philosophy of the law of attraction - What you seek from the universe, you will recieve. Whether you go for the whole deal or parts of it, a healthy positive attitude is a good thing to have. In this article both the pros and cons of the Secret are discussed. Link

The Secret: Amazon

ANGELHEADED HIPSTERS BURNING FOR THE ANCIENT HEAVENLY CONNECTION TO THE STARRY DYNAMO IN THE MACHINERY OF THE NIGHT

All nine issues of Semina, the journal Wallace Berman published from 1955 to 1964, are at the Grey Art Gallery. Wallace Berman

A very different art scene emerged in the time of beatnik glory. The artist, poet lived his life as art. And never became a commodity. The artist lived outside the system. Emerging to steal some sustenance.

It's s a tough life, when you're aim is beatitude. Sometimes the drugs got in the way. Sometimes life was too heavy, man.

"Time is forever. Love is the goal. Art is what you are, not what you do. Many young artists and poets in California in the 1950s and ’60s felt and lived this way. And a traveling band of them, trailing a cloud of marijuana-fragrant air, has arrived at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU in “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle.”
Read: NY Times

A very unusual artist, poet and occultist was Majorie Cameron Kimmel whose featured on the cover of Semina Magazine.

Joe Ferris

An interesting site exploring this era: The American Museum of Beat Art

Allen Ginsberg's Howl: The Beat Page

EVE GRUBIN WRITES POETRY, WE ALL COULD USE A POEM SOMETIME

Your Drum is introducing a Poet of the Week. We are living in a time where we need to hear our poets. We need to listen to the music of words to understand ourselves. It is given to the poet, the deep wisdom that springs from the unknowable to the many.

Eve Grubin is a poet.

Her first book of poems is Morning Prayer (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2005). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Conjunctions, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at The New School University, and she is a fellow at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education.

Eve has a website: The Drunken Boat where you can read her poems.

Eve has a poem in the Winter 2006 issue of a terrific online poetry magazine La Petite Zine.

You can purchase her book Morning Prayer on Amazon

After

After a loss you live
with your gasp, your gaze,

with your hungry mouth as you lift the fork.

Something Sane. Open the door.
A guest sits down at the kitchen table.

Washing evening dishes:
something simple, something sane.
Water dreams over your wrist,
your hand, a round
transparent dish.

Something Simple. Night, rusty fire escape.
Even the rain: sane.

Urgent street voices; screech
of a hinge. Simple. A clanking
bang,

somebody is closing a gate
or opening one.

Edward Hopper