The Burning Anvil

Occassional essays and digressions surging up from the source.

I'm tempted to say that this prospective collection of thoughts and scribbles will veer from the ridiculous to the more ridiculous. But that would be a slur on the creator, and so I shall refrain from such malignity. Often, very often, I've been told that I over-introduce my tropical topics with a blizzard of disguising digressions. I'm informed variously that this is helpful, too helpful, not helpful at all, and by Jacko Monahan to "just shut up and read da po-EM."

Inexpicibly, I'm collecting these various thought-episodes into a short prose collection of essays and introductions (and, here and there, a stray letter let loose in the direction of an attentive ear). One feels that these tidbits and tiddlywinks must fare better on their own then when attached like an irreverent dingy to the majesterial ship of a book of poems. Much can already be spotted or skimmed from this website and the various collections from which these words were originally taken. I will be dusting them off and re-writing them for the sake of coherency and tang. What was only hinted at before in the emergent wood of a metaphor shall now be hunted down and turned to trophies.


Partial Contents list:

1. The Burning Anvil (Poem)


2. Intro


3. Meet Me in Botswana: What Is Blast Press?


4. Poets at War


5. Wheels Within Wheels


6. Why Corporations are Right-Wing


7. What, Me Talk About Terri Schiavo?


8. The Culture of Grievance


9. To All the Harried Angels of the Earth


10. Poetry and Science Essay


11. A Miers Meltdown


12. Fuck You, Glory


13. John Kochansky, an Appreciation


14. O Manifesto! (with Dan Weeks)


15. No Plato's Republic


16. Questioning the Questions


17. Reflections on Reflections


18. Stupendous Punk


19. Telephone Bar Reading


20. The Curse of the Gilded Lily


21. The Ideal of Perfect Love


22. Vim And Vitriol

Mad Hatter lies Hatless and at Peace

Chris Barry, Asbury Park Poet and Mad Hatter Dead at 54

J Keef Christian just called to let me know that Chris Barry, poet and longtime New Jersey music journalist, died last week. His only close relative, his brother, lives in Mexico, so it will be difficult to figure out what will be happening with Chris' writing etc. I volunteered to do what I could, and am reproducing the note I just sent to J Keef in case anyone with more information stumbles across it through a search engine. Please contact me if I can be of any assistance. I don't know what else to do. Presumably there will be an Asbury Park memorial show at The Saint or The Stone Pony sometime this summer.

Dear J Keef:

Brighton Poesy Show:
Wed May 24
'Maybe I Will'
Poetry Show

Sign up for Jacko's email list. There's a copy below of the most recent, which includes the poetry show noted above. I'll be in London kissing the dust of those poets who have gone before.

It was terrible to hear that the Mad Hatter himself has passed through the pearly gates. Chris Barry's name will echo awhile here below--just as his words always did. Please let me know of anything I can do to help caretake his literary legacy. I can scan documents, make electronic copies, store things on the web, etc. quite easily and will gladly take on any such task--including arranging storage space for any of his materials that have survived him. Silence was never his long suit in life, and in death it is an unseemly garment for a poet.

Sincerely,
Gregg
______________________________________________
Gregg G. Brown
324B Matawan Avenue
Cliffwood, NJ 07721
(732) 970-8409
gregglory.com
______________________________________________

"Sex Pistols" Play Debut in Northampton, England

"It's the Sex Pistols!!!", Gregg Glory's first verse play, will be debuting at the Labour Club in Northampton, England (directions).
Billed as "a play for audience participation," Glory is coming off a brilliant reading at the Word Fest 2006 in Metuchen, NJ. At least, that's what he's telling all of his friends who'll listen. Never interviewed concerning the origin or inspiration of the piece, Glory has nevertheless held forth on the topic of his midnight-to-three a.m. shift as a DJ at his alma mater's radio station "back in the day," saying how he used to love playing punk albumsides uninterrupted and then read a scene from Shakespeare aloud to the dreaming audience. This was known informally around the campus as "Tea Time with Gregg G. Brown."

 Sunday, May 21st, 2006, 8PM
 Northampton Labour Club
 97 Charles St, 
 Northampton, NN1 3BG, 
 United Kingdom
 01604 454280
   

The play was originally published by BLAST PRESS eons ago, and was a wall-eyed view of a moment of cultural history even back then. But, since history is a fiction that no number of half-and-halfs can erase, such vivid fictionalizing simply seems to be in the normal course of events. A sign of life itself,as it were. The play was collected into Glory's verse play doorstop book just three years ago, titled "A Million Shakespeares (737 pp)." It is available to read online here.

From the Prologue:

 Everything not incidental
 To a prince's birth in loathed ashes
 Shall be told in what we are about to speak:
 Mire costuming here a spirit as rare
 As any that went naked in greater ages
 Whose philosophers, incidents, and strange tales
 Whisper still in books passed down to us.