musics – panache, perhaps

This is the best thing on the internet (POETRY + HIP HOP).

Published on 10/05/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

The internet is too big to talk about as a whole, but on the whole I’ll generalize and say that my favorite thing about the internet is….this.

So now that you clicked on that link, click the little play button, and now you’ll be listening to Frank O’Hara (THE MAN MY LEGEND) reading his poem “Ode to Joy” over an instrumental version of Drake’s “The Best I Ever Had.”

I already love Drake because he is a pretty good rapper and once made a video that took place at a bar mitzvah (combining Judaism and hip hop, which rarely happens). I’ve loved Frank O’Hara for always & always will, even though he is very easy to love and everyone seems to. I think I still love him differently. His little lispy-crispy pronunciation. His gap tooth. His neck in a crew neck sweater in the postcard that lives in my truck. I do love him. And now thanks to the internet, (well, thanks to Cassanda Gillig, whom I would like to meet because he seems hilarious and cool and smart and essential), I can have poetry & hip hop fused in just the way I never knew I’d love because I hadn’t fathomed it yet.

And there’s more. There’s Brautigan & Mariah Carey! Even better THERE IS JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE AND ALICE NOTLEY. I am going bonkers right now. You know when you find something that you like so much you can’t handle it? And you think about how good life was before and how now it’s one significant notch better? And you feel like your posture has gotten better and that there’s more space between your toes so you can stand and jump and dance better? Do you guys know what I’m talking about?

Love & friends & verklempt (something in prose).

Published on 06/27/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

I don’t think I’m a poet of the atrocities, or even of the victories. I think I’m a poet of the people I love. I’m trying to make sense of how much there is to love in the world. I’m trying to put into words the moment when someone reaches out to touch someone else’s face, but then doesn’t, and then that person never knows that that other person wanted to touch them. And so that touch will never be in the history books. But I might just get it into a poem.

Do you have any famous friends? Friends who people know because of something they did or wrote? I have a couple of great friends in a band and it makes me insanely proud and insanely baffled to know them and to see them progressing in the music world and to know that they are an entity outside of the dudes that I got to know in college. And to think that I knew them in a dorm hallway, with their morning hair and their late night gaits. How I’d leave the coed bathroom when I’d see one of them with their sneakers facing outward in a stall (pooping!).

I have a lot of friends who really impress me. Not just because of their jobs, but sometimes because of their jobs. I have some friends who were born knowing how to be great friends. A lot of my friends aren’t the same as each other. A couple of my friends are attempting similar back-to-the-land plans as I am, but most of them aren’t. I’m here as a human and as a girl and as a poet and as a farmer-in-training to say: my friends, I love the shit out of you. I know you know it already, maybe because I told you recently in an email or textual exclamation or maybe I sent you something recently or maybe you read a poem here that reminded you of it. Either way, I might as well say it often, because life is short and fast (especially in summer).

So here’s a music video that really impresses me featuring some dudes I know. For some reason this video is making me want to hug people (BAD), probably because I’ve been drinking wine and I live with a man I adore and because it’s summer and there’s quite nearly enough sunlight to provide for all the words I want to write and say each day. Amen.

“Mingus at the Showplace” (poem) (William Matthews).

Published on 04/10/2013 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

To think that I was alive when this was written. To think that Mingus was alive. And William Matthews, too. Happy National Poetry Month; may your day be filled with the digestion of experience!

(Poem scanned from “The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine,” edited by Don Share and Christian Wiman.)

February collage (illustration; photography; Frank Ocean).

Published on 02/13/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Some people feel negatively about February, including, possibly, Maira Kalman. Or maybe she just picks up on everybody’s February blues. It’s hard to love February in the city, this I understand.

This February, I’m all about Patti Smith (again). Maybe I’ll make February my Patti Smith month. Why not?

But guys….remember those other times, those other seasons? Remember flowers?

Remember how it’s going to be Valentine’s day soon? Let’s not bring up our consumer culture rants again, we do that every year & even the truth gets stale. This year, lets just do some good lovin’. Let’s share what we got, or give ourselves a little bit more. I mean, Phoebe Wahl is doing it! And why not.

If you’re still not feeling good about February yet, then, here! Have this gift! It’s a free Frank Ocean mixtape! Also did you know he has a tumblr?! Fuck yeah, America! You know?

Alright February!! Allllllllright!

Thankful for bacon pancakes & so much more (poemthing) (mine).

Published on 11/22/201211/22/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:

because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:

Thankful for

winter sun and

a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and

the shoes on my feet and

good soup and a fire and

the ever-discovery of poems and

the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful

and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and

thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!

and emoticons and

thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and

for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful

for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and

thankful for nice thick socks

thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows

thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and

for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”

which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and

thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and

thankful for mittens

and a yellow hat from my sister

and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for

a grey hat from amsterdam

and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck

like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite

which a woman at the stone store told me to select

because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day

and it was

I was sagging that day

I’m thankful for people who help me unsag

like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and

now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and

yayness and love and thankful and giving

this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and

in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.

Saturday song (The Head and the Heart).

Published on 11/03/201211/03/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Katie put this song on a mix for me. It’s track 14 and I skip to it as I drive up the winding hill toward home. And I sing along to it very loudly, especially the lyric that Katie must have known I’d need, the crescendo of “Been talking ’bout the way things change/my family lives in a different state.”

And then today talking to Andrew of Shake the Baron who is my friend and is moving to live in a cabin by a lake and teach guitar and record music for people and make songs through the winter. He listens to songs for melody, I listen for lyrics. Hopefully someday we’ll write a song together.

This video is is in a lonely place, a high underpass somewhere where the acoustics make them loud and resonant. I wonder how much of songs is still in the stones there. Either way I’ll sing along.

Mary Moon: she’s a vegetarian (song).

Published on 05/08/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

When I was sixteen years old I was the only vegetarian around—I lived in a small town and I guess everyone ate meat.

I had three best guy friends; we were a bit of a foursome. We once made a short film with my video camera where one of them, Eoin, turned into a cigar Indian while trying to thieve objects in a house (including toilet paper). The house was my house and we still quote that movie; it’s called “Sitting Bull” and my parents still have that cigar Indian.

The point is, I was the vegetarian of the group. They used to sing this song to me constantly. Listening to it now, I feel good about being compared to Mary Moon. She’s an intellectual, but despite this fact, remains quite sexual. I’m down with that.

This one goes out to Tom, Eoin, and Schnibbe, who taught me this song, to speed up at yellow lights, and the meaning of a “rusty trombone.” Gross.

Hip-hop bar mitzvah, halleluyah (video)!

Published on 04/17/201204/23/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

All I ever wanted was a hip-hop bat mitzvah!!

I mean Drake got one, and Lil Weezy was there in a panda mask, so can I have one, too?

Pisces come from under water (photo series).

Published on 04/04/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

A month ago, there was a birthday party. The theme was “under the sea” and I was a jellyfish and Ellie made me a crown.

There are streamers curled and dangling from my tutu but you can’t really see them. Misha’s hair was huge and awesome and we danced to the band for hours. Everyone sang happy birthday to me, Lauren, and Sara, my other Pisces of the party, and we all birthday-hugged each other while they sang.