For those of you whose goodwill hasn’t been exhausted:
Standard Hotel, West Hollywood. Tuesday, November 13th. Complimentary wine served between 7 and 8pm. Reading at 8pm.
September 28, 2012
Another Last Lamentation
Please join us in lamenting the publication of
ANTIEPITHALAMIA & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment
A new collection of poetry by John Tottenham
At historic Besant Lodge in the heart of Beachwood Canyon.
Saturday October 13th, 7.30pm
2560 Beachwood Drive, LA, CA 90068
A recitation will be delivered by the author.
Melancholic strains will be supplied by violinist Laena Geronimo.
Libations will be poured by Bitter Tears of Los Angeles.
This is John Tottenham’s second book: a sequence of mean-spirited love poems, and a meditation on the subjects of regret and resentment.
Books will be available for sale.
Absentees will be noted.
September 10, 2012
San Francisco. Sept 13th.
The Squat. 849 Haight street, San Francisco. Thursday, September 13, 2012, 7:30PM. Book Launch. In association with Penny-Ante editions.
Jarett Kobek and M Kitchell have written books: Come celebrate their release. Also, if you feel like it, bring money to buy their books. Also Elly Jonez, Lorian Long, and special guest, John Tottenham, who has also written a book.
May 31, 2012
Seriously
The time has finally come
to take myself seriously.
But I don’t have the energy.
May 24, 2012
Parasitology
I measure my life by other people’s milestones.
All this evasion, absorption and accumulation
provides a foundation in tradition,
a rich vein of consolation.
Art, like death, makes life more interesting.
And without it: as unthinkable as love
without pity, or a selfless eulogy.
But the bondage of receptivity
compares most unfavorably
with the selflessness of productivity.
May 23, 2012
And This:
Not that I have anything to say on the subject:
Friday June 22nd. 9pm. Beyond Baroque. 683 Venice Blvd.
March 1, 2012
AVALANCHE
I am the stale receptor, the superfluous accumulator,
the redundant completist trapped
in his cave of musty retention,
buried under years of absorption… unaborted;
decades of consumption… consumed,
sacrificed at the altar of other people’s art,
while everything else fell apart.
Pondering, at last, all the pointless consolation;
questioning if it was really necessary
to devour entire genres until I was crapulous
from gorging myself on culture,
As if it were some kind of achievement
to accumulate all this knowledge
that will die with me.
So that on my headstone it will read:
that I read and lived a lot of fiction…
that Art ruined my Life.
February 18, 2012
LANDSCAPE WITH PEASANTS
The footsteps of bored guards echo in the empty galleries.
A homeless patron wheels a laundry cart around.
Despite free admission, the place is empty,
these are the only sounds; and it’s easy to get lost
in the bleak, rural Dutch 17th century.
Beneath a cloudy, unforgiving sky,
two figures tramp down a muddy lane
toward a house half-hidden behind gnarled trees.
Cattle graze beside a river.
Beyond torn fencing fields recede.
Gazing into these serenely battered bygone scenes,
one is reminded of real life, real weather:
that it might still be out there somewhere.
Not here, far removed from European culture,
at the very edge of the western hemisphere.
Where, on a hollow, cloudless day
the collection’s fragile incongruity is quickly wiped away
by the umpteenth oblivious jogger running by
with a head set on.
There’s nothing in the air.
The sun, subtly vampiric, barely brushes against a world
where everything and nothing is in bloom:
a seductive vacuity, of lifeless trees
and lives of ease and loud complacency,
as soothing and beautiful as a cartoon.
December 29, 2011
State of Grace
Frankly, your prolificity disturbs me:
It serves to satisfy an insatiable hunger
For mediocrity. You swagger in vain
Against extinction. But the efforts of those
Who wrest crumbs from history
Will ensure your immortality.
December 18, 2011
Springtime in an American Town
Why is it that I only ever notice my gut in motel room mirrors?
Perhaps obesity is contagious in these parts,
the natural result of pride and fear.
And why am I not noticed here?
Barely branded by sidelong glances
in one dead-eyed town after another
by a populace whose chief talent lies in the ability
to instantly distrust anything they don’t understand.
The feeling is mutual.
I have passed like a ghost through your cities,
scavenging for scraps of the past.
I have rambled, ambled, bled your cities dry,
arriving at the end of the trail of trash,
weighed down on the great white way,
on tired streets of dead blood-red brick.
And I have found the old buildings,
in all their purity, perfectly preserved, in paint
on the sides of new buildings
in towns like silences
that need not be filled.
And there is nothing left anywhere
that hasn’t been turned over and undermined
by overawareness.
For in this tarnished day and age
the luster of everything must be restored
and celebrated with meat and sugar,
and a soundtrack of feigned emotion.
There’s a lot of ugly laughter in this world:
stranded in other people’s reality;
trapped by freedom and vexed
by pointless innovations in a homogeneity
somehow born of distance and inconsistency.
Discovering myself again
as a useless member of society:
belonging nowhere, only wishing
I wasn’t wishing
I wasn’t here.
Meditating, amid ruins,
upon the ruin of myself,
realizing that the decline of all I hold dear
can be traced to the exact moment
that I first became
aware.
Published in Dialectical Anthropology Vol.34 No.2, June 2010
John Tottenham 