http://peterpayack.net/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://peterpayack.net//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://peterpayack.net/ http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=28

1. Do not abuse your muse.
2. Stress the erotic not the psychotic
3. For men poets, three words: condoms, clitoris and Catullus.
4. The most desirable poetic diction uses imagination, intensity and passion.
5. Dramatic poetry has a rising action, a climax and a falling action. Without the rising action the poem falls flat.
6. Avoid Freud.
7. Rhythmic Expression should not be confused with "the rhythm method."
8. If you find a man who not only has, but knows how to use didactic pentameter, hold onto him!
9. Was: "Vini, Vidi, Vici," Is: "Oh! Vini, Oh! Vini, Oh! Vini!"
10. While free verse is the usual mode in today's permissive society, practices such as end rhyme must be undertaken with care.
11. Closed couplets can still be found (& bound).
12. It's a pathetic fallacy that can't perform. (See Literary devices, #19.)
13. Place emphasis on the content and movement of a poem, not on its length.
14. Never refer to the Wife of Bath as a psychopath.
15. If you're a homonym, end rhyme is not only acceptable but expected.
16. Three things of interest to some women poets: Karma Sutra, Climax and Clinton (Bill or George.)
17. For the desired effect when using dialect, let it flick off your tongue.
18. Bravo for Libido, Sappho and Romeo.
19. Literary devices (for extending your metaphor or inflating your diction) are available through selected stores of carnal knowledge.
20. Treat the Marquis de Sade as a demigod. (Optional.)
21. Dramatic monologues can be a natural & exciting means of self-expression. (Also soliloquy.)
22. In the modern world it is useful to be not only Bi-Lingual but cunnilingual.
23. Foreplay, negligee & Edna St. Vincent Millay.
24. Meter? Metaphor for lunch.
25. Keep abreast of the situation and compose from the cockles of the heart!
26. When writing in rhyme royal (tragic or farce) don't be a pain in the royal arse.
27. Please, no exalted odes to the lowly commode.
28. There are many ways to get into the body of a poem, including the Greek way.
29. First person personals: I, ID & IUD.
30. Over the top topics: Mephistopheles, Medussa & Madonna (Ciccone.)
31. Have no hand in anticlimax.
32. If you are experiencing writer's block, shun thoughts of Socrates and hemlock.

*If you can think of any additional Sex Tips For Poets, please forward them to me at Peterpayack.net. They will be evaluated by my intrepid panel of experts, and if they prove reliable, will be included in next year's edition!]]> SEX TIPS FOR POETS! http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=28 Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:46:31 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=27 Maxx, the subject of "Networking for Dogs" from the 10th anniversary edition of Blanket Knowledge]]> Images/photos http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=27 Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:30:48 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=26 Peter Payack as improvised by Peter P. Payack]]> Images/photos http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=26 Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:09:36 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=22

Star-gazing
through
the wrong end
of the telescope.

]]> Fast Food for Thought: Micro-Poems http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=22 Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:31:26 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=21 Review, The Boston Globe and over three dozen poems in both Amazing Science Fiction Stories, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazines. He has Published over 1,500 poems, stories, prose poems, photos and articles.
His Poem, The Migration of Darkness, won the 1980 Rhysling Award, signifying
The Best Poem in Science Fiction Poetry.

His work has been anthologized extensively including pieces in Knowing & Writing, New Perspectives on Classical Questions (Harper Collins), Astronomy, from the Earth to the Universe (Saunders College Publishing), and The Poets’ Encyclopedia (Unmuzzled Ox), The Paris Review Anthology (Norton), The Alchemy of Stars (SPFA) and Burning With a Vision (Owlswick Press.)

Payack is the inventor of the world-renowned Stonehenge Watch™, an infinitesimal replica of the megaliths at Stonehenge inside of an old-fashioned pocket watch, which can be used as a shadow clock to tell time, mark the seasons and predict eclipses. The Stonehenge Watch™ has been featured at The International Sky Art Conference at MIT, on BBC-TV , in Astronomy and has been for sale at the Stonehenge site itself.

He has published 6 nationally distributed books, the latest, Blanket Knowledge, (Zoland Books).

As a Sky Artist Payack has been commissioned to do environmental poetry projects for The New York Avant Garde Festival, The International Sky Art Conference (MIT), The Harvard 350 Celebration and Boston’s First Night.

Peter is an Assistant Professor and teaches Communications at The
Berklee College of Music, University of Massachusetts Lowell and UMass Online.

When not writing poetry , teaching or inventing new things, he can be observed
coaching The Cambridge Rindge & Latin School wrestling team or running. He has run 24 marathons, including 13 Boston Marathons.
]]> Peter Payack's Bio (of sorts!) http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=21 Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:33:54 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=20


Walking in the woods around Walden Pond
I am approached by
a hiker, a loner, who
by his unkempt clothes
and scraggly beard
looks more like a staler
than a walker.

I greet
this old crank
with a halting,
and hesitant “Hey.”

He offers me
a weathered hand
some blackberries,
and this philosophical morsel:
“I came to the woods…
because I wanted to suck out
all the marrow of life.”

“Philosophy my ass,”
I thought,
as I bolt out of the woods,
grab my car phone
and dial 9-1-1.
]]> General http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=20 Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:13:57 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=19 THE BARREL & BEYOND

The philosophical pickle ponders both that which is and that which might be beyond The Barrel, as speculative thought is usually described. He wonders what makes a cucumber pickled, and speculates whether life as we know it exists in the Beyond. After many months of study he determines that reality is made up of four primary elements: cucumbers, brine, pickling spices, and The Barrel. Further he concludes that there exists a Prime Mover who not only sets the whole works in motion but also decides what is to be, gives order to The Barrel and Beyond, and generally operates outside the limits of normal pickle thought and morality. That night, at dinnertime, the Prime Mover eats the philosophical pickle with a hamburger.]]> Blanket Knowledge:10th Anniversary ed. http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=19 Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:55:40 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=12

Invasions are nothing new to “civilization”. The years 1066 and the invasion of the Normans (to England), 1938 and the invasion of the Nazis (into Poland), and 1966 and the invasion of the Japanese Tourists (to New York City) are three incursions that readily come to mind. Even our language is loaded with such terminology. Take football for instance: The purpose of the game is to invade the other teams territory (past the 50 yard line), gain as much “ground” as you can, conquering the area in 10 yard increments (first downs), until you bring the ball across the goal line and score (a touchdown). You can do this over and over again until you conquer your enemy (win the game). Usually your opponent puts up a good fight. But that isn’t always the case.
It has been said (or at least this is what I think I heard while snoozing in the teacher’s lounge) that the day before the Visogoths sacked and pillared Rome in 410 AD, that the people of this ancient city gazed upon the barbarian hordes, who were camped upon a high plateau above the city, with an almost childlike sense of astonishment wondering what all the commotion was about.
By Jove, to those ancient idiots dismay, they found out the next morning.
Well, every September 1st, the citizens of the People’s Republic of Cambridge have just about the same incredulous looks on their faces as they ready themselves for the “Invasion” of the Students.
(See Peterson’s Field Guide to Common Cambridge Types: Look under “students,” “Migratory species,” or “arrogant”.)
For a few months before that ominous date residents can actually find a parking space, can go to dinner without having to wait in incredibly long lines, and can generally go about their day-to-day business without being told of their natural inferiority (moral, intellectual, cultural) at almost every step of their way.
But as the August days start to grow shorter, the constellation Orion rises higher in the nighttime sky, and the politicians are scurrying about town looking for valid signatures, U-Haul trucks start to appear, as if out of nowhere, on the streets of the city.
At first, it’s a rare sighting, as when the first cormorants came back to the Charles River about 15 years ago. But as the days of Summer wan, the U-hauls become much more ubiquitous until there isn’t a street in Cambridge that is not clogged with their squatty boxturtle-like appearance. Needless to say, the students who rent these trucks, are completely clueless how to drive them, let alone navigate the serpentine Cambridge streets, originally laid out as cow paths.
No, even Ben Franklin and his infinite ingenuity could have envisioned a street clogged with horn-honking Harvard honkies doing U-turns in U-hauls on Mass Ave.
Long time residents, who think of this as “The Migration of the Loons”, avoid travel on the Mass Pike and other arteries of mass confusion. Traffic can be at a stand still from the Cambridge Exit going all the way back to its origin somewhere in the swamps of Secaucus, New Jersey.
This is a yearly occurrence and you can set your calendar by it much like the ancient peoples once marked the changing of the seasons by the flooding of the Nile, the coming of the monsoons in the Indian subcontinent, and the first Monday Night football game in Dallas, Texas.


THE INVASION, Part Duex


If September 1st brings about the invasion of the snobby, ultra-smart, little rich brats, then Street Cleaning Day brings out the invasion of the beer-guzzling, grease-covered, tattooed, low-life tow truck drivers.
(No offense intended).
To them, there isn’t an automobile in the whole of the paved-over Western World that isn’t towable. And they have every imaginable tool (legal & illegal) to break into your car in order to take it away.
In many ways these drivers might actually be descended from the previously Indeed, this is a very special Tuesday! A Tuesday that is almost diametrically opposed to the Goodwill and party atmosphere of Mardi Gras’ “Fat Tuesday” in New Orleans.
Sure there are half-naked women crowding the streets, but they are in bedclothes frantically trying to figure out, among other things: Where the hell did I paahk my caah? (Long time residents); What the hell is a caah, (Newly arrived New Yorkers); Who the hell has that bullhorn and what the hell did he say? (Everyone); What does that maniac mean by “tagged & towed”? (Newly arrived New Yorkers); and Where the hell am I going to paahk my Caaaah! (Everyone).
Most of the students who moved into the neighborhood the day before from various points of megalopolis are in a booze induced stupor since they were up all night blasting their boom boxes as they unloaded their belongings onto their neighbors front lawns. (So much for all the years of watching public television and Mr. Rogers!)
The last thing a newly arrived Harvard student would ever think to read was something as lowly as a street sign, so they parked where ever the spirit moved them.
The longtime residents know what “tagged and towed mean” so they scramble to move their cars, but find that their cars are boxed-in by the U-Hauls, DPW trucks, and the armada-on-wheels of tow trucks.
The tow truck driver’s eyes are lit up like electronic cash registers. It’s quite a sight, reminiscent of a never aired episode of The Twilight Zone where a whole town goes mad upon the arrival of an unexpected pizza delivery man.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a parking space. If it’s in Cambridge that’s all the better. And no matter what you heard, most of the time you don’t have to travel all the way to New Hampshire. Although, when you go through this same thing on the next day, you certainly might consider moving there.
If you’re unlucky enough to find that your car already missing, you have to make your way to a place in Cambridge where the Sun never shines.
This place is accessible only by car, and since your car has just been tagged and towed, this is where the challenge begins.
It’s the type of mythic struggle that someone like Sisyphus would appreciate.
Of course, this lot is not located on a public transportation route. Remember this is New England where the puritan ethnic still reigns, and if it was easily accessible, then it wouldn’t be much of a penance for the sin of parking on the wrong side of the street! (Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa).
The lot is located somewhere between 6th & 7th Streets, or the 6th and 7th circles of Dante’s Hell. (Flip a coin.)
Once you find your way there, you have to make your way across a crater strewn lot that looks a lot like the dark side of the Moon. The place is littered with broken down jalopies dating back to the time of Henry Ford, if not Cotton Mather. At the far end of the yard you can gander something that looks vaguely like your Volvo.
But first you have to go to “The Trailer” to pay your bill. For your convenience, there is a pawn shop located right next to the trailer (in another even shabbier looking trailer) where you can hock just about anything except your first born. (They hate children.)
The guys in the trailer look like the barkers at Pinnocio’s Pleasure Island, except not as clean-cut or honest. You hand them over the “C” note and without a word (but maybe a belch) they hand you over the keys to your car.
In many ways I often think that if I wasn’t a football coach or High School Teacher, or now a credible city Council Candidate, maybe a tow truck driver would have been my calling.




]]> sample from forthcoming dark comic Novel http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=12 Mon, 8 Jan 2007 11:00:31 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=11 Around The World

I’ve read that
around the world
the bark of a dog
is different then the
bow-wow American dogs.

In fact, it has been reported
the sound a dog makes is
"bup-bup" in Catalan,
"wang-wang" in Mandarin Chinese,
"vov-vov" in Danish,
"woef" in Dutch,

"ouah-ouah" in French,
"bhõ-bhõ" in Hindi,
"gong-gong" in Indonesian,
and "hoang-hoang" in Thai.

And to this I think,
they got some pretty weird dogs
in the rest of the world.
]]> Spankin New Poems from Payack! http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=11 Sun, 7 Jan 2007 11:06:18 -0500 http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=10
The Stonehenge Watch™ is specially crafted to keep the integrity of the original construction of Stonehenge, and thus, when opening the watchcase, can use the built-to-scale model of Stonehenge as a shadow clock to tell time, mark the four seasons and note the passage of years. The Stonehenge Watch™ is modeled after an old-fashioned railroad pocket watch and has been handsomely constructed to also include an analog quartz watch on one side (for those who insist on modern methods of time-telling) and a relief of Stonehenge on the other

After selling out the inaugural run of the 5th Millennial Edition of the Stonehenge Watch™ - “A great leap backward in time telling!” The makers of The Stonehenge Watch™ are pleased to announce that it is back in stock and ready to ship. This edition commemorates the 5th Millennia of the construction of Stonehenge.

The Stonehenge Watch™ has garnered much international attention and has been featured in Playboy Magazine, at The International Sky Art Conference at MIT, on BBC-TV, in Astronomy Magazine, in Stuff/UK’s 100 Best Gadgets of All-Time issue; featured in Inc. Magazine, is represented in the classic college textbook, Astronomy: From Earth to the Universe (Saunders), and has even been for sale at the Stonehenge site itself.

This 5th millennial edition of the watch is specially crafted to keep the integrity of the original construction of Stonehenge, and thus, when opening the watchcase, can use the built-to-scale model of Stonehenge as a shadow clock to tell time, mark the four seasons and note the passage of the years. Every astronomical function that was intended by the original builders of Stonehenge can be accomplished with the watch.

By owning The Stonehenge Watch™, you will quickly learn that Stonehenge is, at once, the oldest and newest way to tell time. Begin your "Great Leap Backward in Time" by pressing the watch stem button atop the rugged alloy watchcase and witness the mystery of Stonehenge revealed. Inside you will see the exact scale replica of the major components of the 5,000 year-old megalithic monument we know as Stonehenge. Orient yourself with the watch's accompanying high viscosity compass to tell local apparent time just as the builders of Stonehenge did thousands of years ago!

The late esteemed astronomer, R.J.C Atkinson, former Chairman of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales, renowned as The Authority on Stonehenge archaeology, has called The Stonehenge Watch™ a “Handsome and ingenious time-piece.” Catherine Salmons, in The Boston Phoenix has said, “I’m amazed by the cleverness of The Stonehenge Watch, the outrageousness of its humor; it’s a three-dimensional Zen conundrum, the ultimate neo-dada gadget.” Ivan Peterson, of Science News Online wrote, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, when comparing The Stonehenge Watch™ to a modern day super accurate atomic clock, “The Stonehenge Watch™ tackles the passage of time in a considerably more contemplative manner.” Also available with The 5th Millennial edition of The Stonehenge Watch™ is a limited edition signed copy of the outrageously funny, Stonehenge Unraveled, by Peter Payack (Inventor of the watch) which again, R.J.C Atkinson called “a satisfying and scholarly guide to the unique time-piece.”
.
QUOTES:
ENGADGET.COM: “Apparently the conveniences of modern technology have made us all very lazy. It's just too easy to tell time these days, which is why Sharpe Products is going super-old-school and selling the Stonehenge Watch… this pocketwatch manages the perfect blend of style and street cred for the Druid-on-the-go. It's a throwback to the days before atomic clocks and internet time servers, when estimating the time to within an hour was considered deadly accurate.”

YAHOO! NEWS UK:
Gadget of the Day: Stonehenge Watch Is that a megalithic monument in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? Oh I see it really is Accurate to the ….

GADGETMANIA:
Klar, eine Stonehenge-Uhr. (Was halt man so braucht...) Für den Preis kann man dann allerdings fast schon hinfahren.

CURIOCITYONLINE:
“If it was good enough for the Druids, isn't it good enough for you?”

ASTRONOMY MAGAZINE:
The great American poet Henry David Thoreau admonished his readers to “simplfy, simplify, simplify.” If you feel as if you should heed this call, and you have no desire to wind watches or change batteries a traditional solution awaits…. The Stonehenge Watch.

MOBILECOWBOYS.NL
Als een beetje hippe druide is het ondoenlijk om elke dag maar richting Stonehenge te gaan om te kijken hoe laat het is. Daarom is er nu dit horloge, welke een replica is van Stonehenge.

STUFF/UK
Yes, impress all your friends (in your druid club) by confidently predicting the spring and vernal equinox. Never again be caught out as summer turns to autumn (surely a must for fashion conscious season watchers). Remarkably, the pocketable monument does actually work. Line it up with the compass and you can tell the time just as our ancestors did all those millennia ago. And if you can't be bothered with all that, flip it over and you'll find a proper analogue watch with 'mystical' hour and minute hands. Hey, that's cheating!

THEMUSICGOD1
A stonehenge watch: Probably the coolest watch I've seen in my entire life.

THINKGEEK.COM
A classic timekeeping gadget: Stonehenge is certainly surrounded by mystery concerning why it was built and by whom. Druids, aliens, Merlin, the devil - heck, we don't know - probably built by some ancient ancestors of modern geeks. You can now harness the power of the sun and the stones by using the Stonehenge Watch.

A Pocket Watches For Druids

So all this whizbang you beaut technology stuff, atomic clocks GPS based timesync modules, internet time servers and the like, is well, leaving us with feelings of nostalgia for times past when for example telling the time was based on a quick look at the sky, bung a stick in the ground and bugger me it’s Eleven o’clock… the perfect time for a little smackerel of something.

It’s just too easy to tell time these days, which is why Sharpe Products is ignoring the Royal Society and all that 18th century mechanical horological nonsense and going back to the roots (so to speak) and flogging the Stonehenge Watch. Although not the first portable sundial we’ve seen, see the aforementioned stick in the ground. “This pocketwatch manages the perfect blend of style and street cred for the Druid-on-the-go”.

The Stonehenge has an exact, miniature replica of the henge die-cast on one side, and a compass on the other to help you get your bearings (any debates about Magnetic North, Leylines, Pyramids and Cropcircles can wait) . Sharpe obviously realizes the frustration you may encounter using this archaic method and should the disquieting feelings about modern technology wander off down the pub for a quick one, they thoughtfully included an analog mechanical horological device (a clock with hands) on the outside of the case. Just in case (sorry).

FOR ORDERS, DETAILED INFO, PHOTOS, HISTORY: http://www.Stonehengewatch.com/ or call Steve Sharpe (Designer, manufactuer) at Sharpe Products (973) 335-8535 or toll free 1-888-Watch-55.
CONTACT INFO: Peter Payack, inventor of The Stonehenge Watch™, at (617) 492-2913; 617-512-9196 (cell) or e-mail Payack@aol.com





]]> General http://peterpayack.net/index.php?itemid=10 Fri, 5 Jan 2007 09:26:16 -0500