b
y
b
I don't know about you, but I'm not waiting for Godot, I'm waiting for the goddamned bell to ring. Did you hear that name? No, you don't need help. You've got the world by your eyes- your feelers-
I'm backing off. I've got the whole structure behind me. Who do you think I'm talking to? This isn't the paper, this is the exam.
Meanwhile, nobody's talking to me, but I'm not worrying about it. You want to decide who's boss, you do it. I'll just take the money and back off.
I think what I think and I write what I write. It's all too easy and jump across the tracks to speak to you. You think you understand me, but this time I'm waiting it out. Meanwhile, thinking....
Now I know the kind of stool-pigeon he really is. Look at him, he'd definitely take his opinions from somebody else, you said it yourself- he still believes his daddy's religion, in fact, he probably scrimps and saves to put money in the plate. Up or down, by and by, you'll need something to read. Newspaper, magazinne, anything...Just stop talking to somebody you disagree with...it's just that easy? Soon, however, you'll have a war on your hands. But maybe that's what you always wanted. As for me, I've been waiting for years for a chance to attack (attract?) my readers. What did you expect? An invitational telegram- or maybe you would like to store my casket in your livingroom- "for a truthful reminder."
Chapter 2- When feelings disappear anything can happen. Wait a minute. Buy your beep? Boy, you're bad. Brag your best. As uncomfortable as it is, this is probably how it'll be.
Human beings, says Melanie Klein, show a powerful envy factor. Perhaps she took Freud's painfully honest view another step. The league of lost writers. But for whom do I write? I write for my many selves, who all want to speak to you, all of you.They don't care if you don't listen anymore. Nobody's allowed to be this direct, especially you. In fact, you can't even talk back at all (this you) you can't give credit, where credit is due. You want nothing else but to be left alone to think, while I want to invent a language to speak to you. Off the bat, it looks like a good arrangement. But if we're going to have to live together for 365 pages, somebody's going to have to decide who does what. And it isn't going to be you and it isn't going to be me either.
But sooner or later it is inevitable that we're going to have to switch places, And this is where I'm going to begin to fall down on the job. Be careful what you boast about. They'll take it away from you. On the other hand, be good at keeping them guessing.
You're the one that's disappointed in me.
Slow down, this is one way you deal with projected envy.
Freud constructed it as a mystery story (neurosis). I still don't believe in the narrative. But this could also be denial. Life and death. Is hide and go seek. A bigger model?
(6/26/87)
Distribution Automatique
Friday, April 4
surveillance-
1. inspection or superintendence.
2. Watch or observation kept over a person, especially one under suspicion or a prisoner.
Survey- (French sur- , over and old French veoir, to see, from Latin super over and vidare, to see.)
1. to overlook, to inspect or take a view of, especiallly in a general or a comprehensive way.
(Everything we send out comes back to us- and everything we receive we send out.)
Words keep reversing themselves. Overlook used to mean, to look over and now it means
1. to look at from above
2. to give a view of from above
3. to rise above
4. to look over or beyond and not see; (1) to ignore, neglect
5. to pass over indulgently; to excuse
6. to inspect
7. to oversee, supervise, manage
8. to bewitch by looking at
synonym- condone, disregard, supervise, inspect, survey, review, pardon, forgive.
So the word includes a reversal of its own meaning where to look at comes to mean to ignore.
survey
2. to see;; to perceive (obs)
This is somewhat funny to me. To actually see and perceive becomes an obsolete aspect of a word which is originally intended to mean, just that. By the time we reach meaning 3
3. to examine carefully with reference to condition, situation or the like, with a view to ascertaining the precise state or value of, to inspect or consider carefully
-we are demanding more in our use of the term, we are asking for a more detailed report which incudes an internal judgement. With the 4th meaning, the word takes on a far more technical application, with interesting applications to what is considered real (the earth itself is the bottom line-)
4. to determine the boundaries, form, extent, area, position, contour, etc, of a tract or area of land, by means of linear and angular, and the application of principles of geometry and trigonometry.
*
Could you turn up the radio so that I can hear that indeterminate chord better?
*
Over and over I come back to will and willing.This awareness connects to my imaginings, my desires for change. But that theme constantly points me back to specifics. Will- the generating force (the form)- actions, the particular links of the chain, the specifics.
(7/1/87)
1. inspection or superintendence.
2. Watch or observation kept over a person, especially one under suspicion or a prisoner.
Survey- (French sur- , over and old French veoir, to see, from Latin super over and vidare, to see.)
1. to overlook, to inspect or take a view of, especiallly in a general or a comprehensive way.
(Everything we send out comes back to us- and everything we receive we send out.)
Words keep reversing themselves. Overlook used to mean, to look over and now it means
1. to look at from above
2. to give a view of from above
3. to rise above
4. to look over or beyond and not see; (1) to ignore, neglect
5. to pass over indulgently; to excuse
6. to inspect
7. to oversee, supervise, manage
8. to bewitch by looking at
synonym- condone, disregard, supervise, inspect, survey, review, pardon, forgive.
So the word includes a reversal of its own meaning where to look at comes to mean to ignore.
survey
2. to see;; to perceive (obs)
This is somewhat funny to me. To actually see and perceive becomes an obsolete aspect of a word which is originally intended to mean, just that. By the time we reach meaning 3
3. to examine carefully with reference to condition, situation or the like, with a view to ascertaining the precise state or value of, to inspect or consider carefully
-we are demanding more in our use of the term, we are asking for a more detailed report which incudes an internal judgement. With the 4th meaning, the word takes on a far more technical application, with interesting applications to what is considered real (the earth itself is the bottom line-)
4. to determine the boundaries, form, extent, area, position, contour, etc, of a tract or area of land, by means of linear and angular, and the application of principles of geometry and trigonometry.
*
Could you turn up the radio so that I can hear that indeterminate chord better?
*
Over and over I come back to will and willing.This awareness connects to my imaginings, my desires for change. But that theme constantly points me back to specifics. Will- the generating force (the form)- actions, the particular links of the chain, the specifics.
(7/1/87)
Thursday, April 3
In every discrete experience can be read the full boundaries of contemporary experience.
Given the fact, that in this century a rat has been set loose, is it no surprise that a connoisseur of experience should, upon encountering some ambiguity, say to her or himself "Let me smell this first?" Does she not jump, lightfooted, around those shores that would fasten her to the "whole earth" of property? When to own property comes to be twisted into joining those who would kill and maim?
Too strident. I myself do not trust such pronouncements. Let me go to the deep shade of my own precious fragments and laugh- and tremble- with my mate.
Fate deals new combinations and keeps us honest .Which is to say fate itself, in its "random" (=inclusive character)
will forever remind me of what I've forgotten.
The mind must face this way or that.
Ethical survival needs mobility of awareness.
Fate reminds us of absolute measure.
If fate= light, the absolute= 186,000 miles per second per second.
(Khlebnikov, and Jacobson, Freud and ---------------------------)
Theorists neeed numbers, whether scientific or not, and this is because without measure, theory has no current application. Thus, any "metaphysician twanging in the dark" (Stevens) has recourse to a metrical scale from time to time.
Art= contemporary measure of freedom.
Return the provisional quality of meaning. Hold to the part, not to the whole. Survey the whole (holy=wholly)
To come close to the source of the imagination is to come close to the source of deception. In this "magic" realm one must learn to step lightly. This "dance" is also a good way to deal with dead ends.
Nick,n. the Devil, Satan: usually Old Nick
nick, v.t.
1. to make a nick or nicks in
2. to score or tally by means of notches.
3. to cut through or into.
4. to strike or catch at the exact or proper time, to hit, guess, grasp, etc. exactly
5. (a) to catch off guard; (b) to trick; cheat; defraud (slang)
6. to arrest; to nab (British slang)
Nick, N. (from the verb)
1. a small notch or slit;
especially, a small
cut, indentation, or chip on the
edge or surface of wood, metal,
china,, etc.
2. any of certain winning throws or casts in a game of dice
3. a channel cut in the bottom of a printing type.
4. a tally or record kept by notching something
in the nick of time: at the critical moment
plumb line,
1. a line directed to the earth's center of gravity
2. a cord suspending a lead weight, or plumb,
used in sounding and determining a vertical direction
plumb
plume
Resonance: starting with a small vibration, other proximate objects respond, and a momentum eventually gets established. The response is "harmonic" in that it echoes and frames the original event.
(7/2/87)
Wednesday, April 2
Thanks to Brandon Barr for posting a visualization of an idea I had for a blogger button for him. He thought the button was a smart idea and he is clearly a very smart guy. The idea went back to a maxim he presented many months ago on the Buffalo poetics list; something like lists proceed by contention, blogs proceed via consensus. I liked that idea so much I tried to get further discussion going on the list. But Brandon is so neat and techie perhaps a lot of shoot from the hip types don't respond to his knowledgeable ideas about cyberspace communications.
And my sincere thanks to Brian Kim Stefans for saying some very kind words about me on his blog -Circulars- (comments section). -Circulars- is certainly one of the most useful and interesting blogs available and is very widely read. Stefans' comments emerged in the context of a vital and productive discussion going on there around some of Barrett Watten' s political theories concerning language of great concern to poets in a time of war. There was also some response to thoughts about issues of contention among poets discussed recently in these pages. Brain also said he thought -fait accompli- might now be getting about 50 reads a week.The issue of number of reads certainly appears to be a provocative area of concern for bloggers. Brandon Barr commented recently on the poetics list he feels that numbers might not necessarily be a key issue in blogging. He feels who you audience is might be more important concern in what it is you might want to continue foucusing on in communicating as a blogger.
Speaking of numbers. It turns out that Caterina, who has been blogging since 1999 gets in the neighborhood of 2000 hits a day. She says that blog audiences evolve over time. Well, I think it also might have something to do with charm also because her blog has plenty of that!
And my sincere thanks to Brian Kim Stefans for saying some very kind words about me on his blog -Circulars- (comments section). -Circulars- is certainly one of the most useful and interesting blogs available and is very widely read. Stefans' comments emerged in the context of a vital and productive discussion going on there around some of Barrett Watten' s political theories concerning language of great concern to poets in a time of war. There was also some response to thoughts about issues of contention among poets discussed recently in these pages. Brain also said he thought -fait accompli- might now be getting about 50 reads a week.The issue of number of reads certainly appears to be a provocative area of concern for bloggers. Brandon Barr commented recently on the poetics list he feels that numbers might not necessarily be a key issue in blogging. He feels who you audience is might be more important concern in what it is you might want to continue foucusing on in communicating as a blogger.
Speaking of numbers. It turns out that Caterina, who has been blogging since 1999 gets in the neighborhood of 2000 hits a day. She says that blog audiences evolve over time. Well, I think it also might have something to do with charm also because her blog has plenty of that!
Tuesday, April 1
Monday, March 31
Toni's sister Beryl lives with her husband Bob and their two sons Michael and Jimmy in Arlington, Massachusetts .Toni and Beryl love to get together and crack each other up talking about movies, clothes, politics, husbands, or Beryl's two wild and crazy, politically activist teenage sons, and maybe some things I don't know about (yet). So today, Toni got this letter from Beryl:
Dear Toni,
In keeping with the new tradition you started, here is my report from
the Boston front. It was touch and go getting to the rally on the Commons. Martha's
daughter Molly was Bat Mitzvahed yesterday, and we were at the
(Masonic!) Temple till 12:30. Martha agreed that it was important to go to the
Commons, as long as we'd be back for dinner and dancing.
So I changed shoes and jacket in the car and Bob dropped me off at the
subway and pretty soon I was at the Commons- which was deserted except
for a group of 50 pro-war demonstrators. By this time the rally was over
and the parade was moving down Beacon Street. I caught up with the end
of the line, and---there I was, back in 1969. Except that half the
people around me had graying hair and sensible shoes. The other half
were students It was all very comforting and cheerful and friendly, and
there was a lot of creative pageantry. I think the police estimate of
25,000 was about correct, though, being short, it was hard for me to see
where it began and where it ended. We had drum corps, and a brass
marching band. Giant puppets and guerilla theater folks in masks,
carrying "bodies". Some marchers waved smoking sage bundles, which was
very pleasant. Lots of humor and cross-generational camaraderie. No car
noises at all, since the mayor kindly shut down traffic for us. I
really love this city! Though the sidewalk people were friendly, there
was still a sense of danger and adventure. Perhaps for me it had to do
with walking down the middle of the avenues--right through the red
lights! With all those helicopters hovering overhead. I recklessly
took my life in my hands and bought a hotdog from a street vendor.
I looked for Mike, but didn't see him. Toni- did not see your guernica
sign, but did see a woman with a sign saying "Free Guernica!" Lots of
good signs. pretty much in the same vein as the NYC signs. Some folks in
cowboy hats had "More two-steppin' Less goose-stepping". Mike says he
saw "Drunken Frat Boy Against the War" held by a drunken frat boy. A
contingent had "We're from Lynn- War is a Sin" signs. One kid who got
a lot of cheers was perched on a lamppost near Newbury Street. On one
side his sign said " No War on Iraq." On the other side it said "Single
young multimillionaire, male, against war. (617) 515-XXXX." (When asked
if he was really a multimillionaire he said "no"). College girls in the
crowd were exhorting each other: "Go ahead!Call him!" One girl actually
took out her cell phone, and left a message on his machine. Passing the
Hancock tower, I was afraid the wind would knock the big "Vermonters for
Peace" banner right on my head. Another lamp post-hanger had a t shirt
that said "More Love! More Fire!" This sounded romantic and got lots of
cheers, but afterwards people were saying "huh?", "I don't get it."
and- "what do you think he means by that?" I think he must have been a
poet or an English major.
Around an hour into the march, walking down the middle of sunny Boylston
Street- in the heart of the city for the first time in months- I had a
sudden overwhelming desire... to shop! And to find a Starbucks for a
cold mocha frappacino. And to find a bathroom. At the end of the line
folks some were lying down on the streets for a die-in. The "dead"
college coeds were a lively bunch! Some of the deceased were talking on
cell phones. Some were napping. One truly ancient man- could have been a
hundred- was lying so still that I wondered if he was really faking.
Odd how the march was the first real distraction from war worry and
angst in 11 days.
My post-march search for a bathroom and a frappacino took me to Borders
books, where I found an extremely interesting autobiographical novel
abut China in the cultural revolution called "Balzac and the Little
Chinese Seamstress" which I highly recommend.
I then went camera-shopping, since Bob says he wants to get me a really
big birthday gift, and I'm thinking it might be one of the tiny new
digital cameras.
Got home in time for the BatMitzvah dinner and dancing, so all-in-all it
was a fun day, and a great break from my usual 7-day week,
never-leave-the -house work schedule. But today the emails and
storyboards are backed way up, so it's back to the grind.
Love,
Beryl
Dear Toni,
In keeping with the new tradition you started, here is my report from
the Boston front. It was touch and go getting to the rally on the Commons. Martha's
daughter Molly was Bat Mitzvahed yesterday, and we were at the
(Masonic!) Temple till 12:30. Martha agreed that it was important to go to the
Commons, as long as we'd be back for dinner and dancing.
So I changed shoes and jacket in the car and Bob dropped me off at the
subway and pretty soon I was at the Commons- which was deserted except
for a group of 50 pro-war demonstrators. By this time the rally was over
and the parade was moving down Beacon Street. I caught up with the end
of the line, and---there I was, back in 1969. Except that half the
people around me had graying hair and sensible shoes. The other half
were students It was all very comforting and cheerful and friendly, and
there was a lot of creative pageantry. I think the police estimate of
25,000 was about correct, though, being short, it was hard for me to see
where it began and where it ended. We had drum corps, and a brass
marching band. Giant puppets and guerilla theater folks in masks,
carrying "bodies". Some marchers waved smoking sage bundles, which was
very pleasant. Lots of humor and cross-generational camaraderie. No car
noises at all, since the mayor kindly shut down traffic for us. I
really love this city! Though the sidewalk people were friendly, there
was still a sense of danger and adventure. Perhaps for me it had to do
with walking down the middle of the avenues--right through the red
lights! With all those helicopters hovering overhead. I recklessly
took my life in my hands and bought a hotdog from a street vendor.
I looked for Mike, but didn't see him. Toni- did not see your guernica
sign, but did see a woman with a sign saying "Free Guernica!" Lots of
good signs. pretty much in the same vein as the NYC signs. Some folks in
cowboy hats had "More two-steppin' Less goose-stepping". Mike says he
saw "Drunken Frat Boy Against the War" held by a drunken frat boy. A
contingent had "We're from Lynn- War is a Sin" signs. One kid who got
a lot of cheers was perched on a lamppost near Newbury Street. On one
side his sign said " No War on Iraq." On the other side it said "Single
young multimillionaire, male, against war. (617) 515-XXXX." (When asked
if he was really a multimillionaire he said "no"). College girls in the
crowd were exhorting each other: "Go ahead!Call him!" One girl actually
took out her cell phone, and left a message on his machine. Passing the
Hancock tower, I was afraid the wind would knock the big "Vermonters for
Peace" banner right on my head. Another lamp post-hanger had a t shirt
that said "More Love! More Fire!" This sounded romantic and got lots of
cheers, but afterwards people were saying "huh?", "I don't get it."
and- "what do you think he means by that?" I think he must have been a
poet or an English major.
Around an hour into the march, walking down the middle of sunny Boylston
Street- in the heart of the city for the first time in months- I had a
sudden overwhelming desire... to shop! And to find a Starbucks for a
cold mocha frappacino. And to find a bathroom. At the end of the line
folks some were lying down on the streets for a die-in. The "dead"
college coeds were a lively bunch! Some of the deceased were talking on
cell phones. Some were napping. One truly ancient man- could have been a
hundred- was lying so still that I wondered if he was really faking.
Odd how the march was the first real distraction from war worry and
angst in 11 days.
My post-march search for a bathroom and a frappacino took me to Borders
books, where I found an extremely interesting autobiographical novel
abut China in the cultural revolution called "Balzac and the Little
Chinese Seamstress" which I highly recommend.
I then went camera-shopping, since Bob says he wants to get me a really
big birthday gift, and I'm thinking it might be one of the tiny new
digital cameras.
Got home in time for the BatMitzvah dinner and dancing, so all-in-all it
was a fun day, and a great break from my usual 7-day week,
never-leave-the -house work schedule. But today the emails and
storyboards are backed way up, so it's back to the grind.
Love,
Beryl
Sunday, March 30
I am jealous of all these techy bloggers. I’m still stuck at cut and paste. Damn!
Laura says she’s going to teach me do my own links.
No, Laura, I’m not ready. No!
To see who is linking to the Laurable dot com Log search for link:www.laurable.com/log. Google your blog today!
posted by Laurable on 3/21/2003 11:54:15 AM | link
Laurable
Sunday, March 30, 2003
do you ever wonder how people get to your blog? here are some of the things people typed into google to get to my blog:
poems of thanks
cute crush poems
anti-war songs
poems on abduction
american poems taking the piss out of Iraq (!!!)
poems on pulleys
pro-war songs, poems
poems on low income
poems entitled flying about birds
among others
posted by sandra 3:47 PM
Sandra’s Poems
Sunday, March 30, 2003
I figured out how to record a voice mp3. I just record on audio track for a non-existent digital movie using my imovie program, then open up itunes, find the audio track, somewhere on my hard drive, and convert it to an mp3. Then I can burn a cd directly off of itunes.
posted by Jonathan Mayhew at 11:45 AM
Laura says she’s going to teach me do my own links.
No, Laura, I’m not ready. No!
To see who is linking to the Laurable dot com Log search for link:www.laurable.com/log. Google your blog today!
posted by Laurable on 3/21/2003 11:54:15 AM | link
Laurable
Sunday, March 30, 2003
do you ever wonder how people get to your blog? here are some of the things people typed into google to get to my blog:
poems of thanks
cute crush poems
anti-war songs
poems on abduction
american poems taking the piss out of Iraq (!!!)
poems on pulleys
pro-war songs, poems
poems on low income
poems entitled flying about birds
among others
posted by sandra 3:47 PM
Sandra’s Poems
Sunday, March 30, 2003
I figured out how to record a voice mp3. I just record on audio track for a non-existent digital movie using my imovie program, then open up itunes, find the audio track, somewhere on my hard drive, and convert it to an mp3. Then I can burn a cd directly off of itunes.
posted by Jonathan Mayhew at 11:45 AM
David Hess and Jim Behrle have weighed in on Barrett Watten's call for a critique and analysis of the reasons the present administration have given us for going to war (see -Circulars-). All have ignored the quiet voice of Masha Zavialova whose recent statements on the list were the most cogent because she lived through all this in the Soviet Union. Masha feels there is real work to do for poets in "taking the shit" off what our leaders have to say. But this will take even more time, as poets have immediately clashed as to how to go about working together. One group wants to deconstruct what has been said in order to become more constructive, the other group wants us to say or do something more constructive right away. Are these positions very far apart? Both ideas are useful. But to debate is so much more soothing than to act, feels so much more organized, profound and planful, and these fascinating discussions will continue until a few more thousand, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people die. I lived through all this in the 60's.
In the years of the organization of the protest movement in the 60's , eventually dissidents of every stripe came to work together. It took years of caring people watching more and more other caring people die horrible, useless, violent deaths. Blotto hippies, radicals of all types, students, business people, soldiers, politicos, mothers, brothers,sisters, children, ex-soldiers, hobos, rich people, poor people, the rainbow coalition all working together. Soon the bodies will be so bloody and piled so high and the disgust and misery will be so intense that these semantic arguments will no longer be of much interest. But none of us can really begrudge this needed time of contemplation and discussion. As long as we can bicker over intellectual points, over who is more brilliant or more knowledgable than who, it only means we are not yet quite horrified enough, not quite revolted enough.A few are already. Marianne Shaneen represents that group: the new avant-garde.(We are already being warned that the hours in jail for protesters are getting longer.)
When we are all revolted enough we will do something, not because we "feel we should" but because we will feel and therefore recognize that we have no choice. And every single one of us will work like hell together to stop this terrible war. And it will feel like love, not hate, like we are embracing something beautiful together, not like we are arguing among ourselves either politely or rudely. This is when the poetry really comes into it, don't you think? That said: when do we call for a "Day of Reckoning?" Doesn't it seem that the next step would be towards a day of job walkout and protest, world wide?
In the years of the organization of the protest movement in the 60's , eventually dissidents of every stripe came to work together. It took years of caring people watching more and more other caring people die horrible, useless, violent deaths. Blotto hippies, radicals of all types, students, business people, soldiers, politicos, mothers, brothers,sisters, children, ex-soldiers, hobos, rich people, poor people, the rainbow coalition all working together. Soon the bodies will be so bloody and piled so high and the disgust and misery will be so intense that these semantic arguments will no longer be of much interest. But none of us can really begrudge this needed time of contemplation and discussion. As long as we can bicker over intellectual points, over who is more brilliant or more knowledgable than who, it only means we are not yet quite horrified enough, not quite revolted enough.A few are already. Marianne Shaneen represents that group: the new avant-garde.(We are already being warned that the hours in jail for protesters are getting longer.)
When we are all revolted enough we will do something, not because we "feel we should" but because we will feel and therefore recognize that we have no choice. And every single one of us will work like hell together to stop this terrible war. And it will feel like love, not hate, like we are embracing something beautiful together, not like we are arguing among ourselves either politely or rudely. This is when the poetry really comes into it, don't you think? That said: when do we call for a "Day of Reckoning?" Doesn't it seem that the next step would be towards a day of job walkout and protest, world wide?
Saturday, March 29
Nada reminded me of her penchant - and her considerable talent -for songs and singing.Today, on her blog, she recalled this one:
"come on people now smile on your brother everybody get together & etc..."
This was, in fact, one of my favorite 60's songs. Years ago Toni and I went to see the lead singer of the group that recorded it... He had become kind of slick, short haired, pale, and sang songs about his divorce. But by then we were used to the almost complete evaporation of the 60's spirit. With a little bit of luck and a lot of protests maybe a similar spirit will make its way back here, who knows? If Marianne Shaneen's attitude is any indication, the signs are good.
"come on people now smile on your brother everybody get together & etc..."
This was, in fact, one of my favorite 60's songs. Years ago Toni and I went to see the lead singer of the group that recorded it... He had become kind of slick, short haired, pale, and sang songs about his divorce. But by then we were used to the almost complete evaporation of the 60's spirit. With a little bit of luck and a lot of protests maybe a similar spirit will make its way back here, who knows? If Marianne Shaneen's attitude is any indication, the signs are good.
from "Wine Poetics" (Eileen Tabios)
"Incidentally, four years after changing my lifestyle to spend nearly every day in the writing studio writing poems, I have started to meet others like me who spend their time in this world trying to return to a parallel universe. Several are poets, which would seem to be logical for do not such things labeled as “transcendence” and “longing” fuel much of poetry? We recognize each other when we meet, primarily by the furrows carved by tears against our cheeks. Tears – they often well up from having ripped off halos for the ecstasy of the fall. These otherworldly poets are like fallen angels: when we see sacred cows, we think only of sucking their bone marrow."
"Incidentally, four years after changing my lifestyle to spend nearly every day in the writing studio writing poems, I have started to meet others like me who spend their time in this world trying to return to a parallel universe. Several are poets, which would seem to be logical for do not such things labeled as “transcendence” and “longing” fuel much of poetry? We recognize each other when we meet, primarily by the furrows carved by tears against our cheeks. Tears – they often well up from having ripped off halos for the ecstasy of the fall. These otherworldly poets are like fallen angels: when we see sacred cows, we think only of sucking their bone marrow."
" I want to run into the wall of the social like a glass egg, not to say there is a toy or surprise at the center or that for my self I'd employ the same metaphor so often used upon me earlier to explain about the trinity, and the spirit, and the shell which holds it all together even when blown out through a safety pin sized hole. "
Stephanie Young
Stephanie Young
"When people pray, even monks, they never really get there. Though they might feel they receive some kind of blessing or inspiration...Every person's life is a process of building belief or faith...Why should we live? Even though we know we must die, we still try to discover something so that we can pass a better day. Those who are sick understand this...It's the in between...Whatever we believe in we create a space there. That space is a kind of realm or as Joseph Beuys put it, "Thought is a form of sculpture."
Montien Boonma
Friday, March 28
(Heart) Breaking News
Each successive stage of development brings with it its own measure of responsibility. The idea we have of progress and change is mistaken. The movement of light to dark, from hurting to helping, from creating to killing is never more than a series of masques, broken mini-narratives, reoccuring in more or less the same manner from age to age, through all time and for all time. The Hindus have always had the clearest picture of these changeless stories and archtypical characters. There is Shiva the destroyer, unquestionably in the ascendant now, Vishnu the protector, the preserver of the cosmos, upholder of the universal laws, and Brahma, the creator. It is no use to think that events are gradually revealing progress, developing. They are not and never will. It was an occasional, shimmering bright dream to think for a few moments that humankind was getting a better picture of reality. Pictures, yes. The whole picture, no. It might have been true, or seemed to, if it were not for the fact that we simultaneously, as a society, forget as much as we have learned, and sometimes even more than we have learned. Those fragmentary stories, or broken dreams as I once called them in a poem, are alternately exhilirating and pulverizing. What's the use of trying to derive a universal pattern? When we are not out there murdering each other, as in Basra, we are observing each other furtively trying to figure out how to get more of what we are so pursuaded we desperately need from others or from the earth.
We should watch over each other more and try to ask things of each other or influence other people more gently, more considerately. Far too much bullying, shouting, bossing, berating, cajoling, hectoring, screaming, yelling, sternly explaining, , arguing, angrily debating, hating, criticizing, contemptuously judging, classifying, correcting, deriding, condeming, assessing, testing, categorizing, obtaining, verbally and sarcastically torturing, chafing, arranging, putting down, hurting, damaging, wounding, killing. We never stop, won't stop, can't seem to stop. We never leave each other alone in the sense of allowing the other to complete a thought , see a set of related feelings and then ideas and then convictions emerge and then mutual projects develop in a reasonable period of undisturbed time so we have some shape to the picture of how we are feeling, before we give into our strong need to intervene. We hardly ever or not nearly often enough leave one other alone , even when trying to communicate with one another in the sense of allowing the other person time to figure out something to its conclusion on their own, turning things over and over in their minds, appreciating their ambivalent, ambiguous and multi-dimensional aspects, allowing time for ourselves and others to appraise the situation in a wide-ranging way as we exchange opinions, and take the time to consider what is apropos, each of us hearing all the others. If we are ever to cope with these sudden heart wrenching, terrifying paradyme changes by means of a changed frame of reality, we must learn how to sense and comprehend what masque we are presently in and find a way to acquaint each other with the changed cast of characters and what this ageless dynamism is trying to tell us. We like the movies because they are the closest thing we have to a way of visualizing the big picture as it is, unearthing and tracking a way of seeing the underlying universal archetypes and their interrelated motivations, drives, illusions and delusions, track and plot this archetype of rage and destruction as it really exists, and pervades our every feeling and thought. Ah Michael Moore, Michael Moore, bless your brilliant, insightful, profound, caring, good hearted, hilariously outraged and rousing soul.
Each successive stage of development brings with it its own measure of responsibility. The idea we have of progress and change is mistaken. The movement of light to dark, from hurting to helping, from creating to killing is never more than a series of masques, broken mini-narratives, reoccuring in more or less the same manner from age to age, through all time and for all time. The Hindus have always had the clearest picture of these changeless stories and archtypical characters. There is Shiva the destroyer, unquestionably in the ascendant now, Vishnu the protector, the preserver of the cosmos, upholder of the universal laws, and Brahma, the creator. It is no use to think that events are gradually revealing progress, developing. They are not and never will. It was an occasional, shimmering bright dream to think for a few moments that humankind was getting a better picture of reality. Pictures, yes. The whole picture, no. It might have been true, or seemed to, if it were not for the fact that we simultaneously, as a society, forget as much as we have learned, and sometimes even more than we have learned. Those fragmentary stories, or broken dreams as I once called them in a poem, are alternately exhilirating and pulverizing. What's the use of trying to derive a universal pattern? When we are not out there murdering each other, as in Basra, we are observing each other furtively trying to figure out how to get more of what we are so pursuaded we desperately need from others or from the earth.
We should watch over each other more and try to ask things of each other or influence other people more gently, more considerately. Far too much bullying, shouting, bossing, berating, cajoling, hectoring, screaming, yelling, sternly explaining, , arguing, angrily debating, hating, criticizing, contemptuously judging, classifying, correcting, deriding, condeming, assessing, testing, categorizing, obtaining, verbally and sarcastically torturing, chafing, arranging, putting down, hurting, damaging, wounding, killing. We never stop, won't stop, can't seem to stop. We never leave each other alone in the sense of allowing the other to complete a thought , see a set of related feelings and then ideas and then convictions emerge and then mutual projects develop in a reasonable period of undisturbed time so we have some shape to the picture of how we are feeling, before we give into our strong need to intervene. We hardly ever or not nearly often enough leave one other alone , even when trying to communicate with one another in the sense of allowing the other person time to figure out something to its conclusion on their own, turning things over and over in their minds, appreciating their ambivalent, ambiguous and multi-dimensional aspects, allowing time for ourselves and others to appraise the situation in a wide-ranging way as we exchange opinions, and take the time to consider what is apropos, each of us hearing all the others. If we are ever to cope with these sudden heart wrenching, terrifying paradyme changes by means of a changed frame of reality, we must learn how to sense and comprehend what masque we are presently in and find a way to acquaint each other with the changed cast of characters and what this ageless dynamism is trying to tell us. We like the movies because they are the closest thing we have to a way of visualizing the big picture as it is, unearthing and tracking a way of seeing the underlying universal archetypes and their interrelated motivations, drives, illusions and delusions, track and plot this archetype of rage and destruction as it really exists, and pervades our every feeling and thought. Ah Michael Moore, Michael Moore, bless your brilliant, insightful, profound, caring, good hearted, hilariously outraged and rousing soul.
The article below appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times yesterday. I am quoting it here because of how relevant it is to the very useful discussion that has been taking place between Masha Zavialova and Tom Bell and a few others, that came about partly as a result of my posting a letter from the poet Herberto Yepez, poet and philosophy professor living in Tijuana, Mexico on the Buffalo poetics list. If you haven't checked out the list lately I want to encourage you to read it regularly now. It is a center for alternative discussion on this useless, terribly destructive, and heartbreaking Iraq invasion. In spite of the occasional silly nit-picking, squabbling and bickering (this often happens anyway among poets who are constantly and jealously clamoring for the attention and affections of a highly fickle, though occasionally very generous Muse, and except for this have every reason to have mostly only affection and respect for one another) the list is a fine place to discuss real issues in a media environment of intensely vicious progagandizing and disinformation.
March 27, 2003
Words of War
By AZAR NAFISI
ASHINGTON — These days I am often asked what I did in Tehran as bombs fell during the Iran-Iraq war. My interlocutors are invariably surprised, if not shocked, when I tell them that I read James, Eliot, Plath and great Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez. Yet it is precisely during such times, when our lives are transformed by violence, that we need works of imagination to confirm our faith in humanity, to find hope amid the rubble of a hopeless world. Memoirs from concentration camps and the gulag attest to this. I keep returning to the words of Leon Staff, a Polish poet who lived in the Warsaw ghetto: "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all."
I think back to the eight-year war with Iraq, a time when days and nights seemed indistinguishable, and were reduced to the sound of the siren, warning us of the next air attack. I often reminded my students at Allameh Tabatabai University that while guns roared and the Winter Palace was stormed, Nabokov sat at his desk writing poetry.
My Tehran classroom at times overflowed with students who ignored the warnings about Iraq's chemical bombs so they could reckon with Tolstoy's ability to defamiliarize (a term coined by the Russian Formalist critics) everyday reality and offer it to us through new eyes. The excitement that came from discovering a hidden truth about "Anna Karenina" told me that Iraqi missiles had not succeeded in their mission. Indeed, the more Saddam Hussein wanted us to be defined by terror, the more we craved beauty.
If I felt compelled to keep rereading the classics, it was in order to see the light in the eyes of my students. I remember two young women, clad from head to toe in black chadors, looking as if nothing in the world mattered more than the idea that "Pride and Prejudice" was subversive because it taught us about our right to make our own choices.
Among my scribbled notes from those days, I found a quote from Saul Bellow about writers in the Soviet work camps. To my friends in the United States who are skeptical about the importance of imagination in times of war, let me share his words: "Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place — the foreground."
And so a new war has begun, though this time it is my adopted country and not the country of my birth that is fighting Iraq. Nothing will replace the lives lost. Still, I will take some comfort now as I did then by opening a book.
Azar Nafisi, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."
March 27, 2003
Words of War
By AZAR NAFISI
ASHINGTON — These days I am often asked what I did in Tehran as bombs fell during the Iran-Iraq war. My interlocutors are invariably surprised, if not shocked, when I tell them that I read James, Eliot, Plath and great Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez. Yet it is precisely during such times, when our lives are transformed by violence, that we need works of imagination to confirm our faith in humanity, to find hope amid the rubble of a hopeless world. Memoirs from concentration camps and the gulag attest to this. I keep returning to the words of Leon Staff, a Polish poet who lived in the Warsaw ghetto: "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all."
I think back to the eight-year war with Iraq, a time when days and nights seemed indistinguishable, and were reduced to the sound of the siren, warning us of the next air attack. I often reminded my students at Allameh Tabatabai University that while guns roared and the Winter Palace was stormed, Nabokov sat at his desk writing poetry.
My Tehran classroom at times overflowed with students who ignored the warnings about Iraq's chemical bombs so they could reckon with Tolstoy's ability to defamiliarize (a term coined by the Russian Formalist critics) everyday reality and offer it to us through new eyes. The excitement that came from discovering a hidden truth about "Anna Karenina" told me that Iraqi missiles had not succeeded in their mission. Indeed, the more Saddam Hussein wanted us to be defined by terror, the more we craved beauty.
If I felt compelled to keep rereading the classics, it was in order to see the light in the eyes of my students. I remember two young women, clad from head to toe in black chadors, looking as if nothing in the world mattered more than the idea that "Pride and Prejudice" was subversive because it taught us about our right to make our own choices.
Among my scribbled notes from those days, I found a quote from Saul Bellow about writers in the Soviet work camps. To my friends in the United States who are skeptical about the importance of imagination in times of war, let me share his words: "Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place — the foreground."
And so a new war has begun, though this time it is my adopted country and not the country of my birth that is fighting Iraq. Nothing will replace the lives lost. Still, I will take some comfort now as I did then by opening a book.
Azar Nafisi, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, is author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."
Thursday, March 27
Jordan Davis called the blogger attendance roll at about 10:00 this morning finding all of us a.w.o.l. The thing is, I think at least one of us may have been somewhere in the Rock a feller area lying down on the street about 8:00 am. By now she may be getting fingerprinted in the labyrinths of the New York criminal justice system. I'll let her report her own scoop so mums the word.
My only excuse is that I was at the gym running the 31/2 miles I used to do every three or four days until I fell in head over heels in love with that mysteriously magnetic siren Ms Blogga , who calls to me heart and soul 24/7. Sometimes I do a few other things, but she's forever there and I'm rarely more than a thought away from her waiting...uh...screen.
My only excuse is that I was at the gym running the 31/2 miles I used to do every three or four days until I fell in head over heels in love with that mysteriously magnetic siren Ms Blogga , who calls to me heart and soul 24/7. Sometimes I do a few other things, but she's forever there and I'm rarely more than a thought away from her waiting...uh...screen.
In response to a passionate call for action on the part of US poets from Heriberto Yepez (see below) that I published here and on the Buffalo poetics list this fascinating letter posted by Masha Zavialova has quickly provoked an important discussion tonight on the poetics list from Tom Bell and many others, that I expect will continue for some time.
With her kind permission, and our immense gratitude, the complete text is reproduced below:
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 19:54:19 -0600
From: Masha Zavialova
Subject: what can poets do
What can poets do?
I am starting to develop a deja vu feeling. Some of the things from my
life in the Soviet Union are returning that have been repressed. So what can
poets do?
Apart from doing what a physical body can do - like going out in the
streets, or whatever, and making one‚s presence visible as the opposition
to the regime, in times like these poets could do one very specific thing
that only writers can do ˆ be sensitive to current usage and scrape off the
official ideological shit from the language. I remember a phrase from the
soviet past Å’the wolf is the janitor of the wilderness‚ in the sense that
wolves put away sick animals who are unable to run fast. So poets in the
late Soviet times were the janitors of the language. By 1980s the Soviet
official language became so stale that many words became meaningless or
rather filled with such meanings that one had to be within the context and
know the official doctrine in order to understand. Should I say that what
the ideological apparatus did was to make an attempt to arrest the permanent
sliding of the signifier? Maybe I get it wrong but anyway the ideocratic
state made an attempt to secure the meanings of words and control
signifying processes so that eventually you could not use lots of words
unless in a joke or in some sort of an ironical sense. It was kind of weird
because it would seem that words are polysemantic and you can actually
switch registers, leave newspeak behind and still go on speaking but what
happened was that the whole language was compromised and contaminated and it
took literally hundreds of poets and prose writers, (D.A. Prigov comes to
mind first) to try and repair the abuse.
(I joined the list after a long break thanks to Maria Damon so this is a way
to re-introduce myself. Sorry if I am out of the discourse)
-------------------------
With her kind permission, and our immense gratitude, the complete text is reproduced below:
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 19:54:19 -0600
From: Masha Zavialova
Subject: what can poets do
What can poets do?
I am starting to develop a deja vu feeling. Some of the things from my
life in the Soviet Union are returning that have been repressed. So what can
poets do?
Apart from doing what a physical body can do - like going out in the
streets, or whatever, and making one‚s presence visible as the opposition
to the regime, in times like these poets could do one very specific thing
that only writers can do ˆ be sensitive to current usage and scrape off the
official ideological shit from the language. I remember a phrase from the
soviet past Å’the wolf is the janitor of the wilderness‚ in the sense that
wolves put away sick animals who are unable to run fast. So poets in the
late Soviet times were the janitors of the language. By 1980s the Soviet
official language became so stale that many words became meaningless or
rather filled with such meanings that one had to be within the context and
know the official doctrine in order to understand. Should I say that what
the ideological apparatus did was to make an attempt to arrest the permanent
sliding of the signifier? Maybe I get it wrong but anyway the ideocratic
state made an attempt to secure the meanings of words and control
signifying processes so that eventually you could not use lots of words
unless in a joke or in some sort of an ironical sense. It was kind of weird
because it would seem that words are polysemantic and you can actually
switch registers, leave newspeak behind and still go on speaking but what
happened was that the whole language was compromised and contaminated and it
took literally hundreds of poets and prose writers, (D.A. Prigov comes to
mind first) to try and repair the abuse.
(I joined the list after a long break thanks to Maria Damon so this is a way
to re-introduce myself. Sorry if I am out of the discourse)
-------------------------
Wednesday, March 26
Posted on the Buffalo Poetics Listserv:
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 10:09:33 -0500
From: pmetres
Subject: antiwar anthology/Rachel Corrie
From Gabe Gudding's message, and others, I assume this is an appropriate and
timely posting re: the death of Rachel Corrie.
"John Bradley, and William Witherup, co-editors of the anti-Iraq war
anthology in progress, HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON, invite all poets to
submit an elegy to Rachel Corrie, the courageous young woman from
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington who stood up to an armed
Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, Palestine, the West Bank, on Sunday, 16
March, 2003. If you want more information, contact Bill
Witherup,co-editor, at moolmool27@msn.com. We're still accepting poems
on the war on Iraq. Send poems to John Bradley, 560 Normal Rd., DeKalb,
IL 60115. Enclose an SASE. New deadline: April 30, 2003."
-------------
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 10:09:33 -0500
From: pmetres
Subject: antiwar anthology/Rachel Corrie
From Gabe Gudding's message, and others, I assume this is an appropriate and
timely posting re: the death of Rachel Corrie.
"John Bradley, and William Witherup, co-editors of the anti-Iraq war
anthology in progress, HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON, invite all poets to
submit an elegy to Rachel Corrie, the courageous young woman from
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington who stood up to an armed
Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, Palestine, the West Bank, on Sunday, 16
March, 2003. If you want more information, contact Bill
Witherup,co-editor, at moolmool27@msn.com. We're still accepting poems
on the war on Iraq. Send poems to John Bradley, 560 Normal Rd., DeKalb,
IL 60115. Enclose an SASE. New deadline: April 30, 2003."
-------------
Tuesday, March 25
Can't resist recounting a most rewarding early evening walk through blogland park today. Wow! Stephanie Young zooms in close on protest vomit and a handy 1998 issue of Sufur, a charming David Hess poem concerns a bookcase with a mind of its own, Josh Corey quotes from "The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm," Ron Silliman remembers Larry Eigner, Nada Gordon's 3/16 peace convergence poster list tickles the war gloom spot, Anastasios Kolaitis serves up the full text of a Frank Rich classic essay on "Chicago," Jordan Davis entices his enraptured readers one poetic step closer to never again associating the word "million" with money and burgers, Eileen Tabios comes through with a mini- review of his new Faux Press "Million Poems" book, Jonathan Mayhew weighs in on "the human," and Jack Kimball recounts a new Beat (Maggie Zurawski) chicken dance. Links to your left, please.
Several people have written to the Buffalo poetics list to thank the listees for providing so much valuable information and useful debate on the war against Iraq and the Bush administration policies on civil rights. I couldn’t agree more. When you compare the poetics list and what is available online to mainstream media coverage it is clear that the information gap is widening every moment. A demonstration in Chicago on Thursday led to the arrest of 800. These were not provoked or planned arrests. Another link provided on the list reported on a demonstration in Greece numbering in the hundreds of thousands. These were hardly touched on in mass media reporting. Michael Moore's courageous statement at the Academy Awards ceremonies last night may well be prophetic. At one point, a Mexican show business professional -worked on “Frida”- made an anti-war statement and I decided to write to Heriberto Yepez (who teaches philosophy in Tijuana, Mexico and who is a poet who recently visited here and read recently in Lytle Shaw's "Drawing Center" poetry series) about this. When Michael Moore won the Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine” (a movie I greatly admired) and made a rousing speech against the war and Bush’s illegal coup I wrote to Heriberto again. I didn’t at all expect the answer I received but it made me think. I wrote for his permission to publish it on -fait accompli- and on the poetics list. To view "The Tijuana Bible of Poetics" go to the links on the left.
Nick
I am writing a blog on the Oscars/Frida/anti-war involvement and I just read your email, and I was also thinking of you when was seeing that-"you" meaning American poets. You need to do something. I don't know what but this is a moment when the intelligent people of America need to do something radical to stop the meaning "America" has now to many many people on the world. Stop this government. Nick I think your community (LangPoe, Post-s, NY, etc) needs to do something visible against this goverment you have. Those protests agains the war in NY are great. That's helping a lot the way the outside world, the media, etc, is seeing what America really is.
I think it was Adorno who said what a nation (people/culture) is not what the norm is_does but what opposes that. So I know the Americans are always intelligent. The sleepwalkers need to understand they are not being American, they are damaging not only countries like Iraq and Mexico but also America itself. Being a Mexican or being an American or being a Iraqi needs to be being-totally-intelligent.
As a reader of contemporary experimental writing and I self-made-expert on wanting to understand what "America" really means, I need to tell you this is the moment experimental writing needs to be socially relevant to your culture. This post 9-11 world is a new Vietnam situation in which writers need to act. In Mexico we had that wake up moment in 1994, with the NAFTA and with the zapatista movement. Even though still we need to wake up even more, because too many Mexican writers and artists are so fucking boring and conservative.
What would an experimental writer from the best avant gards do in times like this? The Mexican and the American writers and every writer needs to do something, is not enough to be so complex
˜ you're complex, get over that fact, go beyond˜
now you have to be so much more than that. Talk with the other langpo people and beyond them, this is the historical moment when we are going to know if the LangPo and beyond scenes are a real avant garde or just literature-as-usual.
You're a person who I respect a lot and I think the American writers can find a way to do something versus the war˜go to the Media or something, put the experimental writing history into real political public debate.
Saludos y muchos abrazos,
h.
Nick
I am writing a blog on the Oscars/Frida/anti-war involvement and I just read your email, and I was also thinking of you when was seeing that-"you" meaning American poets. You need to do something. I don't know what but this is a moment when the intelligent people of America need to do something radical to stop the meaning "America" has now to many many people on the world. Stop this government. Nick I think your community (LangPoe, Post-s, NY, etc) needs to do something visible against this goverment you have. Those protests agains the war in NY are great. That's helping a lot the way the outside world, the media, etc, is seeing what America really is.
I think it was Adorno who said what a nation (people/culture) is not what the norm is_does but what opposes that. So I know the Americans are always intelligent. The sleepwalkers need to understand they are not being American, they are damaging not only countries like Iraq and Mexico but also America itself. Being a Mexican or being an American or being a Iraqi needs to be being-totally-intelligent.
As a reader of contemporary experimental writing and I self-made-expert on wanting to understand what "America" really means, I need to tell you this is the moment experimental writing needs to be socially relevant to your culture. This post 9-11 world is a new Vietnam situation in which writers need to act. In Mexico we had that wake up moment in 1994, with the NAFTA and with the zapatista movement. Even though still we need to wake up even more, because too many Mexican writers and artists are so fucking boring and conservative.
What would an experimental writer from the best avant gards do in times like this? The Mexican and the American writers and every writer needs to do something, is not enough to be so complex
˜ you're complex, get over that fact, go beyond˜
now you have to be so much more than that. Talk with the other langpo people and beyond them, this is the historical moment when we are going to know if the LangPo and beyond scenes are a real avant garde or just literature-as-usual.
You're a person who I respect a lot and I think the American writers can find a way to do something versus the war˜go to the Media or something, put the experimental writing history into real political public debate.
Saludos y muchos abrazos,
h.
Monday, March 24
I didn't think my admiration for Pyra Labs and Google could get much higher. But how about this from Raed?
" Monday, March 24, 2003 ::
The last two days we didn’t have internet access. I thought that was it and started what a friend called a “pblog”, what you will read is what should have been the entries for the 22nd and 23rd.
Blogger and Google have created a mirror to this weblog at [dearraed.blogspot.com] for those of you who have trouble with the underscore in the URL. There are not enough words to thank the people at Blogger for their help and support."
Three cheers for Blogger and Google!!!
" Monday, March 24, 2003 ::
The last two days we didn’t have internet access. I thought that was it and started what a friend called a “pblog”, what you will read is what should have been the entries for the 22nd and 23rd.
Blogger and Google have created a mirror to this weblog at [dearraed.blogspot.com] for those of you who have trouble with the underscore in the URL. There are not enough words to thank the people at Blogger for their help and support."
Three cheers for Blogger and Google!!!
During the Oscars I wrote to Herberto Yepez to mention the Michael Moore speech contra Bush and his Iraq slaughter.
He wrote back to me to say he was writing about the Oscar ceremonies for his blog. He wrote:
"After the MX Actor a second speech against the war took place. The filmmaker Michael Moore started saying “We like non-fiction”.
‘I like documentaries, because I like non-fiction... In a country where an election is a fiction… fictitious president... and is going to war for fictitious reasons... We opposed this war… shame on you Mr. President.. your time is up!’"
I have written to Herberto to ask him for permission to publish his letter to me. He feels that writers here could be doing more to oppose the war, especially experimental writers, specifically the Language writers. This is a worthy challenge and I hope we will succeed in meeting it. To view Heriberto Yepez' blog "The Tijuana Bible of Poetics" go to the links on your left. Also Raed, the Baghdad blogger is back! He got so many hits his server got jammed! How about that? Go, bloggers!
"The Pianist" winning three oscars is a fine thing too. Anti-war efforts got some major prime time yesterday, giving us a little relief from the misery of the past few days.
One day Toni and I ran into Michael Moore outside Border's Books in Manhattan shortly before "Bowling for Columbine" was released. Toni said: "Michael Moore for President." He laughed and said, "Don't say that!" But his speech on the Academy Awards made us feel proud and a little hopeful. Go, Michael Moore! If you haven't seen "Bowling for Columbine" or read "Stupid White Men" check out the bravest and brightest mind in Us and Only US-land.
He wrote back to me to say he was writing about the Oscar ceremonies for his blog. He wrote:
"After the MX Actor a second speech against the war took place. The filmmaker Michael Moore started saying “We like non-fiction”.
‘I like documentaries, because I like non-fiction... In a country where an election is a fiction… fictitious president... and is going to war for fictitious reasons... We opposed this war… shame on you Mr. President.. your time is up!’"
I have written to Herberto to ask him for permission to publish his letter to me. He feels that writers here could be doing more to oppose the war, especially experimental writers, specifically the Language writers. This is a worthy challenge and I hope we will succeed in meeting it. To view Heriberto Yepez' blog "The Tijuana Bible of Poetics" go to the links on your left. Also Raed, the Baghdad blogger is back! He got so many hits his server got jammed! How about that? Go, bloggers!
"The Pianist" winning three oscars is a fine thing too. Anti-war efforts got some major prime time yesterday, giving us a little relief from the misery of the past few days.
One day Toni and I ran into Michael Moore outside Border's Books in Manhattan shortly before "Bowling for Columbine" was released. Toni said: "Michael Moore for President." He laughed and said, "Don't say that!" But his speech on the Academy Awards made us feel proud and a little hopeful. Go, Michael Moore! If you haven't seen "Bowling for Columbine" or read "Stupid White Men" check out the bravest and brightest mind in Us and Only US-land.
Sunday, March 23
Every place has its elsewhere, its neighbor not completely known, its strange part. We think of "the known" as conquering "the unknown," two vast terrains, each pitched in darkness, one advancing on the other, and the other in grave retreat. Probably a more accurate portrayal, such as exists between two people, let's say, allows for a more conflictual, yet webbed relationship than that. And partly because the two "sides" are exchanging something vital to each, like a hot potato that neither completely wants, yet neither can entirely let go of either, over time the relationship itself changes both. Eventually, the known and the unknown look more and more alike, yet essentially completely separate as they ever were. At the boundary point between the two there are "leaks," there are clusters of origination- like morning beads of dew on leaves of grass- that erupt very briefly at this peripheral zone, then melt away. Life is this sparkle of movement, even this reflection is part of it. Life is the crumbling of something that once was whole. All we can feel now are the minutest shards of it, but even this tiny part is composed of the same constituents. Contenting ourselves with the slightest whiff, we must reconstruct what may once have been. Always, the whiff is intoxicating. Near it, we may shed tears, we may commune with things we had long forgotten or never knew existed. Yet, like a scorching flame, we must view it from some distance. In any case, time eventually directs every particle into the flame. The consumer becomes part of the all-consuming.
How cold must timelessness have been. With what momentum must life have caused itself to be.
(8/17/88)
How cold must timelessness have been. With what momentum must life have caused itself to be.
(8/17/88)
Saturday, March 22
Some have said that blogging about anti-war activities or opinions or writing on the poetics list about such things is redundant. I don't agree. One of the most important functions of these activities is to offer an alternative to a mass media approach to information dispersion and opinion formation. That said, I don't have much to report about today's convergence beyond what has been generally reported. A group of poets met at Gotham Book Mart as planned around 11 am. Anne Waldman and Ammiel Alcalay very effectively led the small group on a circuitous route, eventually to Broadway from about 47th Street on down, turning eventually at Union Square towards and down 5th Avenue to Washington Square Park carrying a banner stretched widely across the street, held aloft by 2 or 3 marked "Poets Against the War" that was cheered by many on the 40 or so block walk. At one point the poet Ron Padgett helped with the banner. We shared funny stories about high school assemblies that carrying the banner reminded Ron about. Many poets familiar to bloggers and listees were there including two I had not met before- Hilton Obenzinger and Joe Safdie. Hilton O and I reminisced about 60's magazines like "Strange Faeces" where I remembered reading his work that long ago and he reminded me about "Big Sky." Joe Safdie and I talked about blogging and the list. He is a warm and kind man from Seattle who knows my friend the poet Nico Vassilakis. Someone handed me a quite beautifully printed paperback called "A Brief Illustrated Guide To Understanding Islam" by I.A. Ibrahim. I had brought along a book by Anne Waldman that I've had for a long time (it was published in 1970) that I've always wanted her to sign titled "Baby Breakdown." I promised her I would carry the banner if she would sign it (this was a joke, as I planned to do both if I could anyway). She graciously agreed, and made sure I carried the banner. While she was holding the banner aloft, (we had to stand still for about an hour and a half because we were towards the end of the line and the line stretched from 47th Street all the way down to Washington Square Park) I told Anne how moved I was by her reading the other night at the Paula Cooper Gallery. When I told her I felt that she was channeling Allen Ginsberg, especially when she was chanting Blake, she told me she really missed him. I had spoken with Hilton O so long that Ron P seemed to have given up on me and Toni taking the banner back. Toni and I proudly carried the banner for the rest of the way down to Greene Street. Time seemed to stand still, many memories emerged from years past. Nada Gordon copied page after page of slogans that she plans to use as source material for a poem. I chatted with Gary Sullivan, Mitch Highfill, Lee Ann Brown who was wheeling her baby daughter Miranda in a stroller, Maryann Shaneen, Drew Gardner, Katie Degentesh and a longtime friend, the film maker Ed Bowes. I noticed Simon Pettet there also, but didn't get a chance to chat with him. There were at least 350, 000 more people there I don't yet know by name. When some of the poets were no longer around any longer to help with the banner (it was huge!), probably because we had to wait around so long, other demonstrators volunteered and helped us carry it. Of course, the feeling was nothing like the last convergence on that freezing day in February. The bombs had not started to drop yet, the casualties had not yet started to mount. Nathaniel, who had created the banner and also a beautiful large copy of Guernica that he and another poet had been carrying, somehow found us in the crowd and took the banner back. Also Toni had been carrying a small Guernica poster we had found at the February convergence that she had given to Mitch, who apparently gave it to someone else, and which found its way back to us at the Cafe Orlin where Toni and I had dinner later on! (A lot of synchroncities about Guernica today.) At one point a stranger came over and told me another story about Guernica. He had pinned up the poster for a friend with a nail after it had kept falling down in the friend's apartment. On the anniversary of the event the painting represents, it fell off the wall on top of him. Toni and I made it down to Washington Square and were nearby the area where some of the arrests were about to take place. We cheered on those who were about to commit acts of civil disobedience and finally left, although one policeman sarcastically urged us to follow him to the area where some of the arrests were about to take place. Probably because someone thought I was planning to get arrested since we were so close to the action, that person tossed me a "Buck Fush" t-shirt. We found out later about 85 people got arrested right at the southeast corner of the park where we were chanting with the crowd, not long after we left. This was about 5 p.m. Although it was a gorgeous day, and even though I smiled at a lot, I did not and do not feel very uplifted, but just as upset as I felt when the first bombs dropped. "We all live in a military state" sang the demonstrators as they moved towards the police to provoke their arrests in acts of civil disobedience. They are right. Now what remains to be seen is: what else can be done about this?
"Equanimity" (Jordan Davis) noted yesterday:
Nick's linking to the Daily Show, Jon Stewart's war news teaser reads: Iraq: Are We There Yet?
Note: Like most bloggers, Jon Stewart only works Monday thru Thursday.
(Surgeon General's Warning: "Equanimity" is highly addictive and may put you dangerously in touch with your thoughts and feelings.)
Nick's linking to the Daily Show, Jon Stewart's war news teaser reads: Iraq: Are We There Yet?
Note: Like most bloggers, Jon Stewart only works Monday thru Thursday.
(Surgeon General's Warning: "Equanimity" is highly addictive and may put you dangerously in touch with your thoughts and feelings.)
Friday, March 21
Pantaloons: Tykes on Poetry
Posted by Pantaloons today (Jack Kimball):
Friday, March 21, 2003
A friend to poetry and coolmeister of the craft, Alan Davies needs work in the NYC area. Alan has taken on a variety of jobs, ranging from corporate sales to providing care for the infirm. He is meticulous and a whiz in handling details. His situation calls for immediate attention. If you have any information on a likely line of employment for Alan, full- or part-time, and / or a house-sitting situation, you could call his friend Brenda Iijima. If you don't have her number, email me and I can help put you in touch with her or Alan.
posted by Jack 10:06 AM
Posted by Pantaloons today (Jack Kimball):
Friday, March 21, 2003
A friend to poetry and coolmeister of the craft, Alan Davies needs work in the NYC area. Alan has taken on a variety of jobs, ranging from corporate sales to providing care for the infirm. He is meticulous and a whiz in handling details. His situation calls for immediate attention. If you have any information on a likely line of employment for Alan, full- or part-time, and / or a house-sitting situation, you could call his friend Brenda Iijima. If you don't have her number, email me and I can help put you in touch with her or Alan.
posted by Jack 10:06 AM
To discuss the more revolting aspects of the Buffalo poetics list here in Blogland is pointless, it's like reminding someone about their headaches or insomnia, as in, "How's (whatever it is) that makes you miserable lately?" Valery once wrote: "Please oh please don't ask me. Who wants to be reminded of what one is thinking about all the time?" I enjoy the list the way one might enjoy a friend who wants to have something to say but who either always says bitter or sarcastic, mean things or who utters intelligent remarks in an unintelligible way. I can't post the maxims I was responding to in posting the following this morning on the list - essentially, they are the exact opposite to what I say below- you can check these out there if you are interested- or on the EPC poetics archive if you don't presently subscribe. To your left for the links, please.
In any case, here are the aphorisms I posted early today:
In light of an illegal attack upon a devastated country that has already lost 750, 000 children due to an ongoing embargo and a previous merciless attack upon this country in 1991 I would like to muse on my situation as an artist who has other roles and responsibilities and concerns as well.
War is not only obviously bad, but it is also banal.
This is not a war, and it is possible to end the pointless slaughter.
Artists can avoid responding to war, but there is little point in remaining helpless, passive, and silent about these atrocities.
Even better, It is possible to avoid introspection, but since there is little point in trying to deny one's thoughts, it is best to try to reflect on them as if to say "oh god, that's who we've really become by sticking our heads in the sand."
If you believe in art and in your personal art, you might try to inspire others and reinterpret the facts and the actual situation to everyone who has been misinformed and hypnotized by the omnipresent corporate owned, manipulated media.
War will horrify you and will deluge your reservoir of artistic source material with images of misery, futility, hopelessness and pain before, during and after the event.
Get in touch with your feelings and share them with anyone who will listen; as a result you will feel energized instead of depressed, bitter and cynical.
With immense sadness, and hope,
Nick- "We must love one another or die"-Piombino
In any case, here are the aphorisms I posted early today:
In light of an illegal attack upon a devastated country that has already lost 750, 000 children due to an ongoing embargo and a previous merciless attack upon this country in 1991 I would like to muse on my situation as an artist who has other roles and responsibilities and concerns as well.
War is not only obviously bad, but it is also banal.
This is not a war, and it is possible to end the pointless slaughter.
Artists can avoid responding to war, but there is little point in remaining helpless, passive, and silent about these atrocities.
Even better, It is possible to avoid introspection, but since there is little point in trying to deny one's thoughts, it is best to try to reflect on them as if to say "oh god, that's who we've really become by sticking our heads in the sand."
If you believe in art and in your personal art, you might try to inspire others and reinterpret the facts and the actual situation to everyone who has been misinformed and hypnotized by the omnipresent corporate owned, manipulated media.
War will horrify you and will deluge your reservoir of artistic source material with images of misery, futility, hopelessness and pain before, during and after the event.
Get in touch with your feelings and share them with anyone who will listen; as a result you will feel energized instead of depressed, bitter and cynical.
With immense sadness, and hope,
Nick- "We must love one another or die"-Piombino
An obsession with "good versus bad" or "successful versus unsuccessful" poetry is the hobbyhorse of conscientious or anxious beginning writers and readers and poetry professionals. Experienced poets worry about this about as much as a chef in a very busy restaurant might worry on any given day about whether their meals are up to snuff. They think about it if a customer complains or if a reviewer has entered the restaurant because their focus, in any case, is to cook as well as they can all the time. Experienced poets worry less about whether their own poetry is worthwhile and more about whether the whole endeavor of poetry is worthwhile -particularly in their own era.
Thursday, March 20
Lately when I wake up the first thing I do, even before I've had my tea, is to read all the blogs on my links bar. I hope you have the time to check out Drew Gardner's blog, which is excerpted on "Circulars" as well. And Caterina's interesting quotes from D.W. Winnicott. Usually this is enough to brush off the morning mist surrounding my thoughts. Not today. Today the blues got me and I got the blues. Big time. I thought of my all time favorite blog, Jordan's one word blog some weeks back this winter. "Blizzard." I was tempted to follow suit with "War." But Maryann Shaneen is reminding us that this is not "war." This is slaughter.
I sat there drinking my tea and trying to figure out a way to get undepressed. So I casually opened the new issue (March 20) of "London Review of Books" lying there in a basket on the floor. Read through the usual literary stuff, how French biographies, this one of De Gaulle, are not very annotated (yawn), another article about the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation-interesting, but this won't help me feel less depressed, and then I found it. All new cartoons by Art Spiegelman! It happened again. I was laughing out loud. Very loud! A full two pages of color cartoons in the centerfold. One cartoon is about Mr. and Mrs.Spiegelman's visit to their daughter's school on the morning of September 11. Nadja's school is close to Ground Zero. Mrs Spiegelman is screaming to be allowed into the school and they are finally allowed inside, the only parents to be admitted. Art comments that sometimes hysteria pays off. They are waiting around and then they hear an announcement from the principal on the loudspeaker: "ATTENTION: DUE TO TODAY'S UNUSUAL CONDITIONS NO STUDENTS WILL BE ALLOWED OUTSIDE FOR LUNCH."
I sat there drinking my tea and trying to figure out a way to get undepressed. So I casually opened the new issue (March 20) of "London Review of Books" lying there in a basket on the floor. Read through the usual literary stuff, how French biographies, this one of De Gaulle, are not very annotated (yawn), another article about the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation-interesting, but this won't help me feel less depressed, and then I found it. All new cartoons by Art Spiegelman! It happened again. I was laughing out loud. Very loud! A full two pages of color cartoons in the centerfold. One cartoon is about Mr. and Mrs.Spiegelman's visit to their daughter's school on the morning of September 11. Nadja's school is close to Ground Zero. Mrs Spiegelman is screaming to be allowed into the school and they are finally allowed inside, the only parents to be admitted. Art comments that sometimes hysteria pays off. They are waiting around and then they hear an announcement from the principal on the loudspeaker: "ATTENTION: DUE TO TODAY'S UNUSUAL CONDITIONS NO STUDENTS WILL BE ALLOWED OUTSIDE FOR LUNCH."
-Fait Accompli- started with the idea that "the past, present and future are one." Since much has been presented in these pages about the present and the past, we felt that it was time to take a look at the future. Fortunately for us, we have a trained psychic on our staff, the artist Toni Simon, who offers this prophesy: "I predict: the army will 'discover' a weapons plant in Iraq and 'destroy' it. There won't be any real proof or evidence and no one will be allowed to verify this for 'security reasons.' It will be used to berate the French and justify U.S. actions- by the time its exposed as a lie the American press won't bother to report it."
Wednesday, March 19
I'm feeling particularly fond of Canada these days, not only for producing the likes of Kevin Davies, Karen McCormick, Alan Davies and Steve McCaffery, but also for taking a strong stand in opposition to the second reich here in US-and-only-USland. A blogger in Victoria, B.C., Caterina Fake, seems to have very recently taken an interest in -fait accompli- (thanks for the link, Caterina) and she also very kindly discussed the catalogue to the "Poetry Plastique" exhibition, curated in 2001 by Jay Sanders and Charles Bernstein at the Maryann Boesky Gallery, which Caterina came across in a bookstore and recently purchased (!) there, as well!. Caterina noted my discussion of the paradigm transforming work of the British psychoanalyst D.W.Winnicott concerning the role of transitional objects in early psychological development, but also, significantly, in relation to such basic facts of cultural life as spirituality, art and poetry, universal cultural formations that Freud never seemed to have found a way to incorporate into his theory beyond a bare bones notion of "sublimation." I would be more than delighted if you might garner a moment to check out Caterina's lively and lovely site. (Like so many writers these days, Caterina is sleeping less and reading and writing much more). Links to your left at the sidebar, please. Hey, readers and bloggers, blogland is going international! (More about "Poetry Plastique" at the Electronic Poetry Center)
And while you're at the links bar, if you happen to have another few moments, be sure to check out on -Elsewhere- (he's back!) Gary Sullivan's latest, as always, completely absorbing musings, this time on drug culture. It appears the harried Gary had to squeeze quite a few moments out from his busy life to again edit, with Nada Gordon, another new and exciting upcoming edition of "The Poetry Project Newsletter."
I certainlly can't close without mentioning the anti-war reading at the Paula Cooper gallery tonight. Ramsey Clark gave a rousing speech that had the audience jumping up to applaud him (there would have been a lot more people except for tonight's demonstration at Union Square, but there were at least 60 people there, anyway.) His expressive, but quiet, thoughtful style came through in stark contrast to the violence during the Gulf War that he described with a welter of painful historical facts, such as the 3000 guided missiles that will be used during the first hour of this war, and the 11 year old girl he watched receiving an amputation of her leg without anaesthesia during the 1991 Gulf War ("it took 4 men to hold her down.") Thougtfully, he mentioned that she survived. He also mentioned the fact that 45 percent of Americans think, incorrectly, that Iraq was responsible for Sept 11. Since Iraq is almost completely without medicines or even bandages, he asked Bush and Kofi Annan if could we offer at least some medical supplies before devastating their country. During the Gulf War the water supply was deliberately destroyed during the first hours. Mothers, as a result, had no milk to offer their babies many of whom (at least 6000) died of dehydration. It is estimated that since the Gulf War 775,000 children have died there due to the combined effects of war and embargo. The speaker for A.N.S.W.E.R. mentioned that the full cost of bringing the world into the 21st Century in terms of basic needs would be 45 billion dollars. The cost of this war will be over 200 billion dollars. Ramsey Clark urges us to support the Vote to Impeach BushCheneyRumsfeldAshcroft. A few days ago 100,000 had signed the petition. It's already come to 200,000 by practically only whispering about the existence of www.VoteToImpeach.org (1901 Pennsylvania Ave.,NW, suite 607,Washington D.C.20006.)
All four readers-Ann Lauterbach, Anne Waldman, Michael Lally and Robert Creeley were excellent. Robert Creeley did a particularly affecting reading of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" as well as some of his own anti-war poetry. Anne Lauterbach read the touching poem about Sept 11 she read on WNYC's recent presentation concerning Sam Hamill's "Poets Against The War"activities (check the audio link out on Laurable.com); Anne Waldman did a hypnotic, trance-inducing shamanic reading during which she seemed to be channeling Allen Ginsberg (she did sing Blake just as he did) as well as possibly some unnamed male and female Anastazi spirits-Anne W chanted beautifully and was emotionally and mystically transcendent on this occasion! Michael Lally read a very strong long poem in that personal, homespun style of his, enunciating so many offensive acts and policies of the far right that he made us understand that we have far too lightly critiqued these vicious movements for the past 50 years in this country, while endlessly muttering to ourselves- the audience seemed reluctant, even after 30 minutes, to allow him to step down!(I also got him to sign my precious copy of his rare, wonderful book "Rocky Dies Yellow." I learned that he's been living in New Jersey for the last few years, though we rarely see him at readings due to recent illnesses-he's better now-, and the fact that he is the father of two young children. We've got to get this charming, dapper, witty, lyrical and very smart poet to read around here more often!) Anne also suggested that writers gather at 11 am on Saturday morning at the Gotham Book Mart, 41 West 47 Street to join the overall march on March 22nd.
And while you're at the links bar, if you happen to have another few moments, be sure to check out on -Elsewhere- (he's back!) Gary Sullivan's latest, as always, completely absorbing musings, this time on drug culture. It appears the harried Gary had to squeeze quite a few moments out from his busy life to again edit, with Nada Gordon, another new and exciting upcoming edition of "The Poetry Project Newsletter."
I certainlly can't close without mentioning the anti-war reading at the Paula Cooper gallery tonight. Ramsey Clark gave a rousing speech that had the audience jumping up to applaud him (there would have been a lot more people except for tonight's demonstration at Union Square, but there were at least 60 people there, anyway.) His expressive, but quiet, thoughtful style came through in stark contrast to the violence during the Gulf War that he described with a welter of painful historical facts, such as the 3000 guided missiles that will be used during the first hour of this war, and the 11 year old girl he watched receiving an amputation of her leg without anaesthesia during the 1991 Gulf War ("it took 4 men to hold her down.") Thougtfully, he mentioned that she survived. He also mentioned the fact that 45 percent of Americans think, incorrectly, that Iraq was responsible for Sept 11. Since Iraq is almost completely without medicines or even bandages, he asked Bush and Kofi Annan if could we offer at least some medical supplies before devastating their country. During the Gulf War the water supply was deliberately destroyed during the first hours. Mothers, as a result, had no milk to offer their babies many of whom (at least 6000) died of dehydration. It is estimated that since the Gulf War 775,000 children have died there due to the combined effects of war and embargo. The speaker for A.N.S.W.E.R. mentioned that the full cost of bringing the world into the 21st Century in terms of basic needs would be 45 billion dollars. The cost of this war will be over 200 billion dollars. Ramsey Clark urges us to support the Vote to Impeach BushCheneyRumsfeldAshcroft. A few days ago 100,000 had signed the petition. It's already come to 200,000 by practically only whispering about the existence of www.VoteToImpeach.org (1901 Pennsylvania Ave.,NW, suite 607,Washington D.C.20006.)
All four readers-Ann Lauterbach, Anne Waldman, Michael Lally and Robert Creeley were excellent. Robert Creeley did a particularly affecting reading of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" as well as some of his own anti-war poetry. Anne Lauterbach read the touching poem about Sept 11 she read on WNYC's recent presentation concerning Sam Hamill's "Poets Against The War"activities (check the audio link out on Laurable.com); Anne Waldman did a hypnotic, trance-inducing shamanic reading during which she seemed to be channeling Allen Ginsberg (she did sing Blake just as he did) as well as possibly some unnamed male and female Anastazi spirits-Anne W chanted beautifully and was emotionally and mystically transcendent on this occasion! Michael Lally read a very strong long poem in that personal, homespun style of his, enunciating so many offensive acts and policies of the far right that he made us understand that we have far too lightly critiqued these vicious movements for the past 50 years in this country, while endlessly muttering to ourselves- the audience seemed reluctant, even after 30 minutes, to allow him to step down!(I also got him to sign my precious copy of his rare, wonderful book "Rocky Dies Yellow." I learned that he's been living in New Jersey for the last few years, though we rarely see him at readings due to recent illnesses-he's better now-, and the fact that he is the father of two young children. We've got to get this charming, dapper, witty, lyrical and very smart poet to read around here more often!) Anne also suggested that writers gather at 11 am on Saturday morning at the Gotham Book Mart, 41 West 47 Street to join the overall march on March 22nd.
Tuesday, March 18
From the inbox:
URGENT!!!
ANTI-WAR POETRY READING 7 PM TONIGHT!!
International ANSWER Coalition and Paula Cooper Gallery
invite you to attend
VERSUS: Poets Against The War
Ann Lauterbach
Anne Waldman
Michael Lally
Robert Creeley
with a special appearance by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
Tuesday, March 18, 7 PM
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 West 21 St.
New York, NY
URGENT!!!
ANTI-WAR POETRY READING 7 PM TONIGHT!!
International ANSWER Coalition and Paula Cooper Gallery
invite you to attend
VERSUS: Poets Against The War
Ann Lauterbach
Anne Waldman
Michael Lally
Robert Creeley
with a special appearance by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
Tuesday, March 18, 7 PM
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 West 21 St.
New York, NY
Check out -Froth- (Maryann Shaneen) for up to date news on anti- war demonstrations and a special message from Paul Chan. Links to your left.
September 11 cartoons by Art Spiegelman, "In the Shadow of No Towers" in the March 6 issue of "London Review of Books" are the first September 11 jokes that actually made me laugh out loud - with the exception of The Comedy Channel's incredible Jon Stewart. Shortly after Sept 11, Jon, who "hosts" what he calls a "fake" news program, and who is never ever anything but funny, actually wept on his show when describing his experience of witnessing the bombings, at the moment he mentioned that because of their absence he could now see the Statue of Liberty. Since then, as before, Jon will never shirk at laughing at anything or anyone, very much including himself. Spiegelman witnessed the bombings also but in one of the cartoons in this terrific two page spread says: "He ran back home to phone the school so he only saw the second plane smash into the tower on tv (a voice says) Art! forget the damn phone- just HURRY (then) though he heard the deafening crash right outside his window (next box) He saw the burning towers as he and his wife ran to Canal Street toward the school... but the view was obstructed as he ran up the next block (next box) He could only see smoke billowing behind a giant billboard...it was for some dopey new Scharzenegger movie about terrorism (next box with poster of Collateral Damage) Oh my God!...oddly in the aftermath of September 11th , some pundits insisted that irony was Dead..." I can't think of anyone better qualified than Art Spiegelman to find a way to laugh about Sept 11- just didn't think it was possible- but I guess honing your cartoon skills on the Holocaust could do it.
September 11 cartoons by Art Spiegelman, "In the Shadow of No Towers" in the March 6 issue of "London Review of Books" are the first September 11 jokes that actually made me laugh out loud - with the exception of The Comedy Channel's incredible Jon Stewart. Shortly after Sept 11, Jon, who "hosts" what he calls a "fake" news program, and who is never ever anything but funny, actually wept on his show when describing his experience of witnessing the bombings, at the moment he mentioned that because of their absence he could now see the Statue of Liberty. Since then, as before, Jon will never shirk at laughing at anything or anyone, very much including himself. Spiegelman witnessed the bombings also but in one of the cartoons in this terrific two page spread says: "He ran back home to phone the school so he only saw the second plane smash into the tower on tv (a voice says) Art! forget the damn phone- just HURRY (then) though he heard the deafening crash right outside his window (next box) He saw the burning towers as he and his wife ran to Canal Street toward the school... but the view was obstructed as he ran up the next block (next box) He could only see smoke billowing behind a giant billboard...it was for some dopey new Scharzenegger movie about terrorism (next box with poster of Collateral Damage) Oh my God!...oddly in the aftermath of September 11th , some pundits insisted that irony was Dead..." I can't think of anyone better qualified than Art Spiegelman to find a way to laugh about Sept 11- just didn't think it was possible- but I guess honing your cartoon skills on the Holocaust could do it.
Monday, March 17
Sun coming through the window. 62 degrees outside. Chopin on the radio. Somebody walking by whistling "Mack the Knife." Candlelight vigil last night against the war on 92cd Street and Amsterdam- everyone singing all the best anti-war hits of all time-though some disagreement on whether to sing "Masters of War." One of my list pieces(Slam Poetics, or, Who is Bill Kennedy?) published by Bob Holman and Margery Snyder on their column on About. com with loads of great links. Three new links to put on my sidebar. Blogland as provocative, engaging and and absorbing as ever.
Can't smile.
Why?
Saw a headline.
Weapons inspectors kicked out of Iraq.
Bloodthristy military-industrial complex in ecstacy.
Stockmarket soaring.
Can't smile.
Why?
Saw a headline.
Weapons inspectors kicked out of Iraq.
Bloodthristy military-industrial complex in ecstacy.
Stockmarket soaring.
Sunday, March 16
Heriberto is back again!
"In the last ten years, Juárez has lived a social disaster. The Mexican corruption and the spreading of poverty, along with the globalization’s processes have turned Juárez as the example of the hybrid experiment gone wrong"
Check out this disturbing story at Heriberto Yepez' blog. Links to your left, please.
the poet Jeni Olin presenting her fabulous poems
with opening act Jim Behrle reading all 100 Sonnets (don't worry, only takes like 23 minutes).
Soft Skull Shortwave
SUN 3/16/03 at 2:00 PM
71 Bond Street (at State St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718-643-1599
DIRECTIONS: The closest subway stop is Hoyt / Schermerhorn; take the A, C, or G there, go out the Bond Street exit, walk one block down Bond from Schermerhorn, and the store is on the northeast corner at the intersection with State Street, on your left.
Alternately, take the F train to Bergen; walk a couple blocks east from Smith to Bond Street; make a left toward Atlantic Avenue; cross Atlantic, and Shortwave is one block up on your right.
Saturday, March 15
A series of essays using "trigger" words as starting points (as in Ponge's use of "objects"). Time (past, present and future). Now -allow for the other starting points to emerge from this one.
As a writer, to some extent I need the exhiliration of letting my thoughts go- there is a sense of "stretched time" in ths (fold-out of chaos?) There is a moral equivalent of muscular freedom and buoyancy in this. Naturally one would expect such an episode of freedom to lead to a period of fatigue and reassessment. The point is to allow for, to comprehend such a doubling. It isn't fully a waste of time to predict the outcome, but here the need for a kind of ordering principle asserts itself. But one must not be too attached to this because it contains only a prediction of a -possible- outcome.
Reading- 1)definition 2) visual image
What Freud called an association extend into "associative combinatorial" which includes the other senses. A "memory," for example, may contain visual as well as aural and tactile elements. This "memory" itself may be but a fragment of the associative combinatorial, which synchronistically leans, at the moment of its inception, towards one or the other application to an immediate perception. The "chain of association" or the "stream of consciousness" are linear images which do not confront the complexity of a discrete associative combinatoriala.This is no chain or stream but there is a constant overlay, a continuous sequence of accumulating correspondances which, at the singular moment of time, radiates in all temporal directions, and connects them all.
Literature grows geometrically because there are more connections between words and human beings created every
moment than can be tracked simultaneously.
(4/29/87)
I keep reminding myself to send a letter and manuscript to Tabor- in England.
If all is mechanical then all change of location (like a gadget) is illusory. It's not that machines are taking over is frightening. It's that the further we get with the machines, the more the already available technology appears less and less necessary. As it is, less and less necessary to move, the body's machinery appears obsolescent- with the frightening realization that we can now create machines which are immortal. But this was a re-realization that "we" are not immortal. But who is this "we?" The boundaries there are blurry too. The technology can rub out "the them" but their technology can rub out "us."
It occurred to me that if someone sent messages back to the past and also received them then- what relation to this interaction would the future have?
(4/30/87)
If all is mechanical then all change of location (like a gadget) is illusory. It's not that machines are taking over is frightening. It's that the further we get with the machines, the more the already available technology appears less and less necessary. As it is, less and less necessary to move, the body's machinery appears obsolescent- with the frightening realization that we can now create machines which are immortal. But this was a re-realization that "we" are not immortal. But who is this "we?" The boundaries there are blurry too. The technology can rub out "the them" but their technology can rub out "us."
It occurred to me that if someone sent messages back to the past and also received them then- what relation to this interaction would the future have?
(4/30/87)
Right now, instead of looking for "great poems" I'm looking for poetry which emanates poetic energy
1) a piece of writing
2) later: what were the attitudes and character of the person writing it?
3) later: why that investigation?
A piece of writing which represents all the things that stop me- these are not all the things but the piece of paper represents the feeling of "moving" or taking control over those things. Now this writing comes to represent that piece of paper.
Allow the manuscripts to get all mixed in together= shuffling the cards for a "reading."
Endless preparation for "a reading" (=tarot or tea leaves reading).
The poems I am collecting seem to be ones I've thought about or want to think about (!).A poem as a crystal ball- some "thing" around which imaginings can be "seen" and "heard."
"Items of intrinsic value."
i take measure, and leap into the pool of ideas- a tune emerges in memory. Imagining: even if I could not do it yet, take the pieces that fit in (these are details) and imagine (create) the rest.
"I don't care to think about it, but I'd like to have a record of it."
To have control over the attentional faculty, to concentrate andt then break away and then be able to return to the concentrated state- an ideal os some degree of comfort under stressful conditions.
(4/15/87)
1) a piece of writing
2) later: what were the attitudes and character of the person writing it?
3) later: why that investigation?
A piece of writing which represents all the things that stop me- these are not all the things but the piece of paper represents the feeling of "moving" or taking control over those things. Now this writing comes to represent that piece of paper.
Allow the manuscripts to get all mixed in together= shuffling the cards for a "reading."
Endless preparation for "a reading" (=tarot or tea leaves reading).
The poems I am collecting seem to be ones I've thought about or want to think about (!).A poem as a crystal ball- some "thing" around which imaginings can be "seen" and "heard."
"Items of intrinsic value."
i take measure, and leap into the pool of ideas- a tune emerges in memory. Imagining: even if I could not do it yet, take the pieces that fit in (these are details) and imagine (create) the rest.
"I don't care to think about it, but I'd like to have a record of it."
To have control over the attentional faculty, to concentrate andt then break away and then be able to return to the concentrated state- an ideal os some degree of comfort under stressful conditions.
(4/15/87)
Jessica Stockholder, an installation artist whose varied and daring work I admire writes in her catalogue: "My hope is that the viewer will, like me, become engaged in a struggle between viewing a static fait accompli and feeling as if they are participating in a series of contradictions and narratives that come to no settling conclusion. I feel that my work provides and argues for the necessity of both."
I assume Richard Hell would not mind if I quote from his blurb for Guy Debord's book "Considerations On The Assasination of Gerard Lebovici" (now THERE'S a few links for those blog watchers)
"It cannot be said too often and it's never said enough that the mass News-media have low-to-no standards of accuracy whether in relatively minor or peripheral areas of their reporting where their interests may not be obviously at stake (except its in their interests not to go to the expense of bothering to check facts, and to conceal this) or in the larger matters where their prejudices are more apparent. And, as the media leaders know, since all news becomes "old" the moment it's broadcast, most victims of their misrepresentations are at a disadvantage not only because of a power mismatch, but because a protester looks like a fool to be challenging yesterday's papers. But the consequences of the media's irresponsibility and maliciousness are real to their victims..."
"It cannot be said too often and it's never said enough that the mass News-media have low-to-no standards of accuracy whether in relatively minor or peripheral areas of their reporting where their interests may not be obviously at stake (except its in their interests not to go to the expense of bothering to check facts, and to conceal this) or in the larger matters where their prejudices are more apparent. And, as the media leaders know, since all news becomes "old" the moment it's broadcast, most victims of their misrepresentations are at a disadvantage not only because of a power mismatch, but because a protester looks like a fool to be challenging yesterday's papers. But the consequences of the media's irresponsibility and maliciousness are real to their victims..."
From the inbox:
"Dear VoteToImpeach member:
Thank you for joining the VoteToImpeach campaign.
There has been an overwhelming response to the announcement of the grassroots campaign calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for high crimes and misdemeanors. So far more than 100,000 people have voted for impeachment online. Many more are signing petitions calling for impeachment. This is an effort of widespread grassroots democracy. We can see from the recent months that the grassroots peace movement has become a major factor in world politics. We, the people, are making a difference."
"Dear VoteToImpeach member:
Thank you for joining the VoteToImpeach campaign.
There has been an overwhelming response to the announcement of the grassroots campaign calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for high crimes and misdemeanors. So far more than 100,000 people have voted for impeachment online. Many more are signing petitions calling for impeachment. This is an effort of widespread grassroots democracy. We can see from the recent months that the grassroots peace movement has become a major factor in world politics. We, the people, are making a difference."
Ok, back to my boring drivel about the ads. Reading about Google until almost 4 am. The ads occur by an electronic word scanning of our blogs. Maybe my blog, which has the word "travel" brought about the bland swim suit ads. I also learned there is a group "watching" Google which may lead to some ambivalence about that amazing search engine. A little paranoia there, but who knows. Big Brother may be tracking you! Go to Google and check out "Google Watch." The thing is, if google links to google watch how paranoid could they be? Anyway, check it out, all very interesting in these neo-McCarthy times. I'm thinking an amazing James Bond movie set in cyberspace.
Another interesting link is google blogdex- the weblong diffusion index- google that one! Supposedly subscribing gets you some cool crawl. Let's see what happens- I'm not the type to check my hit count anyway (too lazy to do the techie work). Hey, Laurable! How many hits am I getting?
I
Another interesting link is google blogdex- the weblong diffusion index- google that one! Supposedly subscribing gets you some cool crawl. Let's see what happens- I'm not the type to check my hit count anyway (too lazy to do the techie work). Hey, Laurable! How many hits am I getting?
I
Marianne posted Lytle Shaw and Emilie Clarke's letter to us all about the trial. -Fait Accompli- had a reporter on hand to give us the instant update. The court building sported an oversized portrait of ayatollah Bush holding a glowing light and wearing (as usual) a grotesquely unrtranslateable expression; the trial was being covered by a reporter from El Mundo (Spain) sporting duct tape patches on his jacket, and in the courtroom a cadre of supporters held up the very tame photos that brought about the bizarre arrest of our good friends. Go to Marianne Shaneen's -Froth- links on left- for the entire text of a terrific letter from these courageous, and horribly harassed protester friends of ours.
Friday, March 14
I can't make it (I work that night) to what promises to be one of the greatest book parties ever on Monday night, March 17 at 7pm at Teacher's and Writers- see Jordan Davis' blog for details. If I'm not mistaken, these are books from Faux Press, isn't that Jack Kimball? Jordan Davis, Nada Gordon and Alice Notley are all celebrating new books. Nada and Jordan -please say hi to Alice for me!
With an impressive and dizzying array of current and historical references, and patience akin to Job's, Ron Silliman thoroughly affirms and expands on his blog today most of the points Charles Bernstein communicates so telegraphically in his recent controversial essay "Enough" (without actually ever mentioning the piece).
Toni just made the point that Miekal And would clearly make a great blogger. Why is he (and some other cool poets) so reluctant about blogging?
Thanks to Laurable for mentioning my piece on blogging and bloggers on the poetics list yesterday.
Why should bloggers worry about an echo effect? If something is interesting, interest can be sustained though quite a lot of repetition. Mainstream media and particularly advertisers abuse that factor, true. But I don't see this effect as a negative in blogland, yet. Think of Gertrude Stein. Echoes and mirroring can be charming or annoying depending on how they are employed.
Toni just made the point that Miekal And would clearly make a great blogger. Why is he (and some other cool poets) so reluctant about blogging?
Thanks to Laurable for mentioning my piece on blogging and bloggers on the poetics list yesterday.
Why should bloggers worry about an echo effect? If something is interesting, interest can be sustained though quite a lot of repetition. Mainstream media and particularly advertisers abuse that factor, true. But I don't see this effect as a negative in blogland, yet. Think of Gertrude Stein. Echoes and mirroring can be charming or annoying depending on how they are employed.
Yesterday on the poetics list Brandon Barr and Miekal And agreeing with each other that there's nothing new in blogging for poets. Then one of the most avant- garde of poets Miekal And takes a walk down memory lane to the 80's. Then Joe Safdie says the writing on my post reminds him of Samuel Johnson. Josh Corey thinks I'm Emerson. Hey, this time travel thing might really be working! Where might they find me next? See you then...
Thursday, March 13
Josh Corey has cast me in the role of Emerson. But he's ambivalent about my project. Why shouldn't he be? He read my book for homework in Jonathan Monroe's class in Contemporary Literature at Cornell. Hey, thanks Josh, there's still few copies left , maybe this review will help get them sold! The publisher has decided to keep the book in print. "Cashiers" de Corey is on the links to your left.
Wednesday, March 12
I've always liked "the World, the Worldless" by William Bronk. I've gotten many other books by him, but I've remained attached to the first one. Recently I bought a hardbound copy at Granary Books, which happened to belong to George Economou, who wrote his name on the first page. My favorite poem in the book is the last one:
THE OUTCRY
What I want to do is shout. Happiness? No.
Outrage. No. what I want to do is shout
because we were all wrong, because the point
was not the point, because the world, or what
we took for the world, is breaking, breaking. We were wrong
and are not right. Break! Break! We are here!
What I want to do is shout! Break! Shout!
*
THE OUTCRY
What I want to do is shout. Happiness? No.
Outrage. No. what I want to do is shout
because we were all wrong, because the point
was not the point, because the world, or what
we took for the world, is breaking, breaking. We were wrong
and are not right. Break! Break! We are here!
What I want to do is shout! Break! Shout!
*
David Hess and Jonathan Mayhew in the past couple of days mentioned two poets I have always read with pleasure, Joe Ceravolo and William Bronk. Recently, Joe Massey asked if someone would describe Ted Berrigan's book "So Going Around Cities." I sent him the following description which he excerpted on his blog. (I realize most blog entries are short- Laurable pointed this out to me- but mine are long. So far I haven't received any complaints. )Here is the complete letter I sent to Joe Massey:
Hi Joe-
Ted was a friend and I was in two of his workshops; in the late 60's and early 70's. He helped me get some of my first poems published.
I found my copy of -So Going Around Cities- in Paris in 1985. It is a lovely shade of red, hardbound, black flyleaf, and has gold lettering. It is 403 pages long. There is a dedication page that reads as follows.
"The poems are arranged in chronological order, which seemed important to the accuracy of such a book as this, one which might easily have been titled "As Much As Was Possible of The Story So Far." But the individual sections have been allowed to tell their own stories, so calling for some deviation from strict calendar order. The several stories go to making the one story, of necessity overlap, and have been allowed to do so. "My" story in that generally there has been an "I" that, in doing the telling, has by nature located itself in the center of the action, though by no means is I [italics[ always the central character, let alone the hero. My sense, for that matter my ambition, has been to create a character named I, [italics]
In the poems, that, when the actual writing goes on, is speaker, hearer,
notater, perceiver, even judge when that is called for.
There are a number of poems scattered throughout the book which have not been published in any other book; so they are new and selected, The final section is all new poems, as is at least half of the section titled EASTER MONDAY. And, happily, since the final construction of this book, I do have more. Be seeing you.
-Ted Berrigan
Autumn, 1979
New York City
There is a page at the end
THIS FIRST EDITION OF SO GOING AROUND CITIES WAS DESIGNED BY GEORGE MATTINGLY
WITH JOURNAL ROMAN & ITS CARAMOND LIGHT TYPES SET BY DAVID MATTINGLY WITH COVER PAINTING (UNTITLED) BY DONNA DENNIS & TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE SCHNEEMAN WITH MECHANICALS BY ALAN BERNHEIMER & WAS MANUFACTURED BY MCNAUGHTON & GUNN, INC., I SALINE, MICHIGAN, SPRING NINETEEN EIGHTY
[I've never seen the cover painting by Donna Dennis nor the illustrations by Geroge Schneeman.]
The book is dedicated "To Alice, To Anselm and To Doug" [no doubt the late Douglas Oliver, whom Alice Notley married long after Ted died.]
The first poem in the book is
Poem
Seven thousand feet over
The American Midwest
In the black and droning night
Sitting awake and alone
I worry the stewardess...
Would you like some coffee, sir?
How about a magazine?
No thanks, I smile and refuse.
My father died today. I
Fifteen hundred miles away
Left at once for home, having
Received the news from my mother
In tears on the telephone.
He never rode in a plane.
The last poem is
SMALL ROLE FELICITY
For Tom Clark
Anselm is sleeping; Edmund is feverish, &
Chatting: Alice doing the Times [italics] Crossword Puzzle:
I, having bathed, am pinned, nude, to the bed
Between Green Hills of Africa [italics] &
The Pro Football Mystique [italics]. Steam is hissing
In the pipes, cold air blowing across my legs...
Tobacco smoke is rising up my nose, as Significance
Crackles & leaps about inside my nightly no-mind.
Already it's past two, of a night like any other:
O, Old Glory, atop The Empire State, a building, &
Between the Hudson & The East Rivers, O, purple, & O, murky black,
If only...but O, finally , you, O, Leonardo, you at last arose
Bent and racked with fit after fit of coughing, & Cursing!
Terrible curses! No joke! What will happen? Who
Be served? Whose call go unanswered? And
Who can 44 down, "Pretender to
The Crown of Georgia" be...
(Boris Pasternak?)
David Hess asked recently about Joe Ceravolo's book "Fits of Dawn." I happen to be the proud owner of a copy of "Fits of Dawn" that Berrigan personally had bound in dissertation style black covers with the title embossed in gold caps on the cover. Here's a little bit:
fail fail he route non ai-je allay
apple fierce joying like
confide blossom ete-armed recite of barely
Wolves and the metal, Family of
it is post lake enemy Perhaps
envocal motionless leave unhopped
sun trains drinking.
Away! so wet OH
crow fog and rio feeding
Clap-orient song
Naive ground askingly flesh
lookout each
gurgle Away cropped fix
aussi-pied also-foot
intrusion viscous
texas spoons of death
Obelisk rose of
scaffold
Lunge. please stabs quoted
spill ago tree ago
Oh bait! Harangue! Stall!
fete-skys soon. The lowest eaten.
Road! Yes bread, idea wife punch-
solace avenue WAIT!
Whether somewhere bullet path fingers
singing the roofs What a lot Oh
what a ride, caves, And
sprung....
Jim Behrle took some requests for his b-side postcard poems on his blog the other day. One of the poems, dedicated to moi is now published on his blog site with its ever-changing name- but stable and unforgettable address:kickthepodium.blogspot.com. I appreciated this, Jim. A lot.
Thanks to Sandra Simonds for linking to my site, to Joe Massey for sending me a new poem based on an aphorism by Porchia posted here yesterday, and to Stephanie and Laura for their kind words and support. Notice new links to Andrew Mister and Sandra Simonds.
Dismayed about the ever- increasing combative tone in blogworld. Isn't this what many of us disliked about the atmosphere on the Buffalo poetics list in recent months- even years? It takes only an extra moment's thought to critique someone's work with a degree of panache and basic human respect for your opponent. C'mon- leave some scraps for the buzzards, guys, you don't have to cannibalize every last morsel of your victims.
Thanks to Sandra Simonds for linking to my site, to Joe Massey for sending me a new poem based on an aphorism by Porchia posted here yesterday, and to Stephanie and Laura for their kind words and support. Notice new links to Andrew Mister and Sandra Simonds.
Dismayed about the ever- increasing combative tone in blogworld. Isn't this what many of us disliked about the atmosphere on the Buffalo poetics list in recent months- even years? It takes only an extra moment's thought to critique someone's work with a degree of panache and basic human respect for your opponent. C'mon- leave some scraps for the buzzards, guys, you don't have to cannibalize every last morsel of your victims.
Tuesday, March 11
It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy- a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.
(Emily Dickinson, notebook, c.1880)
"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."
(Mark Twain, 1887)
"They will say you are on the wrong road if it is your own."
Antonia Porchia (b 1885-d.1968)
Music deserves a special place in the pantheon or continuum of factors that connect with memory,
Blank=nothing=nothing in particular= breaking away from constraints= a door= walking in= discovering something= examining it again= a path= a street= going forward=moving on=blank is an opening=blank is a door=blank is a street=blank is going down the street=blank is just being=blank admits=blank blends=blank acknowledges=thinking=wandering=wondering=finding=it takes you in and out=it is partial=a choice=a quick scramble through a maze of notices, of expectations=like a collection of magic tricks=include a collection of objects=a crystal=a music collection.
(9/14/2000)
Over time, you learn to pay close attention to motivations, because, no matter how sustained they might appear to be, they are always fleeting, always disappearing. If you become aware of being motivated to do something, the more conscious you become the more you learn to avail yourself of the energy which attaches itself to it, a movement which subjectively makes the action easier.
(7/2/97) (Antibes)
I've lived with time so long as a limiting and controlling reality- that I am weary with thinking of it like this.
I need more images for time. I am so tired of being pushed in front of it, like a child being urged to take its first steps -or like a pet, being dragged along its staccato steps, lurching forward one moment, and then time seeming to drag on forever locked in a room, waiting for its next chance to get out. I can learn to accept a concept of time that is inexorable, leading to one inescapable outcome which awaits all human beings. Of course there is nothing afterwards. Time- more and more no matter what- the end of time- nothing more, no matter what.
Good speech is more a question of when then what.But good writing offers something that transcends time.
[Words- built in time travel.]
(7/28/88)
Mosaic: placing something there you can feel with your hands.
English: "Proper" leave taking.
The thought "splits" between memory and observation.
Time travel. "In between" type moments where the thought splits. "Timelessness is found in the lapsed moments of perception, in the common pause that breaks apart into a sandstorm of pauses." Robert Smithson- "Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan."
Space is the remains, or corpse of time.
Concept of emptiness.
later: Now I see that to elaborate a "story" means to not select the details which will happen, but to create an imaginative universe which the mind "maintains"- like a film projected on a screen by means of succession of details.
I never realized that it does not matter how long it takes to arrive at a plan. Plans are so connected to action that in the sphere of action, the plan is, so to speak, the aesthetic aspect of the action. It is capable of being sustained for some length of time, thus refining the action and also creating useful byproducts (artistic materials).
(6/30/88)
All the details I have to attend to weigh on me more and more heavily. Then, when I have unscheduled time I crave doing nothing, goofing off. This action is actually quite compatible with the wish to write poetry because as an experience, goofing off effects as sense of an intensification of the awareness of thoughts. If it is possible to quiet the aroused superego, a kind of id triumph can prevail, on a mild level. But the 'triumph" can quickly give way to a feeling of "brooding remorse" which is the completion of the wave form cycle: now up, now down. Perhaps this is why I've always wanted a "celebratory" poetry- this is an extention of the wish to sustain the feeling of triumph.
Chidren already contain all but one of the possible expressions: steadiness of purpose.
(7/7/88)
English: "Proper" leave taking.
The thought "splits" between memory and observation.
Time travel. "In between" type moments where the thought splits. "Timelessness is found in the lapsed moments of perception, in the common pause that breaks apart into a sandstorm of pauses." Robert Smithson- "Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan."
Space is the remains, or corpse of time.
Concept of emptiness.
later: Now I see that to elaborate a "story" means to not select the details which will happen, but to create an imaginative universe which the mind "maintains"- like a film projected on a screen by means of succession of details.
I never realized that it does not matter how long it takes to arrive at a plan. Plans are so connected to action that in the sphere of action, the plan is, so to speak, the aesthetic aspect of the action. It is capable of being sustained for some length of time, thus refining the action and also creating useful byproducts (artistic materials).
(6/30/88)
All the details I have to attend to weigh on me more and more heavily. Then, when I have unscheduled time I crave doing nothing, goofing off. This action is actually quite compatible with the wish to write poetry because as an experience, goofing off effects as sense of an intensification of the awareness of thoughts. If it is possible to quiet the aroused superego, a kind of id triumph can prevail, on a mild level. But the 'triumph" can quickly give way to a feeling of "brooding remorse" which is the completion of the wave form cycle: now up, now down. Perhaps this is why I've always wanted a "celebratory" poetry- this is an extention of the wish to sustain the feeling of triumph.
Chidren already contain all but one of the possible expressions: steadiness of purpose.
(7/7/88)
"I don't have the slightest idea of what you must have meant when you said (wrote) that. I did listen to you- in fact, I almost fell into a kind of trance where I was no longer listening to the words in a literal way, but I was really half listening to your tone of voice and half focussing on the words I was thinking about the words you were saying. I don't know how long I was actually in this kind of state. I was reading something and then I was listening to you, and it was somehow all happening inside my head and the different times were all happening at one time."
"You mean, the words were inside your head, and the things that were happening then in your life no longer were occuring to you in the ways you usually think about them?"
"Yes."
"This is exactly what I wanted to have happen to you, which could never happen in an ordinary conversation. People have a need to call things something, to give a name to them. But this often covers up the way they actually happen."
"I felt like you were erasing my memories, or actually my wish to remember. I expected you to be talking about clouds, and flowers and emotions, but then you were talking about something that was far less literal or concrete."
"You expected me to reveal something?"
"I didn't expect you to induce in me a kind of revery that I haven't been able to shake for days. I haven't been able to open a book, listen to a radio, read the newspape. When I think, thinking occurs in a kind of whirling motion, where ideas, feelings and objects won't solidify, or settle in an everyday way."
"Do you want to stay there?"
"I can't say if I do or I don't"
(1/2/94)
"You mean, the words were inside your head, and the things that were happening then in your life no longer were occuring to you in the ways you usually think about them?"
"Yes."
"This is exactly what I wanted to have happen to you, which could never happen in an ordinary conversation. People have a need to call things something, to give a name to them. But this often covers up the way they actually happen."
"I felt like you were erasing my memories, or actually my wish to remember. I expected you to be talking about clouds, and flowers and emotions, but then you were talking about something that was far less literal or concrete."
"You expected me to reveal something?"
"I didn't expect you to induce in me a kind of revery that I haven't been able to shake for days. I haven't been able to open a book, listen to a radio, read the newspape. When I think, thinking occurs in a kind of whirling motion, where ideas, feelings and objects won't solidify, or settle in an everyday way."
"Do you want to stay there?"
"I can't say if I do or I don't"
(1/2/94)
Monday, March 10
"To see is to retain--to behold. Elimination of all fear is in sight--which must be aimed for....This is an age which has no symbol for death other than the skull and bones of one stage of decomposition...and it is an age which lives in fear of total annihilation. It is a time haunted by sexual sterility yet almost universally incapable of perceiving the phallic nature of every destructive manifestation of itself. It is an age which artificially seeks to project itself materialistically into abstract space and to fulfill itself mechanically because it has blinded itself to almost all external reality within eyesight and to the organic awareness of even the physical movement properties of its own perceptibility. The earliest cave paintings discovered demonstrate that primitive man had a greater understanding than we do that the object of fear must be objectified."
Stan Brakhage -Metaphors On Vision- 1963
Stan Brakhage -Metaphors On Vision- 1963
Sunday, March 9
Memories of -In Memory of Truth- a new installation by Ligorano/Reese on view March 8-April 7 eyewash@Monk Gallery (see below)
Woke up this morning thinking about the Ligorano/Reese piece -In Memory of Truth- "Bush is the pinhead," I thought. On the gallery wall, behind the viewer through which you can see the films projected on the head of a pin, hangs a blown up t.v. photo of Bush being told about 9/11 by Andrew Card.
There is an important reference to "Blade Runner" in this installation. While making the piece, Marshall called me up to ask me about certain parts of the Ridley Scott film "Blade Runner" starring Harrison Ford as Deckard, Rutger Hauer as Batty and Sean Young as Rachel. One question was about Batty's final speech on the roof after he saves Deckard.The two were fighting to the death near the roof of a building. Even though moments before, Deckard had killed his lover, and days before his friend and her lover, Batty allows Deckard to live. As Deckard, now on the roof, stilll in shock, stares at him, Batty says: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. C-beams glittering near the Tanhauser gate, attack ships on fire over the shoulders of Orion. All those moments will be lost in time. Time to die." Batty nods his head and dies.
On the way back to his apartment, Deckard sees Gaff, the assistant to his boss. Deckard and Gaff are blade runners, killers hired by the agency to kill, or "retire" escaped replicants. Gaff says: "Too bad she won't live. Then again, who does?"
Deckard goes back to his apartment and sees Rachel inert on his bed. For a moment he doesn't know if she's alive. He calls to her: "Rachel...Rachel...Rachel..."
He asks: "Do you love me?"
Rachel says: "I love you."
Deckard asks: "Do you trust me?"
She says: "I trust you."
Voice-over of Gaff: "Too bad she won't live. Then again who does?"
Leaving the apartment with Rachel, Deckard sees a silver candy wrapper origami unicorn Gaff had left on the floor. Gaff had not killed Rachel as Deckard might have expected him to. Gaff knew Deckard loved Rachel and that was why he had said: "Too bad she won't live."
Deckard voice- over: "Gaff had been there and let her live. Four years he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachel was special. No termination date. I didn't know how long we had together. Who does?"
In referencing "Blade Runner" here Ligorano/Reese may be highlighting several aspects of memory and truth. For one thing, we are living in a historical moment of crisis when no one knows how long they have to live, due to the threat of universal nuclear annhilation, which immediately suggests parallels between the survival of truth and the survival of the human race, given the stakes in supporting or not supporting the far right fundamentalist Bush administration at this moment in time.
Also, the interesting issue of close-ups in the film and in -In Memory of Truth-. In the film, Deckard uses a computer that examines some photos he found in Leon's apartment. This computer, like the Ligorano/Reese magnifier, isolates imagery in close-up form. Leon was the first replicant he killed. By looking at the photo with specialized magnifying equipment, Deckard is able to see a photograph of Zhora, Leon's strip-teaser girlfriend who works with an artifical python. Finding the scales of this python, which Deckard gets examined microscopically by a steet vendor, leads Deckard to Zhora's workplace. With the close-ups of the photos found in Leon's apartment (another reference to the struggle to retain memory and truth), Deckard was able to see Zhora's image reflected in the bathroom mirror, while she is invisible in the photograph itself.
In evoking truth and memory, Ligorano/Reese may be suggesting that we are shown only copies of images, and possibly can only decide the truth not so much by distinguishing memories from reality, but by distinguishing truth from lies. No matter how closely a pinhead looks at the truth, he or she will find nothing other than reflections of his or her own conclusions. If we are to save ourselves from the Tyrells= the tyrants, we have to look back and forth between our own insights into the images we are presented by the media, the same images as understood by our own close examination. In any case, like old war films, the truths repeat themselves again and again, old movies collaged together and repeated in a loop.
Images of war speak for themselves to anyone but a pinhead. "You don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows," sang Dylan over 30 years ago. if we look at reality closely for ourselves. If we examine with great thought and care (=magnification) the conclusions subliminally provided for us by the hypnotizing, propagandistic images pounded into us by mass media, we will remember nothing but what the powers that be want us to remember. These are not memories, as Deckard says to Rachel about her memories, these are implants. Like those of Rachel, our memories are implanted by tyrants by means of mass media manipulations. [I am reminded here of Steven Matheson's films as well, particularly his "Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel" discussed in these pages recently.]
Again and again, Ligorano/Reese's installations by means of multiple layering of imagery, recording, echoing and reflecting the ominous political realities around us, warns us to look very, very closely and examine reality for ourselves if we want to know the truth, if we want to survive. We will never understand anything about the truth by looking at what either the fundamentalist pinhead Bush wants us to see, or what the corporate mass media reveals to us, since both are blindly counting angels on the head of a pin and then deceiving themselves and us about it, while the world around them threatens to implode.
Woke up this morning thinking about the Ligorano/Reese piece -In Memory of Truth- "Bush is the pinhead," I thought. On the gallery wall, behind the viewer through which you can see the films projected on the head of a pin, hangs a blown up t.v. photo of Bush being told about 9/11 by Andrew Card.
There is an important reference to "Blade Runner" in this installation. While making the piece, Marshall called me up to ask me about certain parts of the Ridley Scott film "Blade Runner" starring Harrison Ford as Deckard, Rutger Hauer as Batty and Sean Young as Rachel. One question was about Batty's final speech on the roof after he saves Deckard.The two were fighting to the death near the roof of a building. Even though moments before, Deckard had killed his lover, and days before his friend and her lover, Batty allows Deckard to live. As Deckard, now on the roof, stilll in shock, stares at him, Batty says: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. C-beams glittering near the Tanhauser gate, attack ships on fire over the shoulders of Orion. All those moments will be lost in time. Time to die." Batty nods his head and dies.
On the way back to his apartment, Deckard sees Gaff, the assistant to his boss. Deckard and Gaff are blade runners, killers hired by the agency to kill, or "retire" escaped replicants. Gaff says: "Too bad she won't live. Then again, who does?"
Deckard goes back to his apartment and sees Rachel inert on his bed. For a moment he doesn't know if she's alive. He calls to her: "Rachel...Rachel...Rachel..."
He asks: "Do you love me?"
Rachel says: "I love you."
Deckard asks: "Do you trust me?"
She says: "I trust you."
Voice-over of Gaff: "Too bad she won't live. Then again who does?"
Leaving the apartment with Rachel, Deckard sees a silver candy wrapper origami unicorn Gaff had left on the floor. Gaff had not killed Rachel as Deckard might have expected him to. Gaff knew Deckard loved Rachel and that was why he had said: "Too bad she won't live."
Deckard voice- over: "Gaff had been there and let her live. Four years he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachel was special. No termination date. I didn't know how long we had together. Who does?"
In referencing "Blade Runner" here Ligorano/Reese may be highlighting several aspects of memory and truth. For one thing, we are living in a historical moment of crisis when no one knows how long they have to live, due to the threat of universal nuclear annhilation, which immediately suggests parallels between the survival of truth and the survival of the human race, given the stakes in supporting or not supporting the far right fundamentalist Bush administration at this moment in time.
Also, the interesting issue of close-ups in the film and in -In Memory of Truth-. In the film, Deckard uses a computer that examines some photos he found in Leon's apartment. This computer, like the Ligorano/Reese magnifier, isolates imagery in close-up form. Leon was the first replicant he killed. By looking at the photo with specialized magnifying equipment, Deckard is able to see a photograph of Zhora, Leon's strip-teaser girlfriend who works with an artifical python. Finding the scales of this python, which Deckard gets examined microscopically by a steet vendor, leads Deckard to Zhora's workplace. With the close-ups of the photos found in Leon's apartment (another reference to the struggle to retain memory and truth), Deckard was able to see Zhora's image reflected in the bathroom mirror, while she is invisible in the photograph itself.
In evoking truth and memory, Ligorano/Reese may be suggesting that we are shown only copies of images, and possibly can only decide the truth not so much by distinguishing memories from reality, but by distinguishing truth from lies. No matter how closely a pinhead looks at the truth, he or she will find nothing other than reflections of his or her own conclusions. If we are to save ourselves from the Tyrells= the tyrants, we have to look back and forth between our own insights into the images we are presented by the media, the same images as understood by our own close examination. In any case, like old war films, the truths repeat themselves again and again, old movies collaged together and repeated in a loop.
Images of war speak for themselves to anyone but a pinhead. "You don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows," sang Dylan over 30 years ago. if we look at reality closely for ourselves. If we examine with great thought and care (=magnification) the conclusions subliminally provided for us by the hypnotizing, propagandistic images pounded into us by mass media, we will remember nothing but what the powers that be want us to remember. These are not memories, as Deckard says to Rachel about her memories, these are implants. Like those of Rachel, our memories are implanted by tyrants by means of mass media manipulations. [I am reminded here of Steven Matheson's films as well, particularly his "Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel" discussed in these pages recently.]
Again and again, Ligorano/Reese's installations by means of multiple layering of imagery, recording, echoing and reflecting the ominous political realities around us, warns us to look very, very closely and examine reality for ourselves if we want to know the truth, if we want to survive. We will never understand anything about the truth by looking at what either the fundamentalist pinhead Bush wants us to see, or what the corporate mass media reveals to us, since both are blindly counting angels on the head of a pin and then deceiving themselves and us about it, while the world around them threatens to implode.
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