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[The French poet Denis Roche was first published in the Winter 1962 issue of Locus Solus, edited by John Ashbery. Roche went on to become associated with the journal Tel Quel, to write the 500 or so pages of his collected poems, titled La Poesie est Inadmissable (published in 1996 though the last poems in there are from 1972), and then to stop writing poetry and become a photographer and devote himself to editing at Seuil. At least that's the sketch of his life I have klunking around in my head. Here are the three poems from Locus Solus; in them you can find several phrases that have eerie resemblances to things Ashbery would later write, such as Roche/Ashbery's "a kind of undulation which overtakes me delicately" presaging the line "and then I get this feeling of exhaltation" from I believe the book Rivers and Mountains. The "Denis Roche bootleg" is forthcoming on this site, and following that I hope to edit a book of translations of his complete work.]
Three Poems for Locus Solus
As a matter of fact that bird how many
Chances didn’t I have to know its identity
However it let its spoor die and
The effluvium underneath lost with perfetion
Why should I throw myself
In this hot marsh weather putting in
Diplay windows for a virgin of whom
The memory is enough for me only at the
last noise of the
Battle here I am come toward the dying pine
Two cents would be enough to buy it
A new root and a pitcher so that once
Again would shine in it the black values of
The earth The only effect that has on me is a
Kind of undulation which overtakes me delicately
What silk doesn’t waken in me orisons that I
Don’t know are rapid and final?
Tears allowing one to think that there are
Memories whose beauty surprised in the bath
Introduces itself in another dimension
I no longer restrain myself through things
I pass by them whistling
Lowering my window as I pass and they
Constantly recur in various tonalities
It suits me now to be
A follower of leaves and to be admired for it
Like a slightly bigger leaf
Lived-in perhaps but undernourished
I content myself with being glimpsed
And carefully I cultivate existence
Which is supple says my girlfriend the sensitive one
Which is woody says the tropical vine which is coming
Toward me half president wife and half negress
For she too knows these natural outbursts
If you look closely leaning over and weeping
The sensory organs watered
Continuing to slide at a speed which
Could be considered normal for
Machine-tools vegetable strainers
In front of little cars in which we
Practically haven’t slept at all
Enigmatic we were passing the ointments from
Hand to hand very much at ease feeling
Furtive noises float
But what actually happens?
Necklaces of men lying down in the allée
Pigs who seem innocent departed
Henceforth on a spree like us
Not even looking for the road to the station
Leaving there every time
Mother of pearls trails
Today was supposed to be the bye bye day for FSC but I haven't finished the Denis Roche "bootleg" which I was hoping would be the last offering here. But I got this email from John Barlow, a writer in Canada, which seemed to succumb to line breaks fairly easily (many of them are his own), and become a nice poem, or perhaps a monologue from a Mac Wellman play. Tonight I'll be at Galapagos watching the "Little Theater" event that I guess is usually held at Tonic.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Barlow
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 6:36 PM
Subject: DEBATETERFUGE
I swear ( ... ) when Walkerton first hit the news,
on a local broadcast, they called it, with some hesitation,
Watertown, which I still find murkily funny.
Well, the town of Wiarton must have an in
you say, on this matter, and it does, in that it has
“Wiarton Willie” who, like Wiarton, has - or, had –
two similar fellows himself, in the form of
two other groundhogs. News broke today that
tragedy befell them though. An underground tunnel
had been constructed between their indoor cage and their
outdoor cage playpen, where they built nests
from straw. So near watertable is this section of Wiarton,
they drowned when their tunnel filled up.
The now deeply troubled groundhog handler
kept this a secret until recently. All these
months the handler's been claiming
to believe only one of the groundhogs at a time was showing
itself. Wiarton town council is furious, and disgusted
that Wiarton Willie has had to sleep
in his tunnel with his two dead companions,
all this time. But the theory was plausible,
and this world is in fact rife with plausible theory
just as poorly construed. In today's
Star, a story arises, How to read the polls. The author
lists off some six polling results,
for Ontario, ranging from dead heat (43-42 for
Liberals) to recent landslide 49-33
but the author then points out that steep
differences in the numbers depends on whether
one reports only the percentage support
from decided polled-folk, or the percentage of all
decided and undecided.
Then the author writes this:
“If we recalculate the results used by Decima
so that they match the method reported by
the others, we find that the Liberals have 39 per cent
of support among decided voters, as
do the Tories.” Though the six polls quoted
were all different, none showed a tie,
among decided; undecided would not effect
the difference between the two “parties”. Incredibly
the author later concludes:
“The more informed the voter, the more likely
that the polls will enlighten rather than confuse
debate.” BOOOOOONNNNEEESSSSSSSSS.HOGGGGGG BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNEESSSSSS.
In a similar moment of unbridled if milder irony,
Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty campaigned
for both the Liberals and the NDP yesterday. Asked
where the money would come from,
for proposals, he said: “If we don't put $3.2 billion into tax cuts
for corporations, and we don't put half a billion
into private schools, if we don't put $400 million
into self-promotional government advertizing,
if we don't put $400 million into private-sector consultants,
if we actually collect unpaid corporate taxes, then we
can actually do something.” All day nursing this information
as I worked, I wondered where to email it.
Local softbrain politics is so passe. So I thought I'd just
send it to you to wonder about, and you can forward it if you wish.
The three newspaper articles mentioned are all from
the Toronto Star, yesterday or today. In the case
of two, I wish to cause the authors no further
embarrassment than their produce already caused.
The third is pretty general anyway. It's just an email. They can delete it.
meneninkenlkniienoinoinlkenlknknenononen ~ end ~ 0 ~
d00ds - my play is being "performed" on November 8th which y'all gotta see. The Kinski idea is dead, though you won't be disappointed with his replacement -- Harrison Ford!
November 8: Poets' Plays
Why should San Francisco have all the fun? Our day of Poets Plays might be shorter than Small Press Traffic's Poets' Theater Jamboree, but we can assure you that our poet-playwrights Charles Borkhuis, Jordan Davis, Ethan Fugate, and Brian Kim Stefans (who is apparently working on a monologue based on Klaus Kinski) are no less glamorous, and fully intend to "deliver the goods." Or break a leg. Something like that.
David Perry has posted on poem by Emily Greenley in the comments section. (BTW, the poet I couldn't remember in the last post was not Robert Fitterman but Mara Galvez-Breton.) Here are the three from Arras and the one David posted in the comments section.
Outside in Wichita
Are you going for a walk alone?
It will germinate in your head
How many people do you love at once?
I don't see the bumps in your head
from the crown inside your head
Are you in need of company?
You just left your sister at the house:
You just left your sins at home
You are only walking in line
Do you plan to make money
by your identity?
for Noah
body's the tool
of the soul, and
proxy for anyone
one knows
so I extend
to you far as
I reach, or
three feet:
expend your
self on me
it's welcome
that weight
Your mind
There's a chance someone could see
You standing behind a tree
Or while you change underwear
In a closet at lunchtime.
When you wanted not to act
Someone called you for a date;
You sat on the porch at night
To take a chill because you were bored.
You wanted the world to seem
Enjoyable, to stop dreaming.
for I.
I wish I lived in a blue black glass
or I wish I hadn't lived at all,
& I dream of subliming to a free essence,
watching, invisible, rambling,
& I want to go to a theatre
where your head is a huge balloon
Resting gravely above the audience,
and my special head none the less.
I seem to have made a typo in the Arras issue -- "it's" was originally printed as "its" in the poem "for Noah," or perhaps that's the way it came to me -- I dont' have the original ms. available. I can't think of anything sadder than the thought of someone taking their own life so young.
The new Segue Calendar is now online:
Curators:
October 4 - November 22, Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan
November 29 - January 31, Laura Elrick & Michael Scharf
The new issue of the Poetry Project newsletter has a nice little article by John Ashbery in it about the poet Joan Murray, whom Auden had picked as his first Yale Younger poet in 1947. Murray, who died at 25 and wrote most of her work in the last year and half of her life (Auden was a teacher of hers at the New School and made a special request that a ms. of hers be submitted), has an exquisite "ear" -- the relish for the extra syllable, the knowledge when to make a line sprawl or contract, the off-rhyme -- that Ashbery compares to the effect of waves washing up on shore. Here's a poem of hers I found online -- most of them were titled by her editor, using the first line of the poem, so let's assume this one is called "Sleep, Little Architect":
Sleep, little architect. It is your mother's wish
That you should lave your eyes and hang them up in dreams.
Into the lowest sea swims the great sperm fish.
If I should rock you, the whole world would rock within my arms.
Your father is a greater architect than even you.
His structure falls between high Venus and far Mars.
He rubs the magic of the old and then peers through
The blueprint where lies the night, the plan the stars.
You will place mountains too, when you are grown.
The grass will not be so insignificant, the stone so dead.
You will spiral up the mansions we have sown.
Drop your lids, little architect. Admit the bats of wisdom into your head.
I don't have Ashbery's article here, but writing my short review of the Yale Younger Poets anthology several years ago, I liked her work (as I did most of what Auden picked), though all I wrote was: "There is some surprisingly good work from two little-known poets whose single volumes were from the series, Joan Murray (who died at 25) and Robert Horan, all chosen by Auden; there is also some embarrassing work that, ironically, is mostly taken from volumes that were among the series' bestsellers." Well, now I feel bad for not giving her more of a plug -- I sound downright condescending, but that's because the anthology itself was so dull (hence the "surprise"). I can't find any of the poetry of Robert Horan online -- he may still be alive, though born in 1922 -- so I guess I'll have to get a copy of that anthology again to see if he's any good. Anyone heard of him?
Which reminds me of another poet who died young, Emily Greenely -- geez, I don't remember if that's her name exactly, but I picked her out of the New Coast issue of Oblek when putting together the first issue of Arras back in 1756 or so -- others were Moxley, Derksen, John Byrum and I think Fitterman, can't remember.
Anyway, I was saddened to hear that she had died -- I thought her work really stood out in that issue, lively and compact -- but always assumed that she would have her work collected in the near future and have a little book. Stupid optimism! (I thought the subways would stay at $1 forever, also.) But outside of Oblek and that first issue of Arras, which was just a stapled thing I put together at MOMA by coming in earlier and "liberating" the copy machine (100 copies or so), I haven't seen anything of hers. William Corbett is her executor and I believe was a teacher of hers. Any news out there about her? Boston in the house? Be nice to put together a collection of her work for some small press.
[Today is one of those days when you have to make choices... Yoshimasu starts at 6 pm on Greene Street and Antin goes on at 7 at Poet's House. Luckily it's not raining today otherwise... ouch, it actually is raining, it's pouring. We'll see what happens. Antin will be talking about "The Politics of Poetry" -- yuck -- on 72 Spring Street. Yoshimasu info follows -- at the location that picked up where Roulette left off after being evicted.]
Please join us for a poetry reading and performance by acclaimed avant garde poet Gozo Yoshimasu. This reading brings the legendary poet to New York after a ten-year absence.
Poetry reading by Yoshimasu: September 23, 2003 at 7 PM
Live translation by American poet Geoffrey O'Brien Improvisational music by guitarist Jean-François Pauvros Poems translated by Hiroaki Sato
Admission: Free - Doors open at 6pm
No Reservations.
Exhibition: Poetic Spectrum - Images, Objects, and Words of Gozo Yoshimasu September 3 - September 23, 2003 Curated by Miwako Tezuka Gallery hours: Tue - Sat 12-6 PM
Location One
26 Greene Street NYC 10013
Subway: Canal Street - N, R, Q, W, 6, A, C, E
www.location1.org
In a rare event, Gozo Yoshimasu will come to New York City to read/perform selections from his most recent poems on September 23rd. Through his unique performance style, his voice, ultimately weaves together the visions and touches of the past, and revives the singularity of those encounters. The amalgamation of images, objects, words, and reading as performance, will present a possibility of transcending the limit of language, and reveal the trans-cultural fertility of poetry.
This performance will last just under an hour and will include a live translation by American poet Geoffrey O'Brien, as well as improvisational music by experimental guitarist, Jean- François Pauvros. The event will be streamed live on the Location One website beginning at 7PM EST.
Poetic Spectrum - Images, Objects, and Words of Gozo Yoshimasu is made possible through the generous support of The Japan Foundation, as well as through contributions from members of Location One. Poetic Spectrum is a participating event of "US-Japan 150," a two-year nationwide festival commemorating the 150th anniversary of the inception of relations between the US and Japan in 1853. Thanks to Itoen Tea for its generous contribution of beverages.
For more information about Poetic Spectrum - Images, Objects, and Words of Gozo Yoshimasu and the artists involved in the September 23rd event, please see www.location1.org.
GOZO YOSHIMASU was born in Tokyo in 1939 and published his first book of poems entitled Shuppatsu (Departure) in 1964. Juxtaposing imagery of reality and memories of various locations, his poems open new vistas that reach one's collective consciousness. Yoshimasu is also known for his unusual, trance-like reading through which he has collaborated with artists such as Kazuo Ono and Nobuyoshi Araki. Considered to be an emblematic presence in postwar Japanese poetry, many of his poems have been translated into various languages. He has given readings at Centre Georges Pompidou (2000), Taipei International Poetry Festival (2001), and has exhibited his photographs and calligraphies at São Paulo Biennale (1990), Chambre de Commerce et Industrie, Strasbourg (2000), among others. In May 2003, he received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Japanese government for his significant cultural contributions.
ABOUT LOCATION ONE
Location One is a not-for profit art center whose mission is to foster the convergence of classic and new media for the development and presentation of new work. Emerging and established artists in all mediums from all over the world are invited to collaborate and experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems. Location One presents visual arts, performing arts and online programming. It maintains on its premises an International Residency Program that is open to artists from different fields of expression at all levels of experience in technology.
I'm working on a "bootleg" file of poems by the French poet Denis Roche. The material I have of his so far is:
3 poems in Locus Solus translated by John Ashbery
a sequence in the Paul Auster 20th Century American poetry translated by Harry Matthews
selections in Veronica Forrest-Thomson's Collected Poems
selections in one of Serge Gavronsky's books on poetry in France
more work translated by Gavronsky for the Tyuonyi "Violence of the White Page" issue
I'm writing this from work so I don't have all of the references at hand.
There's a children's book illustrator named Denis Roche who is not the same person. Our Denis Roche was an editor of Tel Quel, a translator of The ABC of Reading and I think the Cantos in to French, and is now (primarily?) a photographer -- below is one of his snaps (I'm sure he would cringe at the term):
I did find the following list of translations:
From the papers of Eric Mottram:
"French poets: Mottram manuscript essay headed 'Under the influence of Rimbaud' [1973-1978]; Mottram manuscript notes on mid-20th century French poets [1973-1978]; a section of photocopies of modern French poets' work, including Marcelin Pleynet, Denis Roche, Anne-Marie Albiach, Jean Daive [1984]"
From The Paris Review # 42: Winter-Spring 1968:
Eros Possessed: A Play
From New Observations (a journal I never heard of before):
54. Ecriture - The French Mind -
Serge Gavronsky
January/February 1988
Julia Kristeva, Anne-Marie Albiach, Ludovic Janvier, Marcelin Pleynet, Emmanuel Hocquard, Leslie Kaplan, Jacques Roubaud, Denis Roche, Martine Aballea, Denis Levaillant.
And a book published by Pennsylvania State University Press called that has a half chapter dedicated to his writing, published in 1999:
Poeticized Language
The Foundations of Contemporary French Poetry
Steven Winspur
I could probably get this last one in my library. The Paris Review issue is available cheap on abe.com.
Anyone know where the Mottram is available outside of his papers collected at King's College? Or what New Observations is all about? Also, come across any translations of Denis Roche? Interested in making some?
Articles in French by or about him online:
TROFOR > Webzine > PHOTO > C’EST MOI DENIS ROCHE
DENIS ROCHE
Le Web de l'Humanité: Denis Roche : une magie des images - Article paru le 19 avril 1999
Articles (fr) : Denis Roche - La Rage de l'expression ou le dernier des Mohicans
GRAVITATION
Lire : le magazine littéraire. L'actualité de la littérature francaise et de la littérature étrangère.
Here's another snaps:
This blog is slowly dying -- on September 26, its first birthday, it's going into the deep freeze. The Madame will take her tarot mysteries elsewhere.
I'd kill it right now but some of the material is still new, and that Iowa interview is still sending visitors over here. A partial archive list appears below, or you can click on "master archive" above to see the entire fabulous mess.
In the meantime, check out the site I designed for my sister Lindsay's company Invisible Light Studio. The site is presently not working too well on PCs -- problem with the stylesheet which I'll change when I get home -- but I'm pretty happy with the quick work (1 day!) I did on this -- very much a "in-progress," it will change over the course of this coming week.
Thanks for all of you who have visited here on and off for the past year. I'm sure I'll come up with something in the next year that will cover some of this territory, though it probably won't have anything to do with poetry.
at Robert Beck Memorial Cinema/Collective Unconscious
145 Ludlow Street NY NY
Tuesday September 16th at 8:30pm
$5
This will be a performance of RASHOMON PIECE by Alan Licht. The film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa will be shown with the sound turned down. The audience must read the subtitles aloud, together. The purpose of the piece is to take the the audience members out of their usually passive roles as observers and to become active participants, aware of the people surrounding them and and their own power of speech--not merely awed and muted by the "miracles" of light and sound projected in front of them on the screen. The audience will create the soundtrack, not simply let a pre-programmed soundtrack created by unseen hands wash over them. No film screening like this has ever taken place before in the 100+ year history of cinemas; it is certain to be an event.
For more info--www.rbmc.net
I don't have time to explain why I sent this to Joan Houlihan, a poet who works for Web del Sol -- but read the Possum Pouch to find out. The prose parts of the email quote from one of Houlihan's terrible essays slamming experimental poetry, but I use one of her own "poems of the day" (see rest of this story below) as an example of bad verse.
"It seems that not only are these words not best (or worst), they are not even among a specifically selected few. All word choices seem equally good (or bad) for this poem because the poem does not want to add up to anything, does not want to become anything, it only wants to resist becoming, to remain a baby in the continuum of its utterance. Therefore:
As Jimmie hears his cue: "The King of Croon,"
how does the fiddle do it? All seats,
--postures, giving muscle to melody--
empty. Even wallflowers crack their stone.
Tension dissolves in tone. Three short
revive and fling toward heaven. Only slaps
from bull strings land them back on the map.
A guileless mother hums as baby snorts
in her arm. The dream settles like beer foam
with a long bow that carries the weight of bones.
Reunion after exile. The sweet tune.
Strokes introduce the path back home.
How does the fiddle do it? Dead feet.
Then the trickster sustains our sympathy.
Why not? How does this version differ from the original? Only in its word order. And since the words don't count, since they don't have to be best, better, bad or in any way related to any potential meaning, my poem is as “good” as the original. In fact, I would argue my poem is the original—is, in fact, better than the original, because clearly this poem wants to be in quatrains! It wants to have the only interesting detail and the only character in the poem at the beginning, not the end. It is exactly the same poem, albeit with different word order—but neither set of words makes any difference to the meaning."
BC Presents
The Sol Poetry Daily
September 8, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wake Up, Goddamn, Give the Fiddler a Dram
Michael Graber
How does the fiddle do it? Dead feet
revive and fling toward heaven. Only slaps
from bull strings land them back on the map.
How does the fiddle do it? All seats
empty, even wallflowers crack their stone
postures, giving muscle to melody.
Then the trickster sustains our sympathy
with a long bow that carries the weight of bones.
Tension dissolves in tone. Three short
strokes introduce the path back home,
reunion after exile, the sweet tune
a guileless mother hums as baby snorts
in her arm. The dream settles like beer foam
as Jimmie hears his cue: "The King of Croon."
Here's the skinny on my first ever poetry writing workshop -- maybe my last if you're lucky! For some reason the words "poetry workshop" doesn't appear in my class title -- which started as a joke but somehow snowballed into the officialdom -- but that's what it is.
***
Hello poets, prose-writers, playwrights, publishers, and those of other literary persuasions! Let's hear it for alliteration. Actually, let's hear it for our three BRAND-NEW WORKSHOPS, coming to The Poetry Project near you.
Fine Print:
The workshop fee is $300. This includes a one year Individual membership, as well as tuition for any and all workshops at the Poetry Project for the fall and spring. Reservations are required due to limited class space, and payment must be received in advance. Please send payment and reservations to:
The Poetry Project
St. Mark's Church
131 E. 10th St.
New York, NY 10003
This fall, our fearless leaders:
Poetry Workshop TONY TOWLE
TUESDAYS AT 7 PM: 10 Sessions Begin October 21st.
Towle writes, "It is assumed that participants will be serious, practicing poets. My critiques and suggestions will be made from the starting point of what the poet has already established, not advocating a total change of style. However, non-binding assignments will be suggested, perhaps on an individual basis, to expand the sensibility. Apollinaire, Keats, Stevens, Neruda, Max Jacob, Williams, and O'Hara are some of the writers who will be discussed, as well as more recent, lesser-known poets whose work will be talked about before their names are revealed. John Ashbery has written: "Tony Towle is one of the best-kept secrets of the New York School." His most recent books are The History of the Invitation: New & Selected Poems 1963-2000 and Memoir 1960-1963.
Genres & Games: A Poetry Workshop JOANNA FUHRMAN
FRIDAYS AT 7 PM: 10 Sessions Begin October 17th.
Fuhrman writes, "Our class will be a laboratory in which we explore and experiment with genres, styles and voices. The goal will be to develop the somewhat contradictory skills involved in poetry writing: the ability to let the imagination go crazy and to view work critically. The class will be comprised of three parts: assignments based on handouts, in-class writing games (often involving giant ski-ball dice), and supportive, constructive discussions of student work. Poets read will include: Maureen Owen, Wallace Stevens, Robert Creeley, Alice Notley, Tu Fu, John Ashbery, Elaine Equi, Rae Armantrout, David Shapiro, Jayne Cortez, Paul Violi and others." Joanna Fuhrman’s books include Freud in Brooklyn and Ugh Ugh Ocean.
Jai-Alai for Autocrats BRIAN KIM STEFANS
SATURDAYS AT 12 PM: 10 Sessions Begin October 18th.
Stefans writes, "This workshop will focus on the relationship between poems inspired by a sense of play - the way we appreciate words when they’re randomly, surprisingly conjoined - and work, which might be loosely described as poems that are subtly crafted, resistant to easy meanings, even ‘traditional.’ We’ll look at elements of prosody that extend beyond meter as it is generally understood - whether that be the counting of accents or the line by breath - into the use of literary masks, deviant syntaxes, Oulipian practices, writing in dialect (invented or not), and experiments with computers." Stefans’ books include Free Space Comix and Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics.
Gary, the white magician of Middle Flarf, has lobbed a few dingleberries at recent events here in Hobbitville.
I still prefer Will & Grace...
Just picked this up on Silliman's Blog -- a link to the National Review, which has a nice Chaucer pastiche about the California elections:
Among us was a TERMINATOR bold,
A player who on many a stage had strold.
Ful big he was of braun, and eke of bone
A manly man, ful wyth testosteroun... &tc. &tc.
Read the rest at:
John Derbyshire on California Recall on National Review Online
Thom Yorke has an article in the Guardian:
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Losing the faith
I recently took out a book of literary criticism authored by a friend of mine that had been published a few years ago. I'm going to leave the friend's name out of this as well as the title of the book, since my point is not to embarrass anyone (or, indeed, to start a series of flames), but I wanted to point out a few problems that I see in the prose in this book, much of which could have been avoided had the book gone through a proper editorial cycle. As the book was published by a small press -- and probably partly financed by the author -- such niceties were most likely unavailable, but I know that I've benefited immensely by hiring -- yes, hiring, since most of my esteemed colleagues are poor and busy -- friends to read my work, especially when I know it's appearing in a small press publication.
The author is explaining why the poetry of Y___ [I’ve decided to delete the proper name after the original posting of this entry] is not better well-known:
Perhaps this was because Y___ (aside from a stint in Boston in which he became the most noteworthy young star to come out of the Stone Soup Poetry Collective spearheaded by Jack Powers in the late 1980s) never seemed to involve himself much in poetry scenes or literary conferences, but has largely chosen to go it alone, or because, valuing love more than fame, he would leave Boston to accompany his lover in his protracted and ultimately unsuccessful struggle with AIDS. Perhaps, even, it’s because the kind of poetry Y___ writes, with just enough in common with the beats [sic] to make it somewhat embarrassing, or worthy of scorn, to the co-editors of the anthology yet perhaps with just a little too much O’Hara-like subtelty [sic] and sensitivity to succeed in the early 90s Nuyorican scene (which admittedly, to my knowledge at least, Y___ never even tried to succeed in), scared many editors off.Now I'm going to play the school-marm and point out what seem to me obvious stylistic infelicities:
1. The parenthetical statement that starts with the word "aside" begins without giving the reader any clue as to the purpose of the digression. We only learn after the close of the parentheses that the digression concerned Y___’s involvement in poetry "scenes."
2. "Never seemed to involve himself much" is a long-winded way of saying "wasn't much involved" -- or if the word "seemed" is important, to whom is he "seeming"?
3. The idea of the "scene" becomes suddenly synonymous with Boston so that -- because his lover obviously did not live in Boston -- leaving Boston curtailed for Y___ any possibility of being involved in a "scene." Consequently -- and forgive me for ignorance of biographical details -- to "accompany" someone in an unsuccessful struggle against AIDS suggests (to me) that the poet died.
4. The second sentence is very garbled. The bit about the "editors" alludes to the author's having worked on an anthology of American poetry, during which process it appears the author had to make a strong argument for the inclusion of Y___’s work (nothing else before this sentence, the third in the essay, suggests that these editors had any problems with the work). This conflates the issue of Y___’s general invisibility in the scene with the co-editors' inability to appreciate the value of his work.
Then, without explanation, there is a digression concerning Y___’s inability (the poet apparently did make it to New York) to succeed with the Nuyoricans -- which the author then declares Y___ probably did not try to do anyway! Why not the Dark Room Collective, the people at the New Criterion or the Moxley circle in Providence?
5. Using both "admittedly" and "to my knowledge at least" is redundant. Or if not, what is the author admitting to -- that the aside on the Nuyoricans was not worth mentioning?
6. Are the "editors" of the last word the same people as the "co-editors" earlier or the larger set, and is creating a feeling of "scorn" in the co-editors the same as creating fear (i.e. "scaring") in the latter group?
7. The second sentence, once you strip away all of the clauses, is: "Perhaps it’s because the kind of poetry Y___ writes... scared many editors off," which to my way of thinking has a problem with tense, but would also have been a great way to provocatively start the sentence, only then to follow up with informative digressions.
8. And finally -- as Ezra Pound scribbled in the margins of the Waste Land as he worked on his famous edits, "DAMN PERHAPSY!"
I'll make a ready confession and say that I feel this way about much of the writing of "The Constant Critic," which I feel errs a bit on the belle-lettrist-meets-grad-school-exile side -- "I do not believe that it is possible to have read too much, but I do think one can have too ready an access to what one has read—and Mr. Bedient subreferences as if his poetry depends upon it" -- in an effort, one presumes, not to sound like a small-press blurb circa 1982-to-now.
Most of my "little reviews" sound like extended blurbs, I know (they are actually first drafts for even shorter, anonymous reviews in trade magazines, hence the nearly uniformly approving tone), but I somehow trust a method of writing, or a prose style, that at least aspires to resemble a contemporary prose style that is in active use -- i.e. what we find in the better rock music and movie review columns -- more than they resemble the Jamesian (what I generously call the digressive excerpt above) or faux-Bloomsbury-ish coterie intimacy (The Constant Critic) that is being experimented with now.
But experimenting, of course, is good, and I only put out these little thoughts with the hope of provoking some discussion about the possibilities of clear critical prose in this time when there is little general understanding of the methods poets are employing in poems and when we lack a central venue where one can find consistently (if not "constantly") responsible criticism. I also wonder if the small press world really finds its limits when it comes to the publishing of prose -- i.e. perhaps the small press world can't handle this next step in constructing an "alternative" to the "mainstream" (or the universities).
Flash is really maturing into a medium that can potentially rival film for creating absorptive fantasy narratives that are -- true to the hoopla of computer technology -- "interactive," picking up on a lot of the pleasures of useless obsession (is there any other kind?) some of youze would feel figuring out the next stages in Mario Brothers or Myst, etc.
Anyway, follow this link for something quite exceptional, but be prepared -- high bandwidth only (and sound certainly helps). One of the few web pieces that didn't make me feel like I was utterly wasting my time (even very good web pieces make me feel that way). The art is impeccable also -- reminds me a bit of the new Radiohead video (and the dude in the second section looks like Thom Yorke).
You have to play along, click around and be patient. What does it mean? What did Melies mean by Voyage to the Moon? What do the Brothers Quay or Joseph Cornell mean?
http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf
Here's how Curt Cloninger of Rhizome described it in the Net Art email:
Known simply as 'samorost.swf', this interactive Flash game by Czechoslovakia's Amanita Design combines Myst/Riven-like puzzles with a whimsical animation style reminiscent of crankbunny.com (or Roger Dean's early 'Yes' album covers). The puzzles are challenging but surrealistically intuitive, and the combination of gorgeously textured organic settings and playfully animated vector characters is plenty of motivation to advance to the next level. Samorost is a rare combination of entertainment, art, absurdism, and humor. And, as an added bonus, you get to save a planet from utter destruction.
On a related note, there was a great article in the New York Times recently about the too-be-release collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvadore Dali called "Destino." Click the image for a larger version:
Read the story while it's still there -- probably disappear into the archives soon: The Lost Cartoon by Disney and Dalí, Fellow Surrealists
Situationist-inspired graffiti has become the new thing, apparently -- a link to the Bureau of Public Secrets was posted both to ubuweb and the UKPoetry listserv recently, and I got an email from Stephen Vincent which I'm pasting in after the graffiti (click "read more") that acts as a sort of new introduction to the selections below.
If you like this stuff, check out the Anarchist site nothingness.org, which has an extensive online library of Situationist writings, including Vaneigem's Revolution of Everyday Life, which inspired much of the graffiti and which I used for the Vaneigem series of fake Times articles. Nothingness also includes a small gallery of May 68 posters:
Nixon...the dustbin of history awaits you
My own inclination is to get past easy assocations of what is happening now with what happened in Paris, as (briefly) the political ferment of 68 led to some excessive jockeying for power and unwise commentary -- not to mention alliances -- from many of its young participants, and the kind of "nostalgia for the 60s" vibe that's been going around these days might make people gravitate toward positions purely for the sake of some romantic sense of truth in living / action.
This is not to say that the division between "living" and "surviving" is not as blurry now as it ever was -- quite the opposite, but unless one really submits to the spiritual and psychological discipline this graffiti (and The Revolution of Everyday Life) demands, I don't see what use one can put the political "fuck the police" aspect to.
I think the substance of the "now" has to be looked at in its own right, without posturing, and motivating energies derived from that -- one presumes passionate -- analysis. I think the seed of a "new poetics" (particularly for "Americans") can be found in the terse, socially-coded, paradoxical but demanding (as in "we, those who refuse to die, make these demands") style of the stuff below -- some are already doing it.
The much-balleyhooed French (or Cartesian) manner of hyper-rational, skeptical thinking, along with prose stylistics based on studies of Latin masters, not to mention a fair degree of Jesuitical missionary fervor -- and further, the dregs of the hardest core Surrealism -- go into the psychological mix that produces this type of writing as well.
This is not to suggest that the graffiti artists were all versed in these traditions, more that they were "in the air" of the culture, and are somewhat alien to American culture, in which the spirit of the petulant unsaid was never very gainfully employed.
It's a peculiar feature of this graffiti that some of it doesn't make a lot of immediate sense -- my favorite is "Under the paving stones, the beach" -- which has nothing to do with severing the sign or Wittgensteinian mind-games. Oh, possibly, but there's a huge difference between this and Robert Grenier's "Sentences." The Situationists thought the American avant-garde willful naifs -- apolitical pot-smoking hedonists, of sorts, whereas they, of course, preferred wine.
May 1968 Graffiti
In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices.
Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .
Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.”
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.
Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.
We want to live.
Don’t beg for the right to live — take it.
In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.
The liberation of humanity is all or nothing.
Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves.
No replastering, the structure is rotten.
Masochism today takes the form of reformism.
Reform my ass.
The revolution is incredible because it’s really happening.
I came, I saw, I was won over.
Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!
Quick!
If we only have enough time . . .
In any case, no regrets!
Already ten days of happiness.
Live in the moment.
Comrades, if everyone did like us . . .
We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy.
Down with the state.
When the National Assembly becomes a bourgeois theater, all the bourgeois theaters should be turned into national assemblies.*
[*Written above the entrance of the occupied Odéon Theater]
Referendum: whether we vote yes or no, it turns us into suckers.
It’s painful to submit to our bosses;
it’s even more stupid to choose them.
Let’s not change bosses, let’s change life.
Don’t liberate me — I’ll take care of that.
I’m not a servant of the people (much less of their self-appointed leaders). Let the people serve themselves.
Abolish class society.
Nature created neither servants nor masters.
I want neither to rule nor to be ruled.
We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their own.
“In revolution there are two types of people:
those who make it and those who profit from it.”
(Napoleon)
Warning: ambitious careerists may now be disguised as “progressives.”
Don’t be taken in by the politicos and their filthy demagogy.
We must rely on ourselves.
Socialism without freedom is a barracks.
All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We want structures that serve people, not people serving structures.
The revolution doesn’t belong to the committees, it’s yours.
Politics is in the streets.
Barricades close the streets but open the way.
Our hope can come only from the hopeless.
A proletarian is someone who has no power over his life and knows it.
Never work.
People who work get bored when they don’t work.
People who don’t work never get bored.
Workers of all countries, enjoy!
Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases.
My father before me fought for wage increases.
Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen.
Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don’t negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.
The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss.
By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate their weakness.
Occupy the factories.
Power to the workers councils.
(an enragé)
Power to the enragés councils.
(a worker)
Worker: You may be only 25 years old,
but your union dates from the last century.
Labor unions are whorehouses.
Comrades, let’s lynch Séguy!*
[*Georges Séguy, head bureaucrat of the Communist Party-dominated labor union]
Please leave the Communist Party as clean on leaving it as you would like to find it on entering.
Stalinists, your children are with us!
Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s or La Rochefoucauld’s depraved sinner.
He is violent when oppressed, gentle when free.
Conflict is the origin of everything.
(Heraclitus)
If we have to resort to force, don’t sit on the fence.
Be cruel.
Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat.
When the last sociologist has been hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat, will we still have “problems”?
The passion of destruction is a creative joy.
(Bakunin)
A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of total revolution.
The tears of philistines are the nectar of the gods.
This concerns everyone.
We are all German Jews.
We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed,
inventoried, registered, indoctrinated, suburbanized,
sermonized, beaten, telemanipulated, gassed, booked.
We are all “undesirables.”
We must remain “unadapted.”
The forest precedes man, the desert follows him.
Under the paving stones, the beach.
Concrete breeds apathy.
Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.
Beautiful, maybe not, but O how charming: life versus survival.
“My aim is to agitate and disturb people.
I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.”
(Unamuno)
Conservatism is a synonym for rottenness and ugliness.
You are hollow.
You will end up dying of comfort.
Hide yourself, object!
No to coat-and-tie revolution.
A revolution that requires us to sacrifice ourselves for it is Papa’s revolution.
Revolution ceases to be the moment it calls for self-sacrifice.
The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will never compensate for today’s boredom.
When people notice they are bored, they stop being bored.
Happiness is a new idea.
Live without dead time.
Those who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring to everyday reality have a corpse in their mouth.
Culture is an inversion of life.
Poetry is in the streets.
The most beautiful sculpture is a paving stone thrown at a cop’s head.
Art is dead, don’t consume its corpse.
Art is dead, let’s liberate our everyday life.
Art is dead, Godard can’t change that.
Godard: the supreme Swiss Maoist jerk.
Permanent cultural vibration.
We want a wild and ephemeral music.
We propose a fundamental regeneration:
concert strikes,
sound gatherings with collective investigation.
Abolish copyrights: sound structures belong to everyone.
Anarchy is me.
Revolution, I love you.
Down with the abstract, long live the ephemeral.
(Marxist-Pessimist Youth)
Don’t consume Marx, live him.
I’m a Groucho Marxist.
I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires.
Desiring reality is great! Realizing your desires is even better!
Practice wishful thinking.
I declare a permanent state of happiness.
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
Power to the imagination.
Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking.
Imagination is not a gift, it must be conquered.
(Breton)
Action must not be a reaction, but a creation.
Action enables us to overcome divisions and find solutions.
Exaggeration is the beginning of invention.
The enemy of movement is skepticism. Everything that has been realized comes from dynamism, which comes from spontaneity.
Here, we spontane.
“You must bear a chaos in yourself in order to bring a dancing star into the world.”
(Nietzsche)
Chance must be systematically explored.
Alcohol kills. Take LSD.
Unbutton your mind as often as your fly.
“Every view of things that is not strange is false.”
(Valéry)
Life is elsewhere.
Forget everything you’ve been taught. Start by dreaming.
Form dream committees.
Dare! This word contains all the politics of the present moment. (Saint-Just)
Arise, ye wretched of the university.
Students are jerks.
The student’s susceptibility to recruitment as a militant for any cause is a sufficient demonstration of his real impotence.
(enragé women)
Professors, you make us grow old.
Terminate the university.
Rape your Alma Mater.
What if we burned the Sorbonne?
Professors, you are as senile as your culture, your modernism is nothing but the modernization of the police.
We refuse the role assigned to us: we will not be trained as police dogs.
We don’t want to be the watchdogs or servants of capitalism.
Exams = servility, social promotion, hierarchical society.
When examined, answer with questions.
Be young and be quiet (a variation on the more common "Sois belle et tais toi", the classically sexist French version of "Just sit there and look pretty")
Insolence is the new revolutionary weapon.
Every teacher is taught, everyone taught teaches.
The Old Mole of history seems to be splendidly undermining the Sorbonne.
(telegram from Marx, 13 May 1968)
Thought that stagnates rots.
To call in question the society you “live” in, you must first be capable of calling yourself in question.
Take revolution seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.
The walls have ears. Your ears have walls.
Making revolution also means breaking our internal chains.
A cop sleeps inside each one of us. We must kill him.
Drive the cop out of your head.
Religion is the ultimate con.
Neither God nor master.
If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him.
Can you believe that some people are still Christians?
Down with the toad of Nazareth.
How can you think freely in the shadow of a chapel?
We want a place to piss, not a place to pray.
I suspect God of being a leftist intellectual.
The bourgeoisie has no other pleasure than to degrade all pleasures.
Going through the motions kills the emotions.
Struggle against the emotional fixations that paralyze our potentials. (Committee of Women on the Path of Liberation)
Constraints imposed on pleasure incite the pleasure of living without constraints.
The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution.
The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love.
SEX: It’s okay, says Mao, as long as you don’t do it too often.
Comrades, 5 hours of sleep a day is indispensable:
we need you for the revolution.
Embrace your love without dropping your guard.
I love you!!! Oh, say it with paving stones!!!
I“m coming in the paving stones.
Total orgasm.
Comrades, people are making love in the Poli Sci classrooms, not only in the fields.
Revolutionary women are more beautiful.
Zelda, I love you! Down with work!
The young make love, the old make obscene gestures.
Make love, not war.
Love one another.
Whoever speaks of love destroys love.
Down with consumer society.
The more you consume, the less you live.
Commodities are the opium of the people.
Burn commodities.
You can’t buy happiness. Steal it.
See Nanterre and live. Die in Naples with Club Med.
Are you a consumer or a participant?
To be free in 1968 means to participate.
I participate.
You participate.
He participates.
We participate.
They profit.
The golden age was the age when gold didn’t reign.
“The cause of all wars, riots and injustices is the existence of property.”
(St. Augustine)
Happiness is hanging your landlord.
Millionaires of the world unite. The wind is turning.
The economy is wounded — I hope it dies!
How sad to love money.
You too can steal.
“Amnesty: An act in which the rulers pardon the injustices they have committed.”
(Ambrose Bierce)*
[*The definition in Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is actually: “Amnesty: The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”]
Abolish alienation.
Obedience begins with consciousness;
consciousness begins with disobedience.
First, disobey; then write on the walls.
(Law of 10 May 1968)
I don’t like to write on walls.
Write everywhere.
Before writing, learn to think.
I don’t know how to write but I would like to say beautiful things and I don’t know how.
I don’t have time to write!!!
I have something to say but I don’t know what.
Freedom is the right to silence.
Long live communication, down with telecommunication.
You, my comrade, you who I was unaware of amid the tumult, you who are throttled, afraid, suffocated — come, talk to us.
Talk to your neighbors.
Yell.
Create.
Look in front of you!!!
Help with cleanup, there are no maids here.
Revolution is an INITIATIVE.
Speechmaking is counterrevolutionary.
Comrades, stop applauding, the spectacle is everywhere.
Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition. Oppose the spectacle.
Down with spectacle-commodity society.
Down with journalists and those who cater to them.
Only the truth is revolutionary.
No forbidding allowed.
Freedom is the crime that contains all crimes. It is our ultimate weapon.
The freedom of others extends mine infinitely.
No freedom for the enemies of freedom.
Free our comrades.
Open the gates of the asylums, prisons and other faculties.
Open the windows of your heart.
To hell with boundaries.
You can no longer sleep quietly once you’ve suddenly opened your eyes.
The future will only contain what we put into it now.
*
These graffiti are drawn primarily from Julien Besançon’s Les murs ont la parole (Tchou, 1968), Walter Lewino’s L’imagination au pouvoir (Losfeld, 1968), Marc Rohan’s Paris ’68 (Impact, 1968), René Viénet’s Enragés et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations (Gallimard, 1968), and Gérard Lambert’s Mai 1968: brûlante nostalgie (Pied de nez, 1988).
Translated by Ken Knabb, March 1999.
No copyright.
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Vincent
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2003 12:16 PM
To: UB Poetics discussion group
Cc: Brian Kim Stefans [arras.net]; Friends; Christine Murray
Subject: Graffiti/ 1968
Many are saying that the Iraq quagmire will repeat the one of the war in Viet-Nam. When I read these graffiti (below), it's a bit of a mental rub to negotiate the relationship between the present and the era of 1968 - 1974. The seeming nausea of the present has yet to unleash anything comparable to the rush of both possibility (hope) and critique that's operative in the graffiti. Maybe the nausea goes hand in hand with the current depressed economy where the economy in 1968 was robust and supportive of conditions of opposition, imagination, etc. Who knows? The only contradiction to the nausea is that at least here - the Bay Area - my sense is that things are more creatively robust than they have been in a long time, as if to say - in the act of making, and getting together with other makers - creative acts are the most visceral way to say fuck the war and vomit out its viral nausea. Whether new political and social critiques arise simultaneously, I can't say. Seems so dormant since last spring. But maybe as the Bush people are saying about the disconnects between his tax cuts and no new job creation, we're just experiencing "the lag factor." (!!) I bring these grafitti over from a posting on the UK poetry listserv. The attribution is at the bottom. Oh yes, a few of them are retrospectively a little embarrassing, or come across as toys thrown back and forth between the already socially and economically privileged. Such as was also true.
Stephen V
I was emailed a request for more info about that late Ezra Pound poem I mention in the Little Review of his Poems and Translations.
The poem was written for Sherri Martinelli, one of Pound's acolytes at St. Elizabeth's -- more like a pretty girl that he liked to have around, it appears, as she was apparently a terrible artist, kind of proto new-agey, yet he tried to promote her work by getting monographs published, etc. -- whose brother had died.
Anthony Hecht, yes that Anthony Hecht, wrote that sestinas, because of their repetitions, were particularly suitable for elegies -- as chants, drones, etc. -- which I never quite believed since I've never read one that made me think of death or the afterlife, despite their incantatory qualities.
But this little poem, which seems like a collapsed, even gutted, sestina to me, makes Hecht's observations (which I don't think are original to him, and are probably obvious after a reading of the Provencal) make a lot of sense. And now that I think of it, "The Painter" and Elizabeth Bishop's sestina about the grandmother and the kettle, etc., are elegies of sorts.
This poem first appeared in the Antigonish Review of Winter, 1971-1972 -- anyone know anything about that publication? I haven't googled it yet. The line about "Adah Lee" really strikes me as Poe-like, and it's struck me for a while now that the Poe line and the Pound line -- by which I mean their delight in, and success with, compact, redolent lyrics -- are very close.
Prayer for a Dead Brother
May his soul walk under the larches of Paradise
May his soul walk in the wood there
And Adah Lee come to look after him.
Queen of Heaven receive him.
Mother of the Seven Griefs receive him
Mother of the seven wounds receive him
May he have peace in heart.
By a stream like Castalia, limpid,
that runs level with the green edge of its banks,
Mother of Heaven receive him,
Queen of Heaven receive him,
Mother of the Seven Griefs give him Peace.
Out of the turmoil, Mother of Griefs receive him,
Queen of Heaven receive him.
May the sound of the leaves give him peace,
May the hush of the forest receive him.
Please come to the opening of my show on Saturday, Sept 6 at
Brent Sikkema Gallery
530 West 22nd Street
from 6-8 PM
A glorious debauch will follow at
The Blarney Stone Pub
410 8th Ave (between W 30th St and W 31st St)
Corned Beef and Brisket will be served, with alacrity
INVITE EVERYONE
I'm the featured artist on The Iowa Review Web this month, yay:
The Iowa Review Web : Volume 5, Number 4 (September 2003)
There's an interview of me by Giselle Beiguelman, who is...
"a multimedia essayist and web-artist who lives in São Paulo, Brazil, where she was born. She teaches Digital Culture and Literature in the Communication and Semiotics Program at the university there. Since 1998, she has run desvirtual.com, an editorial studio."
She's also the Brazilian digital poets' answer to Madonna and the one you read about in the New York Times last year who created an interactive billboard on a highway near Sao Paolo that project phrases submitted on a website (or something like that). Just Google her and see.
I'm pretty happy with the interview which, though a rambling mess, gets to a lot of good stuff. The new poem sequence that goes with the issue can be linked to just below, right here on FSC, but otherwise, go there to check out my other earlier work.
Sorry to be so self-promo lately but 1) I haven't had much time to write "dispassionate" literary crit of late and 2) nobody likes lit crit anyway, right!
This .pdf was commissioned for the next issue of The Iowa Review Web, who also interviewed me and will run a review of Fashionable Noise, which will go live in September I think.
Here's a brief description of what it is that I sent to TIR:
The final 12-poem sequence of "Pasha Noise: life and contacts," a long poem which was partly inspired by Ezra Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: life and contacts," the poet's satirical "farewell to London," published in 1920.
My "Nineties" is that of the "new economy," my London is New York City (particularly Williamsburg), my Lionel Johnson is Alan Davies, and my haircuts not the pre-Raphaelite locks of a Dante Gabriel Rosetti or Algernon Swinburne but the practical buzz-cut of, oh, Miles Champion? John Cayley? Darren Wershler-Henry?
The earlier part of the poem, written prior to 9/11, deals with more narrative elements, and introduces characters such as Pasha Noise, Tepid Ezine and HVA (Her Videoness Avatar). This latter section was written after those events and thus occasionally evinces a more nostalgic tone.
Coda: The Nineties Tried Your Game, There's Nothing In It
Great, rambling but informative story about my friend Alan Licht in the "Paris Transatlantic" -- he's the guitarist who played during my reading at St. Mark's a few years back. Nate Dorwood has a piece in this issue as well.
Here's a bit from one of my first web poems, Alpha Betty's Chronicles. No particular reason I'm posting it except that 1) nothing new in the shoot, and 2) I wanted to see how it looked in the blog.
The formatting was originally determined by a computer program. I was much under the sway of Charles Bernstein and Dante Piombino's "A Mosaic for a Convergence" at the time -- you can find the link on arras.net.
|
You'll see that there's a seas on, a reason the blackouts shrugged and persisted, diletta ntes a figure of hope
to nobody. That's when you cared an d cash and carried the cigarette charm -ing lighter - the paradise for keepsies. holes in the ceme nt (trying to fathom what your mother meant
matchbook (secret matchbook) contained your picture, my puncture, her wound - p ink elephants.
there is syrup in the milk, there is movement on the perimeter, shogun warrior a nd there is a ring of saliva and there shall be calm in the evenings
we pl ayed injuns
p arables. And easy cutlet and lawn chair.
Freedom is an afterthought, after love popped out of the op en box. He screamed, another talent wasted o n portable fictions. Scram, beat it. |
1. the shattered wrists — wondering how this idiot got here— of your economy— we are almost at the top of the sequence— when the skyline is toward the east—& the hemlines— — that of stars— — I am almost in love privilege brings your shy legs to me—— but only a few of them were named jack—there is a lively one gone awol — to chastise a dog with— — — don’t let me say —umbrellas are my favorite things— clearly holding his breath— to minnesota where several poets died canopy on sloping sundays that joke have again in the simulacral hamptons— IT’S VERY NICE———— for ardor—— — with the
— & there were wallets— —years old, and the page a mile— describing pearls— thoughts of — what you’re saying— at a roadside fruit —county —near germantown— was barely three — pulses along abstractly—— THERE’S TOO MUCH HERE BUT I—basket— windexed green don’t care of — yes, nearly forgot to cough— —policeman when her name was jenny— when the pollen arcade when the I failed to be entered I — enjoyed causation— annoyed —annual events for elected suicides the casement — beneath every —when the— case— entertained—
crew — sill — a friend from a different era— in a galaxy far, far away, said— he liked my jean-paul satre style—to my greasy johnny depp— WHO COULD I LOVE———— or brood— if my youth was this violence— looking throat hands— for another mind— but for the taint of my pleasure— palsied for my blood—— the grapones, pishy pishy all of them— nights—best friend’s catholic — —— book— nationalism’s shotgun — & the salt of my wandering eye on this sister— in last year’s immigrant—I agree— green blue — window temper— 4. drag of tired instincts— THE REVOLUTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS———— with titles right out of christian songbooks circa 1975— disks for millennia— australia—we pledge allegiance to the — metered doses and, of —course, poetry advice columns— several hundred 96-page— preserved on caucasian— will not be televised— but with victuals served up each night— reserved for our guilt——in books of limp poetry— —an entire calendar’s worth of—dispassionate of perennial mature promise— by bombers’ wives in ashtrays deep within the vineyards—of over- with assurances of bought votes —usurping the supplements’ one or two columns— confidence —
—— thus we love— I WOULD SAY THAT WE ARE ALMOST TIRED OF CHRISTMAS—— growing old— when the galaxies were invented— we didn’t mind them, too— somehow brings it all back to miracles— anyway, found a heap of orphans— in the pathways under his heart— rendered opaque— pope— garden, in the— by artless close-captioning — of capital I mean,— letters— alternate universes of late night television— of the rendition — translated at the never tiring from eunoia — from the pauper’s rows of every sentiment, every song—clattering applause —those moments of pure conscience— that goes on stage unrehearsed but that was the day alexander —— head
——— ignore the punctuation of gentlemen— — with auto-matic pleats— who wait in the station— I can’t — EROTISM RHYMES WITH MARGERET— shouting blanks —blue, purple, green— every fashion sunday— corrections made— — to the mob who never had the nerve to ask———this war will never— to the pronunciation of laotians that aggravations of government— future dates with— comedy, & never — portend spoke— she’s lost two sons already for a second helping of physical— afterspirits tastes——destiny — of— the end of
THAT WAS A WAY TO START A POEM———— in 1963— —— in the offices of all the rural bodegas— to ambient salsa musics —when the traveller— as if it were never there——— of god— we barely knew how to use “eggs” and “shoppe”— words— then stopped, he learned how to spell— in the local style—— like a williamsburg elmar gantry— um, the market type— with a cossack for trying to market the good word but this time with promises— a backdrop— of increased penetration— he took a nap— dreaming of floating africa—
magazine dreams EVERY WORD WILL FOLLOW YOU HOME—deep——— you learn— the pleasure of graphemic accompaniment— — you host the seoul olympics— nothing’s lost—for the script of bargaining for that that makes duets of— afterwards, feeling— dispensation— the traumas of this speech are depressed— for finding your host— inspiration— murders among the mundane— center, where— —& pay for the practice suits of the north korean — of flitting family refreshed—but seven miles—— the poets team— but still getting their many books published interested in seeing how they do— keeping your face rolled-up but — further from town — in the— a
or my photographs— —those that you can read about in this issue— — rather than criticism — think, now, — music stand, grape leaves, our learning— I DON’T NEED A LOVER WHO LOOKS LIKE THAT——— with new forms of will — dark— beyond the perimeters of —below the sand, below the ocean— and after that the of a being —severin saw contained— in the flowers of cello notes— depicting the naked couple in several stages erotically entwined— of repose— finding it so much more charming to be—I’d manage this conscience— but for those clothes— to be invented— the celestial occurrence government others or retrieved from the flooded center of prague’s old city— of the environment—— establish a new code— single emotion
THEY SAY YOU HAD AN IDEA—— here— — my arthritic double — that brings it all back to you — buried beneath —the austerity— suggesting a charity— — once or twice is almost a career— “choking”— (in medieval minneapolis they used to call it)— fail — one last time— the fireworks could bystand —quite innocently and watch— one— in collusion with mediocrity— a cultish, ritual —necessity — so slow— you are paralyzed and hiding tracks of the lime sky— fluxus night——— |