from This Journal 10/17/03

"a funny thing: this past week
fyp and this journal found
themselves bloglisted at buffalo's
electronic poetry center. seems
the epc asked mr. nick piombino
of fait accompli for his
poetry bloglinks...
among which my stuff was
listed. this is
kind of funny because i
didn't know mr.
p. had added me to his list...
sometime
ago i was surprised to
find fyp named
under fait accompli's
"these blogs are hot"...
but then i never made
it to his permanent list...
so i just figured i wasn't
really all that hot...
and then whammo
there i am this week...
not only at his place
but also over there in
buffalo...
in the company of some
really sharp writers
and thinkers and
goofballs...

which all raises
the big question...
what the heck
do you want,
murphy?
does this linking
stuff really matter
that much to you?
is yr ego so
starved? aren't you
above all this?
to which i answer:
well, no i guess not...
but i ain't now nor
never will be writing
fyp for to get myself
linked...or known
or famous or...
i'm happy that
somebody
likes it... that much...
however much
that is... but i got no
confusions of grandeur...

now it's getting late on a
friday evening and gbv is
done wailing... i hope
we won the football game...
i bet we did..."
--------------------------





Man consists of two parts,
his mind and his body,
only the body has more fun.

Woody Allen

(This Journal; 10/17)


********

"Organic and Inorganic"

Animals and plants cannot
understand our business,
so wehave denied that they
can understand their own.
What we
call inorganic matter
cannot understand
the animals' and
plants' business,
we have therefore denied
that it can under-
stand anything whatever.

What we call inorganic is
not so really, but the
organisa-
tion is too subtle for
our sense or for any of
those appliances
with which we assist them.
It is deducible however as a
necessity by an exercise of
the reasoning faculties.

Popel looked at glaciers
for thousands of years
before they
found out that ice
was a fluid, so it has
taken them and
will continue to take
them not less before
they see that the
inorganic is not
wholly inorganic."

From “The Notebooks
of Samuel Butler”
Selections arranged
and edited by
Henry Festing Jones

NY EP DUTTON & CO.
1917
*******

from “Adagia”

“The poet seems to confer his identity
on the reader. It is easiest to recognize
this when listening to music- I mean
this sort of thing: the transference.”

“The collecting of poetry from one’s
experience as one goes along is not the
same thing as merely writing poetry.”

“All poetry is experimental poetry.”

“Politics is the struggle for existence.”

“A poem need not have a meaning and
like most things in nature often does not
have.”

“Poetry is a response to the daily
necessity of getting the world right.”

Opus Posthumous
Wallace Stevens
Edited by Milton J. Bates,
Knopf, NY 1989