Tsunami Relief {click here}

Distribution Automatique, 1980

Distribution Automatique

I made this photocollage in 1980.
I happened to be living here in
Park Slope at the time, on Garfield
Place, right
around the corner from where
I live now,

Soon after, I was invited by
Susan Bee to show this
collage at the Wordworks Show
at P. S. 122, which included
Susan, Johanna Drucker and
others.

At the top you can see a small metal
box, which probably contained hypodermic
needles. Other collage elements are
pasted inside the box, top and bottom.
This little box was found on the ground
in Marrakesh, Morocco,
where I visited for a few
months in 1969 (not long after
making my first collage, shown
below). Many of the elements in
the collage were from magazines I
had saved from the hourse I lived
in as a child in Bay Ridge in the late 1950's.
These were turn of the century French
photomagazines.

The title, *Distribution Automatique* anticipates,
in a sense, today's weblogs. I was exploring
the interelationship of various kind of media,
and imagining a future telecommunication environment
that encompasses, intercombines and transmits media and time periods
by means of "automatic" distrilbution. Not
long ago, Google decided to post on the web all copyright
free books that might be made available.
The collage contains pieces of film, recording
tape, photos, a section
of a vinyl record, and other materials.

Poetry In The Air

Spaceship Tumblers {click here}
Poetry readings online edited by Tony Tost. This first broadcast includes
Tony Tost, Laura Carter, Aaron McCollough, Marcus Slease, Zachary Schomberg,
Matthew Henrikson, Chris Vitiello, Ken Rumble, Adam Clay, Lane Phillips,
Brent Cunningham.

Brief audio posts on quick-load mp3's (you don't have to close
the window to play them). A real treat!
*************************************************
Word-turner

With fiction, occasionally you come across a
page turner (like Grant Bailie's *Cloud 8* discussed
here recently); and with poetry you sometrimes,
gratefully, come across a "word-turner". Such
is the case with this new piece
*Citation without source* from
XZENTRICK LIBRETTI
(Alex Cumberbatch) {click here}

Ululations (Nada Gordon) mourns the losses due to the tsunami.

When I got home tonight, Toni reminded me
of - and showed me- the print we have
had hanging for many years, *Behind the Waves, Off The Coast
of Kanagawa*, from *Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji Series*
by Hokusai. On the way home, very sadly reading about the
reported 68,000 dead; and the fears of coming disease threatening to
vastly increase the dimensions of this terrible disaster.

After Toni showed me the Hokusai print,
something told me to open *ululations* (above).
******************************************************
Extra Extra
{click here} reporting on-site regarding the tsunami (and other things)
from Sri Lanka, is in the running for best blog in the country...

thanks to Twists and Turns {click here}
for the link...

r.i.p. Susan Sontag


wood s lot {click here}, as always, an excellent resource,
offers some material regarding her crucial contributions.

After a year that can only be decribed as a cultural tsunami,
part of the world is now left devastated by an actual one.
We can only hope 2005 will be a better year-
and that ain't asking for much...
*******************************************
If the Truth Be Told

Speaking of essential blogs,
Caterina {click here}
quotes Charles Baxter on "deniability" in contemporary life...think lie,
think Nixon...

Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound in Portofino, about 1966

Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound in Portofino, about 1966
Originally uploaded by fait accompli.

Rapallo, 1968

A photo of me holding my first collage,
taken in Rapallo in the fall of 1968.
My second collage is leaning against
the wall behind me to the left

It's not a snowy Christmas, but it is a
beautiful day...hope all you loyal
and new *fait accompli* readers have
a very happy holiday...Chanukah, or
the Winter Solstice (my choice) or
whatever guise you celebrate the
season.

I can't begin to thank you enough for
your links, your comments, your visits
and your daily presence!

"I shall have to stop priding myself on being unable to
find pleasure in the things ordinary men enjoy- high days and
holidays; the fun of being one in a crowd; family affection
and so on. What I am really incapable of is enjoying out-of-
the-ordinary pleasures- solitude and a sense of mastery, and
if I am not very good at sharing the sentiments of the average
man it is because my artless assumption that I was capable of
something better has rusted my natural reactions, which used
to be perfectly normal. In general we feel rather pleased with
ourselves when we do not enjoy common pleasures, believing
this means that we are "capable of better things." But in-
capacity in the one case does not presuppose capacity in the
other. A man who is incapable of writing nonsense may be
equally incapable of writing something pleasing.

We hate the thing we fear, the thing we know may be
true and may have a certain affinity with ourselves, for each
man hates himself. The most interesting, the most fertile qualities
in every man are those he most hates in himself and in others,
for hatred includes every other feeling- love, envy, ignorance,
mystery, the urge to know and to possess. It is hate that causes
suffering. To overcome hatred is to take a step towards self-
knowledge, self-mastery, self-justification, and consequently
towards an end of suffering. When we suffer, it is always our
own fault."

Cesare Pavese
29th September, 1938
*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company, 1961

Pity Party on the Misery Train

Loss has its circuit, its regular travels
here it comes now chugging by
warm white smoke coming out of its stack
just in time it is chugging back
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
its got awful news for you
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
lament and sorrow right on track
there is the whistle of the 8:13
just how miserable have you been?
not enough torture and do not know why?
train can promise a fair supply
buy your ticket, find your seat
tap your foot to the hellish beat
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
tons of bad news just for you
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
get your whole life on the rack
warm white smoke coming out its stack
listen up it is coming back
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
jump right on you will feel so blue
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
if lament and sorrow is what you lack

I accept comparison and laughter, love and diatribe, doubt
and fecundity as my daily diet. I can't reject the bitter
taste of disappointment either. To avoid this compulsively
may lead to paralysis. What we remember best is what
we sensed was the actuality of the situation. But this doesn't
nullify the other thoughts and soundings. There were
innumerable small venturings that led to the knock on
the door. There were moments of strangeness too before
the smile of recognition. This happened so many times it
became like breathing. But the first few times seemed
infinitely long. Once your mind has segmented the leap
into human strides the abyss has measure if still as
daunting. Even chaos may get less forbidding as its
features (ever changing) start announcing themselves
as provoking a recognizable feeling or constellation of
reactions. The giddy dizziness will finally relent and the
familiar landscape will once again reveal itself. Only one
or more elements have been added with this sighting.
Each round of lostness and foundness leaves its own
set of markings on the map we make inside and constantly
consult. Like any map, the more it's shared with others
the more useful it becomes. If they ignore it, don't let
that stop you from proceeding on your quest. After all,
it's just a map.


from; *Writing and Persevering*
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

The Tao of Reading, continued

Every once in awhile you see a movie or read a book
you find yourself thinking about much longer than usual.
*Cloud 8* by Grant Bailie is that kind of book.
I know I will reread it very soon; I need a little
time before reading it again, so I can soak up
all the metaphysical and experiential nuances that
keep occuring to me since reading it the first time,
a few days ago. I read it breathlessly, greedily,
anxiously, joyfully in one night and one
morning

James Broadhurst wakes up after a fatal
car accident to find himself in an afterlife
just as tedious, boring and uninspiring,
if not more so, than his life had been. He
is assigned a boring roommate, is drafted into
a boring job and disovers his boss to be a spoiled
hypocrite. His escapes consist of alcohol and television, but
television in the aferlife consists of watching
all the endlessly tedious details of the daily
lives of all the people he loved and who, from
one degree or another, cared about him. Chief
among these is his father, who he disovers
was a much more caring person than he ever
realized during his actual life.

The most incredible thing about this book is
the way Grant Bailie forces, or beguiles the reader into
confronting the experiential evidence that the most fascinating
thing about life is the way we think about
it, is our thoughts and interpretations themselves. Everything
"out there" to learn from is right at hand; your
noisy upstairs neighbor might be an angel
in disguise; the guy sitting next to you on
a barstool might rescue you from an eternity
of terror for a night; "whatever gets you through
the night is alright," as John Lennon put it.

This book deserves to be a movie; it has exactly
the same attributes to offer us, potentially, as Bill
Murray's hilarious, haunting
and achingly profound, *Groundhog Day."
Another resonant precedent (you youngsters
may not have seen this one)
It's A Wonderful Life
{click here}.

Listen up, producers: We need this movie!

Here's an interview with Grant Bailie; scroll
down to find a link to one of his stories:
Smoking with Grant Bailie {click here}

from Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's nonlinear poetry {click here} December 19, 2004

from *Twenties * by Jackson Mac Low
(Roof, 1991)

from #38
"Flatulent ridicule zero degree
fledgeling fled/rinse mode marker
tea Lorca mobile float/region misuse
tenor penitent/lemon parameter"

from #39
"Billikins tragedian/light-year falsification
dilatory swagger/penal meter partner
link phalanstery brevity encompassment
tango sweetmeat petal tingle"

The Tao of Reading

I won't go into all the tedious details, but
our new abode has brought along with it
a plethora of challenges, let us say, in the
current parlance. One of them you might be
able to help us with (by signing a web-based
petition at
stop the expansion {click here}). Poly Prep,
a local private school, wants to build a 4
story building,next to and marring the time-travel
effect of, the gorgous Landmarked 19th Century
mansion it is housed in, one
of the key reasons why we moved here
(you don't have to live in Park Slope,
or Brooklyn, to sign the petition- the idea
is to safeguard the landmarked status of
the neighborhood).

Anyway, despite some of the drawbacks of the
apartment, which nonetheless
has some very nice qualities,
I still love Park Slope. Prospect
Park, across the street, is much more
rural in feeling than manicured Central
Park, and best of all, the main branch,
at Grand Army Plaza, of the Brooklyn Public
Library, is about a 5 minute walk away.
I've taken to endlessly browsing the fiction section.
My previous visit's booty- which was included in
a list published here not long ago,
netted a page turner titled *Mooch*
by Dan Fante. Yesterday's expedition
led to (among others I might get to by and by)
a nifty excellent read titled *Cloud 8* by Grant Bailie.
Of course, even though it was published
by*ig pubishing* in Brooklyn, because it's good
there are lots of reviews online; I just
love the fact that the mainstream media
is not the place to look for opinions on
anything anymore- New York Times
is no longer "over if you want it"- it
is now "over, in case you haven't noticed."

Here's a review of the wonderful *Cloud 8*

Flavah reviewers {click here}...
Hmm... I wonder if anybody's bought the
film rights yet- it would make
a fun movie- especially without any
"stars"- except for, of course,
Parker Posey {click here},
and, even though the book opens up with the main character dying
in a car accident at age 35,
Wally Shawn {click here}
who should narrate the whole film in a voice-over.
******************************************************
Missing Tom Beckett already?
Try to console yourself with this
interview from
Jacket 25 {click here}

Coming to a Theatre Near You



fait accompli gets around (on Yahoo){click here}

*********************************
The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging


interconnected.org...{click here}

*fait accompli* notebook quotation on "linear thought"
included (#366) in this interesting, heterogenous
ongoing selection of links

"Love the art, poor as it may be,
which you have learned, and be
content with it; and pass through the
rest of your life like one who has
entrusted to the gods with his whole
soul all that he has, making yourself
neither the tyrant nor the slave
of anyone."

Marcus Aurelius
adapted from the translation
of Goerge Long
Shabhala
1991

It comes down to little specks of things. Even
the smallest particle of time can be crucial. Like
an accordion, life expands and contracts.

For example, a bit of a lesson might be gained in
experiencing a mistake. Such contractions and
expansions emit, over time, a considerable
amount of energy.

I wonder what the relationship is between such
tiny specks or particles of things and the constant
expansion of time which is called "forever."
Except as an idea, whatever forever is can only
be understood in relation to the tiniest portion
of time.

"Anything might be transformative if you would
only allow yourself to complete it." He had come
to distrust any kind of explanation. Or is that a way
to talk about what you might talk about
in everyday conversation.

For example, some sentences may be incomplete,
in verbal terms. But the nuances of a person's gestures
and tone of voice- not to speak of years or
even decades of exchange...

Always, some things are too much to say,
or too little. Then, more and more things are
too much to say or too little.

The glances may become embarassing. More and
more, and eventually you turn to your violin.

You take your violin in your hands and play it.
As you play it, you're creating the melody. You've
put on a tape recorder. Unbelievably, you realize
as you are playing that you are actually creating
music. As a result, later, when you put it down,
you suspect very strongly that you'll come back
to it.

As you are playing, you realize that the opening
chords were very important. You go back and
listen to them. You go on your way after them,
but now and then you come back to them.

To know how to do something is to know
what the constituants of the doing might
be. There might be many different kinds of
steps, but there will always be steps.

Sometimes there is an apprehension that
precedes the steps. The step is visualized,
imagined, and anxiety creeps in. On some
level, however slightly, danger has been
realized, or rather, recognized. there might
be hardly any expectable order in the
events that precede the steps.

*

The piece we listened to this afternoon
is the type we may call expansive, or
ever-expanding. Constantly pushing on,
but calmly, the oboe guides the violins
to places where they did not expect
to go. By means of a kind of gentle
layering, or playful challenging, the violins.
those so sweetly sighing sopranoes, echo
or announce their companions, the
woodwinds. The ending leads to
nothing more astonishing, or tragic,
than a nap. But such a lyrical, seductive
flight, that all memories and words have
vanished, both happy and said. (Debussy's
Prelude, on the radio, the second hello
from him today).

Notebook: 8/8/98
********************************************
Saturday, Dec 18


AT THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB

Fall / Winter 2004
http://www.bowerypoetry.com/
308 BOWERY, JUST NORTH OF HOUSTON
SATURDAYS FROM 4 - 6 PM
$5 admission goes to support the readers

JESSE SELDESS and JENA OSMAN
Jesse Seldess lives in Chicago, where he edits Antennae magazine, co-curates the Discrete Reading Series (www.lavamatic.com/discrete) and works in social services for the elderly. Recent poems have appeared or are soon to appear in Crayon, Conundrum, Kiosk, Traverse, Kenning, and First Intensity. Jesse's chapbook, Who Opens, was recently printed by Milwaukee's Bronze Skull Press. Jena Osman's most recent book of poetry is An Essay in Asterisks, published by Roof Books. Her previous book The Character was published by Beacon Press. She co-edits the journal Chain with Juliana Spahr and directs the Creative Writing Program at Temple University.
********************************************************************************************

"Don't be disgusted, don't give up, don't be impatient
if you do not carry out entirely conduct based in every
detail upon right principles; but after a fall return again,
and rejoice if most of your actions are worthier of human
character. Love that to which you go back, and don't
return to Philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as a
man with sore eyes to the sponge and salve, as another to a
poultice, another to a fomentation. For so you will show that
to obey Reason is no great matter but rather that you will
find rest in it. Remember too that philosophy wills nothing
else than the will of your own nature, whereas you were
wlling some other thing not in acccord with Nature. For what is
sweeter than this accord? Does not pleasure overcome us just
by sweetness? Well, see whether magnanimity, freedom,
simplicity, consideration for others, holiness, are not sweeter;
for what is sweeter than wisdom itself when you bear in
mind the unbroken current of all things of the faculty of
understanding and knowledge?"

Meditations V
#9
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (AD 121-180)
translated by A.H.L. Farquharson
Everyman's Library
1946, 1992

Verse (the print edition) celebrates its
20th Anniversary with an issue packed
with familiar writers and poets
You can order now for a special blogger price
Verse {click here}
*******************************

"Well it's awake/ before the take
Zeno gloried in/a whacked tack clacked
Doris humped a/fiddles in Fidelio/
Factors o'vagabond nestle coves

Warrant tormentor /flavor glaze
reaching for a talisman tackle
the leaders bunched fickle
whooee Lampman cracked

Wheedle/treadle/Wheatena knee
zing/slighted the estuary maze
read a particular intention in th'outage
fractious/factitious"

from *Twenties* by Jackson Mac Low
(Roof, 1991)

This book is still available, and I can't recommend
it too highly. Mac Low's brilliance in working with
sound and meaning is made clear by this witty passage,

*Not Yet*, published below, was also posted on the collaborative poetry blog
as/is {click here},
where it received some very much appreciated comments,
as well as a collaborative poem-response from Jordan Stempleman.
Please check it out!

**
Jordan Stempleman, who lives in Tucson, AZ, has opened a blog,
called Growing Nation {click here}.
Charles Alexander, publisher of Chax Press, makes a cameo
appearance in a saga of technical frustration worthy of
*Zen In The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*...plus pieces on
Oppen and Robin Blaser.
Also, more recently, a memorial poem to Jackson Mac Low:
Growing Nation {click here}

**
Chax, by the way, happens to be the publisher of my recent chapbook, *Hegelian Honeymoon*
(scroll down sidebar for details).
Chax Press {click here}

*Jacket* is just out. This Issue- #25 -is packed with interesting sounding stuff:
Jacket {click here}

Ming of the Periplum {click here}
An index of avant-garde sites, publishers, artists, writers, et. al.
Thanks for including *fait accompli*!
****************************************
LITERATURE NATION by
Maria Damon and Miekal And- Reviewed by Tom Hibbard {click here}
This is a very rich essay about an excellent book that was first presented
in an online version still available at
a network distrituted text {click here}

Not Yet

The desert of time between each poem, each insight, each plateau of understanding.

The steps towards the poem feel like small epiphanies,
but are not yet the poem; brief shimmers of hope the
poem may still come, while the weary shadowy downpour of doubts continue to dog my path.

Silence encourages me; no discontinuance, no refusal, no
critique, no patronizing, no flattery, no false hope.

The failure to conceive the line captivates me; its remoteness, its beckoning closeness reveals a seductive
movement that stirs me, awakens me, stimulates me;
trapped, frozen, eluded on the verge of something endless, I am wholly alert; ready to pounce.

Is it that the possible, even the improbable but still conceivable, at the moment of composition, offers possibilities so much more appealing than the immediate data of experience- the sensible material for the poem? Is this the appeal of the poetry of place, for example, or the poetry of time:
“I wanted to say it’s ok
the dark sky is the way
it is anyway. Night
keeps its own counsel,
muttering to itself in the form
of shadows.”

Is this the attraction of the poetry of thought; i.e.
“the struggle for the poem is the poetry” or
“it’s beautiful to have the time to think”?

Oh, how I miss the idea of pure poetry, I miss it
but I do not want it back; the same way I miss
the poetry of pure words, the poetry of pure
thought, the poetry of pure detail,
the poetry of pure meditation, the poetry of pure revolution,
the poetry of pure nonsense; will I never learn to
miss (let go of) the poetry of poetry, the
poetry of the thought of poetry,
that still continues to beckon, almost
like the surprisingly shocking, patient weave of dawn?

Jackson Mac Low: A Few Images

I met Jackson Mac Low in 1967. We both participated
in an anti-war event, blocking the Whitehall Street
Induction Center in November of that year. I found
nyself in a jail cell with Allen Ginsberg, who I had
met a couple of years earlier. I asked Allen if he
knew Jackson Mac Low, whose poetry I had been
avidly reading and researching for the past few months.
As we left jail together, Allen pointed to someone walking
up the street ahead of us. "There he is," Allen said. I
ran up to Jackson and introduced myself. He sent me
a copy of *The Pronouns*, an early, stunningly beautiful serial
poem, written as instructions for dancers, which
has been performed many times, which he had published
himself, in mimeographed form. It has since been republished
a couple of times. By the way, I came back from Berkeley
in late November to attend the trial, only to learn the case was
dismissed, since it was decided we could not really have
been blocking the Center at 7 o'clock in the morning!

Another memory of Jackson is that he was a frequent performer
in Charlotte Moorman's avant-garde festivals in the late 60's
and early 70's.. I and a number of
my friends were also invited to perform in a few of them. An early
one took place on the Staten Island Ferry. I found Jackson in
a corner on the ferry, playing his music on an instrument he
had invented.

Charlotte Moorman {click here}

Jackson Mac Low will surely come to be known as one of the
greatest seminal artists of our era. Due to his convictions about
ego-lessness he was different from the avidly self-promoting artists
and poets of today. His influence is pervasive but as yet remains largely
undocumented and untracked. This is surely one of the reasons for his
constant tendency to carefully date and document his own works,
as perhaps he was conscious of this situation, contributing to his
relative obscurity, which was largely deliberate, and no doubt somewhat frustrating to him.

Despite Jackson's ubiquitous presence throughout his life in
experimental and avant-garde circles (Fluxus, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,
etc), Jackson's humility, modesty, and unique ideas, kept him
surrounded in mystery; an all the more intriguing figure whose voluminous,
yet consistenty superb work will offer much for critics and art historians to unravel.

I can't recommend too highly, if you are unfamiliar with Jackson's
work, to check out the CD he did with his wife and artistic collaborator,
Anne Tardos titled *Open Secrets*.
*********************************************************************
Another giant of the New York late 20th Century avant-garde
is Hannah Weiner. Just pubished, Patrick Durgin has created
An Introduction to Hannah Weiner's
Early and Clairvoyant Journals {click here}
********************************************************************
Barrett Watten on Jackson Mac Low {click here}
********************************************************************
Wood s Lot on Mac Low {click here}
*******************************************************************
Tim Peterson on Mac Low {click here}

I have never encountered any person
of more intense internal confrontation
with the reality of social experience on the
one hand, provoking a concomitant sense
of personal political responsibility,
and the desire and ability to focus continuously
on the reality of internal thought and
experience, at the other pole,
as it is or could be encompassed in or by
forms of verbal expression.
A powerful current connected these poles
in the writing of Jackson Mac Low, sparking
an astoundingly continuous stream
of beautiful, haunting, complexly evocative and inventive poetic objects.
All of this from a person of incomparable modesty and humility,
yet unmatchable humor and vivacity, particularly in performance of
his own or others' poetic or artistic works.

Although his works will surely forever continue to nourish, his human
presence will be sorely missed and its memory cherished by all who knew or were touched by him.

"Time will be wasted
but honesty
whether in light from an Argend lamp
or arc light
or Aufklarung
is the
best
policy?

Tragedy.

Idiocy.

Honesty?

An aureole springs around a formerly hated form.

You must stay alive."

Jackson Mac Low
born September 12, 1922
died December 8, 2004

[from 14th Light Poem: For Frances Witlin- 10 August 1962]

(Black Sparrow Press, 1968)

Rest In Peace John Lennon
b. Oct. 9, 1940 d. Dec 8, 1980
**********************************
Paranoia and
Pre-Emption: Is the Bush Administration Certifiable?...from *Counterpunch* {click here}
**********************************

Jackson Mac Low, born September 12, 1922,
a great poet and close friend, died this morning.

Nada Gordon's Automatic Wisdom & Poetry Factory

"So strike up the sarod,
fellas, and wiggle your fngers on the skins, drummer boys.
Like you, I hear it all technically, a mountain of rouge
on a pale imitation, wallowing in the anemic spirit of time..."

Ululations {click here}

It's all in the perception, folks, and if you were Nada Gordon
you would find poetry anywhere, even in lowly spam.

Go on, let Nada make you smile with your
Monday morning coffee or tea!
(Don't forget to scroll UP for more,
once you get there.)
********************************************************************
Hey, *fait accompli* is getting around...
flarf this!
{click here}
********************************************************************
Jack Kimball {click here} is right,
The blogs are heating up! I love it when I want to link to every blog I read.
Here, Mike Snider serves up a provocative questionnaire on
Ashbery, and Jonathan Mayhew takes the serve head on
and slams back in the comments section. Check it out.
Mike Snider's Formal Blog & Sonnetarium {click here}

Pondering what do do about the accumulation of
archives, on *R/ckets and S/tries*, Allen Bramhall contemplates the lengthening shadow of history and "enters the lists." And feeling
the need to chime in on the issue of smarm, a comment or two from me.
Right now on


Tributary {click here}
*********************************
Jean-Luc Godard's superb *Notre Musique*
has a couple more days at Manhattan's Film Forum {click here}
Godard {click here}

Last night we saw the Romare Bearden retrospective at the
Whitney {click here}
Don't miss this terrific show! Except for those of Kurt Schwitters,
these are the most beautiful examples of the art of collage
I've ever seen.

from Romare Bearden online:
Romare Bearden {click here}
click here
click here
click here
click here
click here
click here
click here
click here
*****************************************************************************
Holiday poetry shopping at Small Press Distribution
from Kathleen Miller at Small Press Distribution:
“Small Press Distribution (SPD), the country’s only nonprofit literary book distributor, opens its warehouse for its annual holiday Open House on Saturday, December 4, 12-4 pm, at 1341 7th Street (off Gilman Street) in Berkeley. The free event will highlight the conjunction of gardening, writing, and writing about gardening. The guest of honor will be Cole Swensen, whose most recent book of poetry, Goest, is a finalist for the National Book Award. The Open House also offers open-stack browsing on our 13,000+ titles, a 10-50% discount on all books, and ample free food and drink.”

Heathens in Heat asks the question: "But why write if you have nothing to tell us?"

Like a hand on the shoulder from a friend, a knock on the door,
a mumble or a grunt, if it is coming from someone I like or
care about, a message without much content might be very
welcome indeed. I am glad to hear from them quite often, even
if what they have to say is not that specific. This is because
when they do have something to say, it means something to me.

With people I don't care for, often they can say the most
fascinating things, the most useful information, they
might be brilliant but I still don't want to hear from them.
I just wish they would be quiet or go away.

It's people who know how to llisten that keep me interested
in the long run. What they have to say is resonant with the world,
not just with themselves.
**************************
Speaking of friends chiming in, Tim Peterson continues the discussion here on
Mappemunde {click here}

An odd thing about human beings is that
they cannot truly rest until they've done
everything they can.





Notebook: 8/22/91
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

"The spectacle must deny history, because history
proves that laws are nothing, whereas process and
struggle are all. The spectacle is the reign of an eternal
present that claims to be history's last word. Under
Stalinism, it took the form of a systematic manipulation
and rewriting of the past. In countries where the diffuse
spectacular system holds sway, by contrast the mechanism
is subtler. To begin with, it eliminates all opportunities
for people to share experiences without intermediaries
or to recognize themselves in their own actions and in the
effects of these actions. To complete the disappearance
of historical intelligence creates socially atomized individuals
with no choice but to contemplate the seemingly unalterable
progression of blind forces. All those faculties that might
allow individuals to perceive the contrast between the fasifications
wrought by the spectacle and earlier forms are likewise eradicated."

*Guy Debord* by Anselm Jappe
University of California Press, 1999
***********************************************************************
"There can be no freedom apart from activity, and within the spectacle activity is nullified — all real activity having been forcibly channeled into the global construction of the spectacle. Thus, what is referred to as a “liberation from work,” namely the modern increase in leisure time, is neither a liberation of work itself nor a liberation from the world shaped by this kind of work. None of the activity stolen by work can be regained by submitting to what that work has produced."

Guy Debord


The Society of The Spectacle by Guy Debord (Complete Text) {click here}*******************************************************************
UbuWeb | UbuWeb Papers

Ubu Web-Guy Debord's Comments {click here}



Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (February-April 1988)
Guy Debord

VII.
"With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. For every imbecility presented by the spectacle, there are only the media's professionals to give an answer, with a few respectful rectifications or remonstrations. And they are hardly extravagant, even with these, for besides their extreme ignorance, their personal and professional solidarity with the spectacle's overall authority and the society it expresses makes it their duty, and their pleasure, never to diverge from that authority whose majesty must not be threatened. It must not be forgotten that every media professional is bound by wages and other rewards and recompenses to a master, and sometimes to several; and that every one of them knows he is dispensable. "
*********************************************************
*Note
A good contemporary illustration of the above took place last night
when Frank Rich-who is enlightened enough to know better-
on Chris Matthews MSNBC's *Hardball*
revealed his pathetic compliance with mainstream media's wimpout
on widespead demands for investigations concerning possible
vote count manipulations- Rich, in line with the media armies,
dismissed all such claims as "blogger conspiracty theories."
New York Times is Over If You Want It!

"Most importantlly, however, I still feel like there is a lot
of talk about poetry on blogs, but not a lot about *poems*.

(from) cosmopoetica {click here}
****************************************************

"Politics is itself increasingly enclosed in the
media world either by adapting to its codes
and rules or by attempting to change the
rules of the game by creating and imposing
new cultural codes. In both cases, politics
becomes an application of the hypertext, since
the text simply reconfigures itself to the new codes.

Yes, there is life beyond the network society; in
the fundamentalist, cultural communes that reject
dominant values and build autonomously the sources
of their own meaning; sometimes around self-constructed,
alternative utopias; more often, around the transcendent
truths of God, Nation, Family, Ethnicity, and Territoriality.
Thus, the planet is not subsumed entirely by the
network society, as the industrial society never extended
to the totality of humankind. Yet the networking logic of
instrumentality has already llinked up dominant
segments of societies in most areas of the world around
the structural logic embodied in the new, global, networked
economy; in the flexible forms of individualized work; and
in the culture of real virtuality, inscriptied in the electronic
hypertext.

The networking logic, rooted in informationalism, has
also transformed our practice of space and time.
The space of flows, characteristic of the network
society, links up distant locales around the shared
functions and meanings on the bases of electronic
circuits and fast transportation corridors, while isolating
and subduing the logic of experience embodied in
the sphere of places. A new form of time, which I
call timeless time, emerges out of sytemic trends
to compress chronologicall time to its smallest
possible expression (as in split-second financial
transactions) as well as to blur time sequences,
as can be observed in the twisting of professional
career patterns away from the predictable progression
of the organization man, now replaced by the flexible woman."

*The Hacker Ethic* by Pekka Himanen
(Random House, 2001)
translated by Anselm Hollo and Pekka HImenen
(Himenen works at the University of Helsinki and
the University of California at Berkeley)

[posted late due to Blogger being slow…]


Good Morning! First things first...
Coffee, and....

"Rewrite a substance, prove it has thoughts. Up cracks &
parts accorded to my birthday arranging form. prime hour, behold.
He seize your map, you sea; His lustre’s all Mont Blanc have looked & constructed these three parts."
(from )The Red Dragon and the Black Beast {click here}



"Delimited strike
on the back of the mouth
from my moving reference that has no spirit.
My country has no spirit."
(from Blue Revisions {click here}

"I do believe that poetry has a peculiar power to access some kind of collective unconscious by opening up the writer/reader's singular unconscious through/in language and is therefore worthy of reverence. "
(from) Cahiers de Corey {click here}

"The funny pages that want to get into your pants."
The Jimside {click here}

Baltimore Chronicle: Did Bush Lose The Election {click here}

[Link published with author's permission]

Blog Irony


With all that has been said, still all has not been said.

notebook: 10/19/91
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)


(This is the aphorism I've wanted to post
since yesterday, but Blogger has been
down until now).

Hey There Boston People- You Won The Series and Now You
Get A Great Double Feature:

Peter Gizzi and David Shapiro at Tim Peterson's

Analogous Series {click here}

Books and Company, Part II

If interested, please scroll down
for the first part of this
post. In the area of book gathering,
this Thanksgiving gave me a lot
to be thankful for. It's a highly
varied list, and here's some more:

Rodney Koeneke, *Rouge State*,
Pavement Saw Press, 2003
"Impurity's the watch word here;
you get that the minute you step/
off the boat"

Bob Perelman, *Ten to One:
Selected Poems*, Wesleyan,
1999
"I do not believe poetry and
prose will continue seven years
longer"

Gilbert Sorrentino, *The Moon
In Its Flight*, Coffee House, 2004
'Consider the young, reasonably
well-mannered men who killed so
many people on September 11th.
There they are, as unremarkable,
as sadly ordinary as any representative
American one can conjure up..."

Edward Bellamy, *Looking Backward:
2000-1887* (1888, Signet classic, 2000)

"To borrow a phrase which was often used
in your day, we should not consider life
worth living if we had to be surrounded by a
population of ignorant, boorish, coarse, wholly
uncultivated men and women..."

*New Worlds*, edited by Michael Moorcock,
Thunder's Mouth Press, 1983, 2000
Science fiction and speculative essay
anthology including Thomas
M. Disch, Brian W.Aldiss, Norman Spinrad,
J.G. Ballard, Daphne Castell

"Certainly Nazi society seems strangely
prophetic of our own-- the same maximizing
of violence and sensation, the same alphabets
of unreason and the fictionalizing of experience."
(JG Ballard, from *Alphabets of Unreason*; first'
published in 1969)


Paul West, *The Immensity of the Here
and Now: a novel of 9.11* (Voyant, 2003)
"When I at last lose consciousness, it will
not be to regain it...I am a haunted man,
victim of appalling dreams, both night
and day variety."

*Lucid Dreams in 30 Days: The Creative
Sleep Program*, St Martin's Griffin, 1989
by Keith Harry, PHD and Pamela
Weintraub "Then quietly say to yourself,
*from now on, I'll remember my dreams."

*The Portable Boog Reader*, edited by
David A. Kirschenbaum, Boog Literature,
2000. Poetry anthology, includes:
Lee Ann Brown (her photo, by Allen Ginsberg
is on the cover), Bruce Andrews, Anselm
Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Allison Cobb,
Katie Degentesh, Rob Fitterman, Ed Friedman,
Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Mitch Highfill, Bob Holman,
Rachel Levitsky, Lisa Jarnot, Andrew Levy, Lisa Lubasch,
Kimberly Lyons, Dan Machlin, Eileen Myles,
Julie Patton, Matthew Rohrer, Kim Rosenfeld,
Douglas Rothschild, Eleni Sikelianos, Chris Stroffolino,
Gary Sullivan, - and these are only the poets
I know!- many others.

Paul Levinson, *The Pixel Eye* (Tor, 2003)
"A cold November wind stalked Central Park....
In the past 24 hours I'd been propositioned
by a hologram working literally underground
for the feds, and a make=believe scientist
who said she really worked for some *uber*
ACLU."

Alberto Moravia, *Contempt*, translated
by Angus Davidson, (New York Review Books,
1999) "'Well, Freud will serve us as a guide
through this interior landscape of Ulysses,
not Berard with his maps and his philology
which explains nothing...'"

Rainer Maria Rilke, *Sonnets to Orpheus*
translated by Edward Snow (Northpoint,
2004)

"Breathing, you invisible poem!
World-space in pure, continuous interchange
with my own being, Equipoise
in whch I rhythmically transpire."

Jonathan Letham, *Amnesia Moon*,
(Harcourt Brace, 1995)

"Nah, I got a problem with The Man- all that
dream-stuff doesn't work on me. I'm
immune, got a built-in bullshit protector.
I used to live in California..."

Books and Company

was the name of a bookshop, gone long ago, housed
by the Whitney Museum, and then heartlessly
thrown aside. Its passing was mourned by innumerable
writers; it has never been replaced, not by a long
shot.

I always liked the name of that store, because, in a
way, books *are* company, and the combination
is unbeatable. By that I mean, hanging out with
friends and family who you exchange books and
talk about them with.

The aforementioned visits, in combination with a
trip to the Brooklyn Public Library, has yielded
several huge stacks of books, a list of which I
am about to share with you. Don't ask me why,
and don't ask me why I blog: that's a conversation
for another day. Today it is raining, things are
relatively inert in Blogland (I've read Blue Revisions {click here},and I've read quickly through DagZine's {click here}interesting piece about Michael Davidson, and I'm
looking forward to catching up on today's blogposts later-especially
wood s lot {click here} on Blake,
and the latest conversations on Okir {click here}
and p- ramblings {click here}-
and many other favorites, of course. Checking my
own and other bloggers' bloglink crush lists always
leads to interesting discoveries-while the hours melt away...

The first book on the list,
Dan Fante's *Mooch* (Canongate,
2000) is one of the best
short novels I've read in a long
time, reminiscent of Hubert Selby and
the movie *Leaving Las Vegas*, I
read it in one long sitting and
one short sitting last night
and this morning. An addicitve
page turner. But the rest of
the books on this list I haven't completely
read yet. Some are long shots,
indeed.

Robert Sheckley's
*Xolotl* is a short story
about the Aztecs. Sheckley,
if you don't know, is one
of the greatest science fiction
writers of the 50's and 60's.
I have a copy of *Galaxy*
magazine for October, 1954
signed by Sheckley and
Phillp K. Dick, that I got
online.

Another book of Sheckley's
I found in a Cambridge, Mass
bookstore is *Journey Beyond
Tomorrow* (Dell, 1962).
"America the 21st Century and
the nightmare triumph of the
machines*. Well, this was correct
but the machines are walking
and are mostly born-again
Christians.

I've always wanted a copy
of John Lennon's *In His
Own Write and A Spaniard
In The Works* (Signet, 1964)
and I got one for a dollar.
"Why did Harrassed MacMillion
go golphing mit Bod Hobe?"

*Stardoc* is a novel by S.L. Viehl
that looks intriguing (Roc, 2000).
It starts with an epigraph from
Hippocrates (460-377? B.C.)
"Into whatever houses I enter,
I will go into them for the benefit
of the sick."

*The Vintage Book of Amnesia:
An Anthology on the Subject of
Memory Loss* edited by Jonathan
Lethem (Vintage, 2000) looks
fascinating. Anyway, I read everything
I can find by or about Jonathan
Lethem. Toni's sister gave me a
first edition hardbound copy of
*Gun, With Occasional Music.*
I can't recommend his first novel
too strongly. It's a hoot! The
Amnesia Book has articles by:
Robert Sheckley, Shirley Jackson,
Borges, Oliver Sacks, Geofrey O'Brien
(did you ever read his book on
the 1960's?), Barthelme, Nabokov,
others.

*Galatea 2.2* by Richard Powers
(Harper, 1996) looks intriguing.
"...I lost my 35th year. We got
separated in the confusion of a foreign
city where the language was strange
and the authorities horrible... Some
years slip their chrysalis, leaving only
a casing to hold their place in my
sequence."

I've started *The Hacker Ethic*
by Pekka Himenen and have already
mentioned it here. It was translated
by Anselm Hollo, published in 2001
by Random House. "First playfulness
was removed from work, then
playfulness was removed from play,
and what is left is optimized leisure
time."

I met Geoffrey Dyer in Berkeley
a couple of summers ago and liked
his band. *The Dirty Halo Of Everything*
was published by one of the hottest
poetry publishers around, Krupskaya,
in 2003. "Inside the paint and cockroach
world you forgot how ro improvise. Replacing
freedom with a process, the closest thing
was writing an essay...This is an anecdote
for escape."

Edmund Jabes is someone who I
feel I should read more often, but
who sometimes disappoints me.
I'm going to give *Desire for a Beginning
Dread of One Single End*, published by
my friend Steve Clay of Granary Books
in 2001 the old college try.
I've made no secret of my
affection for aphorisms. "All light
resides in thought."

Some of my friends don't seem
to overly appreciate the poetry of
Rachel Blau DuPlessis yet I
really enjoy it. I want to reread
*Drafts 15-XXX: The Fold* (Potes
and Poets, 1997). II might have a copy still packed
away somewhere in a box. "This kind
of speaking/doubles the unspeakable."

*Draft 43* by R BD came out
from Belladonna in Spring 2001.
Side stapled chapbook. ." a pile
of ashes orphaned/or bare feet
sloshing through the narrow part
near shore."

Belladonna 10 was *Soft Pages*
by Kathleen Fraser. (Winter, 2001).
I enjoy nearly every word I read
by KF. "The sentence, of course,
will be different once it has been
retrieved. " OK, like Barrett Watten
she can be didactic; but it is a kind
of didactic that has a lot of worthwhile
things to teach.

Kim Lyons' work is awash with
humor, charm, curiosity and
wisdom.
. *In Padua*
(St Lazaire Press, 1991) should
be at the top of anyone's holiday
shopping list. If you can find it!
(4 Patten Road, Rhinebeck, NY
12572). "After two days of
complicated rain/an arrival
of sentences wet and anxious."

*Lip Service* by Bruce
Andrews (Coach House Books,
2001). Unreadable required reading,
like Finnigan's Wake. I will place
it respectfully next to *No. 111 2.7. 93-
10.20.96* by Kenneth Goldsmith
(The Figures, 1997)
on my bookshelf and open it and
read as much as I can muster, a
sprint of reading/thought, when I am so inspired.
"In champion the vagina sailor
on leave-"

*An Anthology of New (American) Poets*
edited by Lisa Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz
amd Chris Stroffolino ((Talisman, 1998).
includes Judith Goldman, Bill Luoma, Kimbely Lyons,
Eleni Sikelianos, Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace,
Rod Smith, many others.
from Kim Lyons *Millefleur*:
"A whirling vortex of fragmented conversations/
threw up sparks, shards/of the beautiful shale."

Adeena Karasik's *The House That HIJACK Built*
(Talonbooks 2004) is concerned with the Kaballah
and is visually energized and absorbing. ""speak of taut machines/
speech, thought, motion"

Jena Osman, who edits *Chain* with Juliana Spahr
is another poet whose work I have long
felt deserves more attention from me.
*The Character* was published in 1999
by Barnard and won the 1998 Barnard
New Poets Prize. 'A pool stick can transform
a person into a thing."


to be continued...

How The Grinch Stole the White House... Again--.by Alan Waldman-- from *Online Journal* {click here}

This is an detailed update on what's being done right now
....behind the media scenes...regarding
voter fraud. Bev Harris leading the charge on
Volusia County, Florida possible recount.

Sin (A Cardinal Deposed)

is the title of a play by our friend Michael Murphy
now in its last few days at Theatre Row
(410 West 42nd Street, bet 9th & 10th Ave.-
tel: 212- 244-3380).

This play, excellently directed by Carl Forsman,
was based on transcripts of the trial
of Cardinal Law of Boston, who was accused
of neglecting to confront priests who were
sexual child abusers in his diocese. We were
amazed at how compelling this production was,
considering the dialog is completely based on
transcripts a la court tv. Cardinal Law failed
to confront a single child abuser in his diocese
although there were many proven cases, including
one priest who was a leader in Nambla.

The play was presented in a very comfortable
small theatre, part of a kind of multiplex
off-Broadway group of theatres. The staging
was effective, utilizing vignettes from complainants
in screens off to stage right and left, while the
main part of the play takes place completely
in center stage at a conference table. Due to
the finely focussed acting and presentation, this
play, not overly long, remains
a gripping, provocative and
suspenseful experience.

Thinking and talking about this play brought to
mind the tendency on the part of bureacratic
institutions to shield themselves from public
scrutiny and outrage. This play also brought
home the tendency, a la Nazi Germany, for
this country to breed cults that are openly
abusive-certain groups within the
Catholic Church being among
the core constituency of the far right wing
political/religious movement in this country.
Another issue, among many this play evokes,
has to do with a contagious paralysis,
on the part of so many people working
within any kind of hierarchy,
in the ability to think for themselves, or to
stand up for any ideal unless it embraces the
stated and unstated aims of
the given power structure.
The cast in this play included John Cullum
who was chillingly convincing at Cardinal
Bernard F. Law.

We were also excited to learn about
The New Group, a repertory group
that makes inexpensive memberships
available at this theater. Upcoming
plays include *Hurlyburly* by David
Rabe, directed by Scott Elliott, with a
star studded cast featur�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ing Wallace
Shawn, Parker Posey, Ethan Hawke
and others.
****************************************
Gary Sullivan's *New Life* cartoon
today focuses on the ongoing tragedy in
Fallujah
Elsewhere {click here}
****************************************

"Behold the Machine:
how it rolls and wreaks vengeance
and drains and deforms us."

from : *Sonnets to Orpheus*
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Edward Snow
North Point Press, 2004

Before going into our usual diatribe (in this case a
quote from Anselm Jappe's absorbing *Guy
Debord* -University of California Press, 1999)
I can't resist telling you what a great and delicious
time we had last evening with Gary and Nada, their clever cats Nemo
and Dante, and the wonderful Marianne Shaneen.
I do not wish to provoke envy, yet I will mention that
the world at large should have so many more opportunities
to spend time with these immensely entertaining
poets; and, in particular, to experience directly their abundant
knowledge of certain hlarious, entrancing and stellar moments in Bollywood
film history. I will state unreservedly that such knowledge
should be made immediately available
to a broad, and hopelessly dismayed and bored
public, particularly in this bluest of blue states.

And Marianne's suggestion of Nada singing
flarf set to music- picture that! Is she not to
be enthuiastically encouraged in this most
hopefully entertaining of possiblities?
********
and, now, from Anselm Jappe:

"It will be evident by this time that the spectacle is the
heir of religion and it is significant that the first chapter
of *The Society of the Spectacle* has a quotation from
Feuerbach's *Essence of Christianity* as its epigraph.
The old religion projected man's own power into the heavens,
where it took on the appearance of a god oopposed to man,
a foreign entity. The spectacle performs the same operation
on earth. The greater the power that man attributed to gods
of his own creation, the more powerless he himself felt;
humanity behaves similarly with respect to powers that it
has created and allowed to escape and that now "reveal
themselves to us in their full force." (Society of the Spectacle).
The *contemplation* of these powers is in inverse propportion
to the individual's experience of real life, to the point where
his most ordinary gestures are lived by someone else
instead of by the subject himself. In this world, "the
spectabor feels at home nowhere" (Society of the Spectacle).
In the spectacle, as in religion, every moment of life,
every idea, and every gesture achieves meaning only from
without." (Debord and Conjuers, 1960 and *Situationist
International Anthology, 1983).

Oooooh eeeee oooooh aaaah aaaah ting tang walla walla bing bang

Toni and I are going to
Nada and Gary's
place for
Thanksgiving
Dinner

- Marianne
is coming too-

and, dear readers,
Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Some samples of music by Eric Satie {click here}

Thanks to Laura Carter at Blue Revisions
for her kind words about *fait accompli*
and for including us on her Blog Crush List.

Blue Revisions (click here}

"The rest is history
The rest is literature
The rest is silence
The rest is history
The rest is literature
The rest is silence
The rest is literature
The rest is history
The rest is silence"




Frank Kuenstler

*FUGITIVES. ROUNDS*
EVENTORUM PRESS, N.Y.
1966
********************************
Peter Manson's Freebase Accordion new links page {click here}

A Universal Manifesto for Contemporary American Poetics, Aesthetics, Politics and Business

Manifesto {click here}

"Freedom of speech! It hath not entered into your
hearts to conceive what those words mean. It is not
leave given me by your sect to say this or that; it
is when leave is given to your sect to withdraw. The church,
the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal
and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only
that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken
aloud. What is it you tolerate, you church to-day? Not
truth, but a lifelong hypocrisy. Let us have institutions
framed not out of our rottenness, but out of our soundness.
This factitious piety is like stale gingerbread. I would
like to suggest what a pack of fools and cowards we
mankind are.They want me to agree not to breathe too
hard in the neighborhood of their paper castles. If I should
draw a long breath in the neighborhood of these institutions,
their weak and flabby sides would fall out, for my own
inspiration would exhaust the air about them. The church!
it is eminently the timid institution, and the heads and
pillars of it are constitutionally and by principle the greatest
cowards in the community. The voice that goes up
from the monthly concerts is not so brave and so cheering
as that which rises from the frog-ponds of the land..."

Henry David Thoreau
Journals
November 16, 1858

You Can't Always Get What You Want

but you can dream about it by means of


Lucid Dreaming {click here}
*************************************

*fait accompli* called it *paranoia* (see the sidebar to your left)

-Counterpunch calls it *fear*- either way- a new approach is needed


the full essay available right now on
Counterpunch {click here}


put your fingers on the pulse of contemporary information-
via wood s lot {click here}
************************************************************

Truth In Blogging

Visiting in-laws today in Arlington, Mass, everyone out, so I had the time to
read through every blog listed on Brother Tom's finish your phrase {click here} linklist (my hypothesis is, that since the election was Bushwhacked,
most bloggers are going through a well-earned depression).
One, and only one, blogpost made me laugh out loud today. And the winner is...

Paula's House of Toast {click here}
***************************************************

Police, protesters clash in Chile {click here} via Transdada
****************************************************
Shanna Compton is working on Jerome Sala's new
book: *Look Slimmer Instantly*. This post includes
a photo of the cover plus a link to four of the poems
published on a webzine.
Brand New Insects-Jerome Sala's book {click here}
*************************************************

"in his work *The Information Age*, Castella has
demonstrated empirically how competition intensifies
in the global information economy (or *informational*
economy to be exact, because all economies are based
on information, but ours is based on the information-
technology paradigm...) Speedy technological changes
make it imperative to get new technology to consumers
quickly, before one's competitors do. The slow are left
holding obsolete products; even worse is a belated
response to fundamental shifts in technology."

*The Hacker Ethic* by Pekka Himanen
translated by Anselm Hollo and Pekka Himanen
Random House, 2001
*************************************************
Competition and Alienated Labor

Marx on Human Persons {click here}
Estranged Labor by Karl Marx {click here}

Thought as Constant Conjecture

The Rule of Conjecture by Laura Carter on Blue Revisions {click here}
*******************************************
From Bob Holman at Poetry About. Com

Special Holiday Sale at SPD Books on December 8th

SPD Holiday Book Sale {click here}
***********************************************
Drew Gardner from *The Membranous Labyrinth {click here}
published in
The Alterran Poetry Assemblage {click here}
***********************************************
from *Million Poems* to *Five Million Copies*
Do I hear Ten Million?

Blogged Vispo right now on

Five Million Copies Project {click here}

via

Tributary {click here}
**********************************************
Thanks to OKIR (Jean Vengua) {click here}
for posting to our poem *www* on as/is {click here} and to Chris Murray (TexfFiles {click here} for her comments.

What a poet must invent and reinvent is not
only poetry but a *raison d'etre* for poetry.


from*Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
******************************************************
from *Literature Nation* by
Maria Damon and Miekal And
Potes and Poets, 2003

"[angelic object]

There is a ghostly remembrance, or rather, the phosphene double-
image as one screen is replaced by the next. &,that [moment when
the page turning ] allows a nanosecond of expectation & guessing.
Even as you hesitate, wondering what link to click, Literature
Nation is writing itself in your head [This is your invitation] to
create your own language state."
*******************************************************



David Bromige and Richard Denner have
been doing a terrific ongoing collaboration
titled *Spade*. The latest parts are availabe
here on Poetic Inhalation {click here} as pdf's. Work also by
Vernon Frazer, Opal Nations, Stephen-Paul Martin,
Raymond Federman, Andrew Lundwall and many others.
**************************************************************
Two of My Favorite Writers Have New Betas from Faux Press
Mitch Highfill and Cori Copp. On line now at

Faux Press {click here}

The Lineup:

Carl Annarummo:
High Heaven Ugly Hat
Micah Ballard:
Unforeseen
Tina Celona:
When I Am Done with Cookies I Look for Pie
Corina Copp:
Carpeted
Joe Elliot:
101 Designs for The World Trade Center
Mitch Highfill:
A Dozen Sonnets
Tim Peterson:
Trinkets Mashed into a Blender
Christina Strong:
Utopian Politics
Alli Warren:
Yoke
*********************************************************************
Reward for Information of Serious Voting Fraud that Would Lead to
Change of Election Outcome Raised to $200. 000

Blue Lemur {click here}
*********************************************************************

Berkeley Study Finds Disparity in Vote Count {click here}
*********************************************************************
Holier Than Thou (This link requires video software)

Bush Uncensored {click here}

Since we have heard only lies all our lives
we must assume the truth is unintelligible
and start from there. It's like panning
for gold and not knowing what gold is.


pubished in *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)


****************************************
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

229

"If a war has lasted twenty years it can well
go on to last a hundred. For war has
now become a *status*. People who have
enjoyed peace die out."

Notebook:J 1789-1793


(Penguin Classics
translated by RJ Hollingdale)


101

"I would give something to know for
precisely whom the deeds were really
done of which it is publicly stated it was
done *for the fatherland*.

Notebook K 1793-1796

***************************************

"To be born to create, to love, to win at games
is to be born to live in time of peace. But war
teaches us to lose everything and become what
we were not. It all becomes a question of style."

Albert Camus
April 1939-February 1942 Notebook III


***************************************"


"The Americans are not realists. I discovered
this while watching an American film remade
from an old French film. What had been *real*
atmosphere, a geniune setting, was now a shabby
backcloth. Their vaunted realism 1920-1940
was a particular kind of romanticism about "living
reality." The fanciful idea that everything is realism
(Dos Passos). The point of view is not tragic,
but "voluntaristic." Tragedy is a clash with reality:
"voluntarism" is to make a comfort of it, a way
to escape from reality."

28th April, 1949
The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950
Cesare Pavese

Walker and Company, NY
1961

****************************************************
Chemotherapy is

Dying to
get well

10 12 83

Wystan Curnow
*Cancer Daybook*
Van Guard XPress
1989

********************************************

The Letters of Sigmund Freud
1932-1939

295 to Max Eitington

Vienna IX.Berggasse 19
February 6, 1938

Dear Friend,

I have often asked myself in bewilderment if it is absolutely
necessary for newspapers to tell lies so regularly and without
restraint. In any case, it is good to hear you don't believe the
news this time, either. Our brave and in its way decent government
is now more energetic than ever in keeping the Nazis at bay.
although in view of the latest events in Germany no one can be
sure what is going to happen...."

cordially,
your
Freud
***********************************************************

Debussy Letters


to Robert Godet
31 October 1917

Tres cher,

...Don't be upset if I haven't mentioned my plans
for some time. . . Music's completely abandoned
me. Even if it's not a cause for tears, it's a trifle
ridiculous, at least. But there's nothing I can do about
it, and I've never forced anyone to like me. If music thinks
I'm treating her badly, then she can go elsewhere: if
necessary I can give her some useful addresses if not
particularly sympathetic ones. The hard part if all of
this is to have to go on writing about it: that's certainly
the worst thing! Why haven't I the energy to write on
military matters? That's a good life at the moment. Look
at Bidou in the*Debats* and Laloy in *Excelsior*- you'd
think they were born wearing zoave's trousers. Seriously,
I think Bidou is marvelously clear at explaining the most
complex military situations- perhaps his skill as a drama
critic's more help to himthan one can imagine!

yours, but a little exhaustedly,
CD
*********************************************************

from Dream Time
Chapters in the Sixties

Geoffrey O'Brien

"They could not help observing that the war was still
going on. Every night the footage of smoke and rubble
and the recitation of body counts continued, while they
sat watching it in a world invulnerable to mortar fire.
The spectable numbed them. They had to keep reminding
themselves that the flat pictures- wedged between Alpo
commercials and summer reruns of *Hogan's Heroes*-
pertained to irreversible deaths. "I can't believe it's
still happening. They *have* to stop it pretty soon." Something
would change. Johnson's advisors, after watching the
protests from a balcony would take him aside. "Sir,
they're just not buying it anymore, I'm afraid we have
no choice but to pull out."

But the change was not coming fast enough. It would take more
than peace buttons and chanted slogans. The powerful
vibrations that had been unleashed in the march on the Pentagon
- a mustering of all the energy the underground had to
offer- were lost on an enemy insensitive to anything but
the grossest applications of force. For the pigs to get
the message, it would be necessary to hit them where
they lived. Commando teams were better suited than crowds
for such tactics. One morning the newspaper announced
that the induction center had been reduced to ashes by'
unknown arsonists. The counterescalation had begun..."
****************************************************************

from: *An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry*
Edited by Nanos Vaalaoritis and
Thannasis Maskaleris
(Talisman House Publishers
Jersey City, NJ, 2003)

*TESTAMENT*

by Adriana Ierodiakonou

"Don't forget the small countries.

It's easy, they fit in places
so secret, so sharp.

In a drop of oil.
Or in the voice of a knife.
black as black after months.

Don't forget the small countries
at the hour when everything changes.
In my plate? Earth!
My bed? A boat!

Because everyone knows and doesn't know.
Don't forget the small countries."




******************************************************

Editors: Nanos Valaoritis and Thanasis Maskaleris

I did not restrain myself.
I let go entirely and went.
I went into the luminous night,
To those pleasures that were half real
And half reeling in my brain.
-- from “I Went” by Constantine Cavafy

Modern Greek Poetry brings together translations of works by some of the most eminent and accomplished writers of our time. The Greek poets have played a powerful role in the creation of modern and postmodern literature. Modern Greek Poetry is a landmark anthology, a major contribution to our understanding of world poetry. No anthology of Greek poetry is as encompassing and commanding.

Greece for the past century has given the world some of its finest poetry. The editors and their translators provide generous selections not only from internationally celebrated poets but also from younger writers who are beginning to play key roles in the literary world today.

There are new translations of works by Cavafy, perhaps the greatest of all the Greek modernists; Surrealist and Nobel Prize winner Odysseus Elytris; and Nobel Prize winner George Seferis as well as works by such celebrated writers as Yannis Ritsos, Angelos Sikelianos, and almost a hundred others.

NANOS VALAORITIS is among the most celebrated of the contemporary Greek poets. Born in Switzerland but of Greek descent, Valaoritis was prominent among Surrealist poets under André Breton before moving to the United States. He was a professor of literature at San Francisco State University.

THANASIS MASKALERIS, the former director of the Center for Modern Greek Studies at San Francisco State University, is a native of Greece and the author of numerous literary and critical works in Greek as well as English.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Daily Kos: Blogger Blackout over 2004 Election Issues {click here}

The fact that I keep finding things when
I am no longer searching for them might
be an indication that something is holding
me back.
************************************

The more I am heard, the more I
must resort to silence to be heard.
The quicker I go, the stealthier
I must move.

7/88
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

Activists Question
Accuracy of Optical Vote Scan Machines {click here}
*******************************************
This Just In


BOX OF UNCOUNTED VOTES 'DISCOVERED' IN FLORIDA
-From Suny/Buffalo Poetics List {click here}

All human error is impatience, a premature
renunciation of method, the delusive
pinning down of a delusion.


Kafka
********
I posted a new poem titled
www {click here}
on as/is today...

Comic Relief From The Apocalypse


B is for Blogging, I must be balmy or bloody bonkers

No, B is for Bet Boynton {click here}
can still make you smile.


*********************************************************

After the Shock, Denial, Rage and Grief
Time To Get Down To The Nitty-Gritty

Taylor Brady responds to Thomas Frank, Timothy Burke,
*minor american* and others on
his new blog

Inflection Point {click here}

This Just In: Green Party Announces Vote Recount in Ohio

Truthout.org {click here}
**

Green Party "Morning After" Press Release
Tired of Cleaning Up After Other People's Parties {click here}
********************************
Allegations of Election Fraud by Bush Are Mounting

Why We Hate Bush.com {click here}

Parfum D'élection Putréfiée (Scent of A Rotten Election)
or, As Zogby Puts It: "I Smell A Rat"

Zogby {click here}
**********************************************
Publishing writing is a dare, a way
of initiating struggle at a boundary.
Writing consolidates reading, reading
generates a kind of vacuum, a kind of
frustrated silence. Reading demands
expression, writing demands reception.



Notebook: 1/27/88
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)


   

Is This "Information Anarchy"--Or Just Chat?--
You decide-and let us know...
...the discussion continues- right now on

Okir (Jean Vengua) {click here}
**
Ernesto Priego posted one of my comments
from the lively discussion on *okir* above
on

Never Neutral {click here}

Ernesto, thanks!
*************

At least for now, the Constitution still includes the first amendment.
If you can't make your vote count, at least you can make your voice count.

Write to Congress as soon as you can with this form:

Dear Congress: Investigate The Vote {click here}

(I wrote that..." the confidence in the voting process has eroded further since the last election.
If Americans do not have confidence in the voting process, the authority
of every elected official will eventually erode as well. This includes you!")

Probably since my days in college, not a week
has gone by, that I have not listened to some
music by Claude Debussy. And especially
during times like these, rife with concern,
disappointment and anxiety. I happened
to come across this site. If you have a couple
of speakers on your computer, and probably
you have, and some software for listening,
probably you do, here are some samples of
Debussy's piano music, yours for a click.

Claude Debussy {click here}

A Message from Rod Smith (publisher of *Edge Books*) on Vote Fraud
(includes many important links)

Rod Smith links on Election Fraud {click here}
via Limetree {click here}

This is one of those interesting discussions about blogging-is conversation better in person or on-line was part of it-
that used to occur so often- ages ago- in 2003!-often in the middle of the night... don't miss it on: Okir (Jean Vengua) {click here}...You can still chime in, I think...
*********************




The New York Times has joined the Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush’s victory might not have been entirely legitimate. The New York Times' front-page story was entitled, “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried.” [Nov. 12, 2004.]

As odd as these attacks might seem to some, this pattern of protecting the Bush family has a history.
Big Media-Some Nerve! by Robert Parry {click here}

Bush's Paranoia in The News-Sept '04 story
The Madness of Emperor George {click here}




The First Amendment {click here}

Swept Away By P. K. Dick:
A New Broom {click here} unpacks Dos Passos' *Manhattan Transfer* and Phillip K. Dick's
*Man In The High Castle*
********************
a *fait accompli* flarfy moment

A Society Controlled By Fear
only 17 people took the trouble to state it online, though

society+controlled+by+fear{click here}
*******************
Hope and Poetry

Thanks to Allen Bramhall for noticing and llinking to this aphorism/slice:
tributary {click here}

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger

1.On Friday night I stopped off at the Strand Bookshop
on the way to going to a lecture
by Peter Gay, an historian
well known for his pristine,
excellently written biography of Freud. In
addition to finding an inexpensive hardbound copy
of one of the few books by
Phillip K. Dick that I've never completely read many times,
*The Man In the High Castle*- its premise is
that Germany won the Second World War- how apropos
for 2004 Amerika- I found a copy of Tony Tost's *Invisible
Bride*, which happens to be winner of the 2003 Walt Whitman
Award, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. I love
finding books of poetry by bloggers, and I'm enjoying this
book. First of all, it's prose poetry, which I have a bias
towards, and I liked this part a lot:

"Did you know that Rick James and Neil Young played together
in a band called The Mynah Birds? Did you know that Thomas
Jefferson was once given a 1, 235 hunk of cheese, giving us
the term "the big cheese"? That sleep walkers are not allowed
in the armed services because of the threat they pose when they
have access to dangerous equipment and are unaware of what
they are doing? I have razors hidden through my room, so I'm
curious about what will happen when all the somnabulists get in
there."

(from *The Invisible Bride*, Louisiana State University Press, 2004-
chosen by C. D.Wright).

2. Then I went to the New School to hear a talk given by Peter Gay,
historian, Emeritus Professor at Yale,
about a book he is writing on modernism
(in his view modernists got that way because
they liked to break rules and were obsessed
with subjectivity--interesting--and modernism
still exists, though hardly so, particularly in architecture,
such as the Bilbao Guggenheim- which he says is a
must-see; also, FLW once said that his
New York Guggenheim was the only museum
ever built that made sense.)

I wished I could have brought along my copy of Prof. Gay's
famous biography of Freud, which I love, but most of my
books are as yet unpacked, unbelievably,
because I have so many and have still do not
have my bookshelves built since I moved. They
were selling some other books by Peter Gay
just before the lecture so
I bought a very interesting one titled
*Freud for Historians*. Professor Gay
is one of very few historians who are fascinated by Freud. He has
also written many books about literary history, particularly the
fin-de-siecle, which has interested me for a long time. After the
lecture I asked him to sign my book and he graciously did so (the
line was long, the lecture was packed with at least
150 or more people, mostly psychoanalysts,
since the lecture was sponsored by a psychoanalytic institute.)
After asking him if he liked Shattuck's book *The Banquet Years*
(he did, and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it-
though not Shattuck's other books)- I asked him quickly
if he intended to write about Schwitters, Arp and the other
Dadaists (he plans to) I then asked him what i was mostly
curious about. He had emigrated from Hitler's Germany
when he was a child. Would he compare the rise of the radical
right wing now to the rise of Hitler's party in Germany?
I said I was particulary concerned because my wife
feels very worried about this. He said, no not at all. No comparison.
Still, he doesn't want to think of this, because he
doesn't want to emigrate again! Then he said, apparently
in response to what I had said about Toni,
"I don't read the newspapers." Someone standing nearby said,
"You don't read the newspapers and you are an historian?"
Then he mentioned briefly Bush's replacement for Ashcroft
and the fact that only 16% of New Yorkers voted for Bush.

When I left I thought: I really don't have to read
*Man in the High Castle* (of course I will)
because we are living it. Talking about
all this with Professor Gay,
I felt like I was in a movie about the Third Reich like
*The Blue Angel.*

Now I'm going to go read a few more pages
of my signed copy of Peter Gay's totally absorbing
*Freud for Historians* (Oxford, 1985), and maybe a
little more of Tony Tost's book too.
***
After reading Tony Tost's *The Invisible Bride*
some more I thought: All we ever had to do was
write about was our differences. Then
we would know each other better and
our similarities would speak for themselves.
..

Poetry and hope have something in common:
over time, inexhaustible, even if you don't understand
and can't explain.

Election Fraud Updates

Are becoming harder to find but this site is excellent:

Truthout {click here}

The video of yesterday's MSNBC program is interesting, but
a very long download.

One must not cheat anybody. Not
even the world of its triumph.


Kafka

***********************************
The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Prose and photos: *Halloweed*

A post from

Paula's House of Toast {click here}

Penumbra

Thoughout our history,
tyrants and fantatics have inspired
the fearful, boot-licking aspect
of the zetgeist. Its luminous, poetic side has been
temporarily eclipsed by the cratered
satellites of prejudice, self-serving
empowerment and domination

We live in an era of would be Pharoes,
pulling their shabby confidence tricks, their
hollow and hateful gambits
substituted for patiently
accumulated knowledge and wisdom.
Earlier phases of American history
such as FDR's New Deal are now
part of our shared experience.
These successes are tools that can't be
easily eliminated from our political
knowledge of how to address social needs.

It is hard to visualize what forces must emerge to
transition from a society controlled by fear and repression to
one based on social needs. There is
something in human nature
that will not put up, for long, with laws and leaders
whose authority is founded on
hypocrisy and mean spirited oppression.

Things resist manipulation and usually
respond better to a frank and solid grasp.

notebook: 9/12/88
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
*****************************************
"NATASHA: Well, nearly every day there are words which
disappear because they are no longer allowed. In their place, one
must put new words to correspond to the new ideas. And you
know. . . in the last few months...some. . . words have disappeared
that I liked very much.
INSERT: *Let Alpha 60 destroy itself*
LEMMY: Which words?. . . I'm interested...
NATASHA: Robin redbreast. . . to weep. . .
INSERT: *Save all those able to cry*
NATASHA: Autumn light. . .
INSERT: *Tenderness*
NATASHA: Tenderness, also..."

from *Alphaville: a film by Jean-Luc Godard*