The poet is asked to speak in the "language of the
people."

Does this mean that intellectuals, artists,
or others who keep trying, against all odds, to find
more time to spend with books, are not
to be included among "the people"?

The heartbreaking anti-intellectualism that
finds is most welcome nest in the thoughts
of narrow minded pragmatists and
misguided visionaries.

It seems much of this group has a taste
for a topping of violence on their literature
and art desserts, instead of the dreaded
and/or despised, abstraction
or ambiguity.

The fact that chaos and destruction
is apparently more true to life?
A self-fulfilling prophecy, no doubt.
**************************************

Double Room, Spring/Summer 2004
is out {click here}
-[via
Dagzine {click here}-

After All

To leave things (know them,
see them, anyway)
just the way you find them.

To find a way to care,
after all.


*********

You are loved and admired by many,
yet some seem indifferent,
others avoid you, get bored, or
even seem to be annoyed.

You should wonder why, but nobody who
likes to be happy ever worries about these
things too much.

(Another reason why life
resists being fair.)

********

Leaving the theater, the audience
happily astonished at the final twist in the
story.

Caterina's {click here} "Unordered List"

"If I am asked, 'What is it that has
produced this change so far, what is
it that keeps power in check and
humanises the breast? I answer-
Books- books of poetry and philosophy.
Some may think that Law ought to be
mentioned first; but I should say,
No; for law itself is the creature of
opinion, and floats on its bosom like
'the swan's feather on the tide,' or
is swayed by it as the waves are agitated
and driven by the least breath of Heaven.
I believe there is still a law to burn
witches. Is it executed? Even the
rabble, whose ignorance keeps up their
prejudice as pride does those of their
superiors, expose themselves to universal
execration, by still occasionally acting
upon this exploded superstition...Books,
then, teach us (and they alone do it,
generally speaking)
'To see ourselves as others see us.'
Or they may be truly said to 'show vice
its own image, scorn its own feature, and
the very age and body of the time its form
and pressure.' An act of oppression,
a stretch of power and authority, are
monstrous in themselves; but our self-love,
as well as habitual prejudice, blind us
to their enormity, which is also screened from
the centsure of others within the sphere of our
local and personal influence, by fear of favour...
The reading public- laugh at it as you will- is
after all (depend upon it), a very rational
animal, compared with a feudal lord and his
horde of vassals..."

"The Influence of Books on the Progress of Manners"
William Hazlitt
*New Monrhly Magazine*
May, 1828

*Free Radicals: American Poets Before
Their First Books* edited by (that giant)
Jordan Davis and Sarah Manguso in the
mailbox tonight, published by that very
admirable and invaluable enterprise,
Subpress.

Nada and Gary are back! Awfully jet-
lagged, but they had a terrific time
on their honeymoon in Japan.

Life is good.

Going Backwards

Sometimes I have wished that I
could compose my poems completely
out of ellipses or blank space.
As soon as I think this I realize
that my "poetry" consists as much in what
I have refused to say and do-
than in what I have actually done
or written. This heightened awareness of this choice
is a very so called modernist
notion, but it's still true. If there are
politics for a poet they exist in the kinds of
choices one makes as a poet because
those choices are the tough choices.
Most poets are very good imitators.
This is as easy for a good poet
as it is for a good musician to
whistle a tune. You don't have to be
a good musician to whistle a tune
so it's that easy. As easy as it is,
it is that hard for a good poet to
refrain from imitating. Now, it is even
much harder for good poets to not
imitate themselves.

The further along I go, the
more often I feel like I am at a
precipice. That I am actually backing
into a precipice because I want to
keep moving but I am conscious that I
must continually be aware that I
am backing away from something.
Also- I've been aware for a long time
that the clearer I am about something
the quicker those who listen to me take
my ideas for their own. This is
because I am making clearer the
situation that we (myself & my listeners) are actually
in. This is about the best thing you
can do in a hard situation. Where there
are few obviously good answers you
try to become aware of what is making
it so hard.

This growing number of options
is backing me into a corner. I am
more aware of the things I can't choose
to do. I want to keep moving so
I keep backing up. Although the precipice
is said to be in front of me, it
is actually behind me.

I am backing into the future, I
am going backwards because it is
actuality that takes me where I have to
keep going- me and my quick embraces
with actuality. When I let go & really
move I must fall. This fall is
the free flight of future time.
This fall is the surrender to the
non-existence of what I want. How
else might I create? I can only create
what does not yet exist. In order to
create what does not yet exist I
must resist all
imitations to previous directions. These
other ways may be in light or darkness, but
they must not be immediately
recognizable. Do I tremble? No. Am
I disoriented? Yes.

This is what I am waiting for.
This is the starting point I've been at
all my life. This so called courage is
none other than the willingness to get used
to being scared. If the other poets
haven't told you this- the ones who
ought to know- it is because they didn't
want you to leave them stranded out there
alone. They've gotten used to having
you around. You've been there all
along. So come on in, the water's
fine. Don't hesitate- just
dive.

Going
backwards in time {click here}
*****************************************************
notebook: circa, 1980

the diary will be about
myself- but a kind of
magical incantation to
make myself more aware of
others- others are my
whole pleasure so that
it will be about this
growing awareness in a
man of others, their
pleasure and pain,
their fortune & failures-
the situation-
internal
external
at the outset-

****************************
Whiskey River {click here} "...but how different it will seem to us when the gloom is past..." (Novalis)
****************************
Rene Wanner's Poster Page-Shraivogel in Tehran {click here} (via Topher Tune's Times {click here}
September 11, 2001 {click here}
****************************

"Toes were said to have actually burst into flame"
on Moonshine Highways {click here}

***************************************************
Just try to go into a summer slump in Blogland-
your blogger friends won't let you! as in
Equanimity {click here} (By the way, Jordan, who is the
epitome of discretion, does not mention in his post, that the first thing I asked him
about was his anthology -with Sarah Manguso-- Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books, which I am awaiting, with bated breath -what is, "bated breath", by the way-?)
Pelican Dreaming {click here}
Bemsha Swing {click here}
Third Factory {click here}
(via Well Nourished Moon {click here})
and
&& {click here}
****************************************************
recent interview with Noam Chomsky {click here} from *ZNet*
****************************************************
Recent interview with Jessica Grim {click here} from *Vanishing Points of Resemblance*
****************************************************
The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (Seattle) {click here}
****************************************************
Jack Kimball's celebrated
essays continue {click here}- the latest two reflect on books by Brenda
Coultas and Anne Tardos

Lisa Jarnot's new blog {click here}

Lisa's volunteering to help out at the Republican National Convention.
She's looking forward to helping with the computers, and giving directions.

"Tyranny and bigotry are the same they
ever were; we have seen what havoc they made
when left to themselves, and had everything
their own way; and they would still have it
so if they could. Are they not still at their
old work as far as they dare- striving to
continue every exclusive privilege and invidious
distinction as they formerly strove to usurp
and extend them? Not a thing will they suffer
to pass unresisted, undegraded, that is
recommended by reason: they are always against
it. If we look back to former periods, do
we not find them uniformly opposing every
reform, every liberal measure and principle-
wreaking their fury on it in the first instance,
and shrinking with cowardly malignity before it
as it gathers strength, and at last making a merit
of granting what they can no longer prevent by
force or cunning? Their object is to gain time with
the prescriptive and lordly advantages of the few.
When we find kings and priests running before
public opinion, urging moderation, inquiry, reform,
detaching themselves from the interested and powerful,
then it will be soon enought to believe that their
temper and principles have changed with the times,
that they are to be trusted like other men, and that
the side on which they are found is not longer a
sure sign that the lovers of truth and freedom
ought to be on the opposite one. The *Quarterly
Review* some time back made a triumphant peroration
(after a detailed and elaborate survey of the growing
prosperity of the country) to show that neither the
Crown nor its Ministers nor Parliament nor the Clergy
nor Gentry had anything to do with it, but they remained
just as they were, and that all these astonishing
improvements in every other department had taken place
in spite of them. So it is, and so it will be.'To do
aught good will never be the task' of those who profit
from the contrary. They will always stand in the way,
and oppose the *vis inertia* of custom and indolence
(at least) to every project of amelioration and reform,
just as the proprietor of an old house or rotten
tenement holds out against the improvement of a street
or city..."

"The Influence of Books on the Progress of Manners"
William Hazlitt
*New Monthly Magazine*
May, 1828

*fait accompli* sends out our heartfelt gratitude to the following beautiful blogs for their recent kind comments about us:
Red Threads{click here}

Dagzine {click here}

Topher Tune's Times {click here}

Mappemunde {click here}
and
Equanimity {click here}


These posts have meant a lot to us and have helped avert a threatening summer slump; we're definitely going to try hard to pull out of it! Thanks!

"The diffusion of knowledge and literature,
by increasing the number of pretenders, has
lessened the distance between authors and
readers; has made learning common and familiar;
and given to reputation a temporary and ephemeral
character. In the succession of new works,
we cannot find time to read the old:- in the
crowd of living competitors, we lose sight
of the dead. The pretensions of rank and
literature being each set aside and neutralized
by the impertinent scrutiny of vulgar opinion,
they *club* their stock between them, and strive
to make a feeble stand that way. Hence the
aristocracy of letters! An author no longer,
in the silence of retreat, and in the dearth
of criticism, appeals to posterity as a last
resource, as in a flat and barren country we look
on objects in the distant horizon; in the din
and pressure of present opinions and contending
claims, he must throw himself like an actor
at a fair, on the gaping throng about him, and
seize, by the most speedy and obvious means, the
noisy suffrages of his contemporaries. The poet,
as of old, is not now, from rarity, regarded as
a mystery, a wizard, a something whose privacy is
not to be profaned by being encroached upon;
every effort is made to throw down this partition
wall, to rend asunder the veil of genius; and
instead of being kept at a studious and awful
distance, he must be brought near, must be shown
as a *lion*, must be had out to dinner, or to an
AT HOME; we must procure his autograph, get him
to write his name in an *album*, and, if possible,
come into personal contant with him, so as to mix
him up with our daily impressions and admiring
egotism. Thus the imaginary notion, the *divine
particula aura*, is lost under a heap of common
qualities or peculiar defects; and only the shadow
of a name is left. Nothing is fine but the *ideal*;
or rather, excellence exists only in abstraction.
If we wish to be delighted or to admire, we have no
business to seek beyond what first excited our
delight and admiration. Those who go in search of a
cluster of perfections, or expect that because a
man is superior in one thing, he is superior in all,
only go in search of disappointment; or, in truth,
hope to indemnify their self-love by the discovery
that, except in some one particular, their idol is
very much like themselves."

William Hazlitt
"The Prose Album: Maxims on Mankind"
*Monthly Magazine*
July, 1839

This just in from
The Brutal Kittens {click here}

Kasey S. Mohammad to read with
James Meetze at Wordsworth
Books, Cambridge, Mass
Saturday, June 19th
introduced by James Behrle

"The inner truth and greatness of Nazism-
Martin Heidigger spoke of.

A fatherly type, Knut Hamsun called Hitler."

from *Vanishing Point*
David Markson
Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004

I have nothing but contempt for this administration
for administration itself
if things did not have to exist
mainly in particularities
obsession with improvement
exact instructions
issued on arrival

and the gross plumes
prescient continuity
evades poetry
when getaway appears impossible
to Where? Nobodaddy? Singularity?
Chant? Illusion?

This cave-in is not popular
a deduction from absent inference
systematic repression of the real
glints from ancient rituals
subtracted from reason (gape)

Splash and be done with it
destroyed voice canvasses actual fear
in neighboring opposites
called "dance"- but that isn't it
manuscript piled on top of radio
on top of document on top of prayer-wheel
a voice inverts it again
it's called "invent"
representation represents betrayal
in an anxious moment
invites defeat
remains a fool
noise substitutes for continued defiance
absent relative appears on t.v.
play it out of the fumes of defeat
pull meaning from its roots
this is different
rosy carcass signifies rifleman

Doorway symbolizes exit
voice predicts advancing military dictator
mechanical assent begins again
figure it out or don't eat

Yet this pie prophecies a shift in state
the system of definition fails
to enlighten the preening monarch
who marches rhythmically to silent lash



(notebook: untitled poem: 7/10/86)

#26 (blab damnnation)


blab damnation
meaty blotch
haydn arabesque

calculate
auric
basepoint
potion

abominate
paralinguistic
oppressor

fasten
diagnosable
trodden
screen
blemish

isomorphic
pappy

two for two, sharp tapdancing no doubt requires a click (or two){Topher Tune's Times} {click here}

#22 (booze/it won't hurt)

booze,
it wont hurt
they say there,
delicate,
what an absurd,
desecrate,
to take your.
californium,
in the evolution,
strawflower

already
published
editions

pantheist
custodial
procedure

rink
improvisation
expedition
neophyte

sideman
impossible
adventurous
distillery.



#23 (amber/office to this/savant)

amber,
office to this,
savant,
wont be comfortable,
recalcitrant,
it isn't done.
octennial,
and im wasting,
lynx,
ivan
right after
thirtieth mystery



#24 (conservative/demented)

conservative
demented
bombastic
buzzword

pyroelectric
suicidal
cloudburst

jellyfish
intellectual

youthful
automat
czar

ambulatory
oedipal
grandmother
crisis

ditto
buried
Bauhaus
nightclub
pariah

oracular
complacent
introject

swallow
chili
subpoena

besiege
youthful
Kimball

evaluate
inexpensive
premonition

bloodshot
weedy
crisis

catchy
lebanese
concertmaster

nuptial
honey
uppercut


#25 (Blake/axle)

Blake
axle,
example of real,
populous,
moscow art theatre,
grumman,
as the door,
logjam,
i'll take this.