Only when you give yourself over to the dream
(thought, idea) does it fully open itself to you.
But then you are no longer the you that gave yourself.
This is why you hesitate.



notebook: 12/1/1991

My chapbook *Hegelian Honeymoon* (18 Haiku)
is just out from
Chax Press {click here};Thanks to
Charles Alexander, publisher!
***********************************************

DagZine (Gary Norris) {please click here!}
responded to a maxim recently published here
with a stirring *accompaniment." Right now
I can only respond with:

The final words when there are no more
words are: I am speechless!

(In this case, of course,
with surprise and delight.)

Sometimes, close-up, a piece of writing,
a solution to the puzzle seems all wrong.
Yet somewhere, someone touches me
and I touch back.

notebook: 10/31/87

Patiently observing a few of our
soft shoe shuffles on the themes of
"linking" and psychoanalysis -see As/Is {click here}(around Magritte's
*The Therapist* and Mark Young's
poem on that theme) we are delighted
to link to a new poem that Mr. Young has written
in response to our occasionally versified comments,
posted on his Series Magritte {click here}, and dedicated to yours truly!

Consciousness, that master poet, never
forgets that final touch, even when the heart
itself does.

notebook: 10/28/88
*******************************************
Thoughts for Voters - from Toni Simon

Toni feels that voters may have not fully considered the dangers and abuses
of one-party rule as seen historically...


"They've got the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and
increasingly the Supreme Court. What ever happened to checks and balances? To protect our democracy, vote for John Kerry.

Restore Checks and Balances
End one party rule:

A simple and obvious point which I haven't heard mentioned as a talking point by anyone…and time is running out. Direct to swing voters.

Don't know who to vote for?
Think all politicians are corrupt?
Consider this:

Use your vote to restore the balance of power
Republicans control every branch of government, even the judiciary. What we have now is the fox guarding the chicken coop.
We need the oversight of a 2-party system again. For this reason alone you should vote for a Democrat.

Many Americans don't vote because they think politicians are corrupt and want our money. We have a huge deficit and our tax money is being shoveled into the pockets of Republican party contributors.
Mention examples of scary one-party governments.
Give examples of corrupt power-grabbing by republicans.
'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"
*******************************************************************
Tiime Travel Thoughts on 9/11

Thanks to Arlee Christian {click here}
for quoting, linking to and further considering
the powerful contemporary signficance of a passage from
Dreiser's *Jennie Gerhardt* (1911) quoted here on 9/09/04

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

notebook: 8/22/91

The final thought of thought
is freedom from thought.

notebook: 1988

In order to do a new kind of thinking,
we learn to do a new kind of writing-
the *relationship* produces what is new,
like a new kind of speaking. Art combines,
where science atomizes.

1/1/88-2/13/88
********************************************
Ear Today


Cahiers de Corey {click here}

The pathos of life lies in the disparity
between the specific thing we are focused
on and the fact of life itself.

Notebook: 12/12/87
*******************************************
thanks to

Blindheit: clarity is overrated {click here}
for the link

Style is as much a question of undress
as it of dress. Letting down my guard, I
imagined saying things to people I would
never allow myself to say in everyday life.
In this fantasy, I usually pause for a moment of
intense satisfaction. It is life, not the imagination,
which is oblique and mysterious.


from notebooks:1/1/88-2/13/88

Sacred, Secret Haste

From word to word
A step to define
A moment. A sequence
Drawn from the life.
Yet between them, what
Thoughts, what gaps
From picture to
Habitation. Tilted
Towards remembrance,
What is still is real.
All the rest, beginnings,
Furtive grimaces, scratched
Surfaces from whispered
Conversations, an utterance
That encircled a night.
When, like a joke, sprinkles
Of images appear in one place
After another, unbidden,
Ungracious, unkempt. And
Breathing, full and radiant,
Painted simultaneously with their
Inception, fingers mount
Meanings against the sound of
Quick phrases, presences announce
Vanished emphases, particular
Nuances survive briefly before
Succumbing to a new flow of
Different days. Suspended, immaculate
A generation of reflected yearnings
Drops out of sight, replaced by
Long philosophical asides, yet
These too had a way of just reminding
One of an experience, and there again
Is life, frowning and gaping, sullen,
Unmoved, muscular, buoyant. But
Prefaces amount to pronouncements,
Noon sports new habitudes, and
A choral *allegro* echoes sweetly and
Quietly, now in the Nineteenth Century.
Poems? They must be plucked
Out of the in-between silences,
Huddled inside the inhalation
Before yet another anticipated
Listening. If it hadn't happened
Just the way it did
It wouldn't have happened
At all. Think of the looming
Times, the shadows of expectation
Leaning from their lonely cells
In dreams. Spoken from in there,
Something else, could yet be
Understood from what was left
Unsaid. O, like a stutter, like
A surprised exclamation, an
Involuntary gasp. Right
Up to it then, and not
Turn away. An utterly coherent
But vast and unconquerable beating,
Like a hand against a wall,
A foot against a bench, the
Insides establishing the rhythm
And the sound, uncomprehensible,
And the singing, in unison.

notebook: 8/6/86
Previously pubished in
*Avec*, edited by
Cydney Chadwick
***************************
"Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice"
Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 -- 7pm; $10 admission
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan
a public forum with Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein (chair), Kathryn Hellerstein,
Stephen Paul Miller, Marjorie Perloff, Jerome Rothenberg
Tickets available from Ticketweb {click here} or the Box office: 917-606-8200. More informationCenter for Jewish History {click here}
What are the innovations and inventions of American Jewish poets, over the past century? Can we say that there is distinctly Jewish component to radical modernist and contemporary poetry? What is the relation of Jewish modernist and contemporary poets to the historical avant-garde and to contemporary innovative poetry? How does Jewish cultural life and ethnic and religious forms and traditions manifest themselves in the forms, styles, and approaches to radical American poetry? What role does a distinctly secular approach to Jewishness by poets and other Jewish artists mean for "radical Jewish culture"?

Steve Tills (Black Spring) {click here}
likes Neil Young-and Drew Gardner's {click here}
2001 chapbook *Student Studies*