Luna de miel Hegelian

Ernesto Priego Never Neutral {click here} (scroll down) has generously translated
and posted a poem (*The Thief of Time*) from my new
chapbook of haiku, *Hegelian Honeymoon*, into Spanish.

Ernesto Priego has translated a number of other works of mine, happily still
available here
Never Neutral {click here}
and here (scroll down) Never Neutral {click here}

(my chapbook
*Hegelian
Honeymoon*
(18 Haiku)
is available
from
Chax Press 101 W.
Sixth St.,
Tucson,
AZ 85701
(handsewn
$10
includes
book rate
postage
add $4
for priority
mail)
*****************************************
One Of Those Offers You Can't Refuse

FROM THE DESK OF DR. SHELLEY KEATS
DIRECTOR, POETRY IMPLEMENTATION
FEDERAL MINISTRY OF METAPHOR AND
PATHETIC FALLACY, DAKAR, PARNASSUS
PHONE: 00221 523 4715

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL!

DEAR FRIEND,

Based on the information gathered from the Ministry of Metaphor and Pathetic
Fallacy, we intend to solicit your assistance on this transaction with you
on the assumption that you will not disappoint us.

We have Twenty Five Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Poems (US
street value $25,500,000) which we have collected over time from
over-inflated anthologies in my war-torn country's Pantheon of Immortal
Poets.

We are seeking your assistance and permission to remit these poetries into
your account or any other nominated account you can provide for us. Your
commission will be 20% of the total syllabic count, 10% for allusive
gratuities, and the remaining 70% is for my colleagues, myself, and of
course the Muse.

Could you please notify me by coded villanelle of your acceptance to carry
out this transaction? Kindly and urgently, acknowledge the receipt of this
poetry by sending to me by email a copy of this letter with your private
ISBN and Library of Congress numbers. I shall in turn inform you of the
modalities for a formal application to secure the necessary approvals for
the immediate release of these poetries into your account.

Thanks for your co-operation.

Yours faithfully,
Dr. Shelley Keats



CC: Mikhail Horowitz
***********************************************
The above completely bona fide offer
is reproduced with the kind permission of
Vernon Frazer
**
as published on the
SUNY/BUFFALO poetics list
received by Mr Frazier from
Mikhail Horowitz

Saturday, October 30th in New York, New York
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, North of Houston
The Segue Series, curated by Nada Gordon
and Gary Sullivan

David Larsen and Hassen read
4 -6 pm
**************************************
In Cambridge, Massachusetts
Home of the victorious Red Sox
and home state of the next President
of the US

Jack Kimball, Brenda Iijima, Christina Strong
at The Analogous
Series {click here}

The ::fait accompli:: 2004 Oxymoron of the Year Award

Today, the Pentagon stated, that they will report further soon, as
to the missing explosives at Al-Qaqa in Iraq:

"We will release further facts about what may have happened."

"Facts" about what "may have" happened?
I guess these "facts" are anybody's guess.

Things only appear to be what they are
until much later. By that time they are
so tied in with other things that they
are indistinguishable from other things.



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

Les Webb (Negative
Velocity {click here} reports on a sad loss to contemporary science fiction
****************************************************************

The Red Dragon and the Black Beast {click here}
is inspiring. Check it out!

**
kari edwards, Sheila Murphy, Rachel Kendrick, Harry K. Stammer, Lanny Quarles, others...
as is {click here}
is on a roll.

This Just In

Pollster John Zogby {click here}
announced tonight on the Jon Stewart show
that, based on his polls, he predicts that John Kerry will win the
presidential election on November 2cd.

Then he admitted, that if he is wrong,
he will curl up in a fetal position for
two days.

Good prediction- funny guy!

Can't Wait

Less toleration of ambiguity in everyday life, more
craving for it in literature.

Speed of resolution of frustration in life,
however, makes it harder and harder to accept
uncertainty anywhere. The inability to absorb it
creates at the same time the craving. Substitutes are
sought. But as Freud frequently pointed out, an
enemy can't be slain in effigy.

When once suspense was the literary method
of choice in the use of ambiguity (or uncertainty)
now suspense is used as a sugar-coated or
aspertame-coated form of ambiguity. Instead of
depicting the fact that nobody knows what's going on
we are given the option of thinking- for awhile-
that nobody knows what's going on yet...





published in *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)
************************************************
More very soon about two books just out from *Avec*

>Mark Wallace's long awaited important new novel
*Dead Carnival*

"Mark Wallace writes llike
John Hawkes dreaming of
Paul Bowled having a gothic
nightmare." Ronald Sukenick(!!!!)

also just out from *Avec*,
from an excellent poet:

>Dennis Barone
*The Walls of Circumstance*
*******************************
Friday, Oct. 22, 8:00 p.m.
Epic Arts Teahouse
1923 Ashby Ave. @ MLK, Berkeley
(Right across from Ashby BART)
$5-$10 sliding scale
EPIC Arts {click here}
Mary Burger performs poetry with piano, strings, and percussion accompaniment
Alex Cory presents Appalachian alt-country originals
Tanya Brolaski sings heartbreaking honky-tonk country

What is more foregrounded- the facts or the feelings about the event?



notebook: 4/2/92
published in *The Boundary of Blur*

Two of my very favorite authors
have nre books out from
Post-Apollo press. I plan
to order both of them very soon-
and discuss them here.

Laura Moriarty
*Self-Destruction*

and

Joan Retallack
*Memnoir*

call
1 800-869-7553
email: spdbooks.ort

Dreiser's Narcissistic Titan


Dreiser's *Trilogy of Desire* consists of three books: *The Financier*,
*The Titan* and *The Stoic* (1912, 1914; *The Stoic completed
posthumously in 1947). The main character is Frank
Cowperwood (surely a reference to Dickens' David
Copperfield, who is the antithesis to Dreiser's character),
who is a financial speculator with criminal tendencies.
Cowperwood is a depiction of the
classic narcissistic personality disorder-
manipulative, power-driven, lacking in conscience,
or any balance between personal desire and caring for others.
Essentially, Cowperwood’s caring is completely directed towards
his own appetites and needs. Secondly, Cowperwood is depicted
as revealing a form of narcissism that
directs him unconsciously towards the cultivation of a
spectacularly driven personality which longs for, and
must compulsively attain, a great deal of self-sufficiency and
and control over his environment. Since others
are needed for his physical and emotional cravings
he can often be dependent, but he is careful to rotate
his victims.

Dreiser is very apt reading for this current era because
he consistently focuses on manipulativeness, power
and greed. Dreiser demonstrates that power-
driven individuals are action oriented, and are greatly
concerned with how they are viewed in the world, and
therefore are obsessed with personal accomplishment.
There is a Nietzchian side to Dreiser, in that he well
understands the relationship between accomplishment,
the will to power, and the forces of circumstance. Thus:
"The impediments that can arise to baffle a great and
swelling career are strange and various. In some
instances all the cross-waves of life must be cut by the
strong swimmer. With other personalities there is a chance,
or force, that happily allies itself with them; or they quite
unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that
there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not
necessarily. there is no understanding of it. Guardian
spirits? There are many who so believe, to their
utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth.) An unconscious
drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are
banners of moral manufacture. Nothing is proved;
all is permitted." (from *The Financier*.)

People under the sway of narcissistic personality disorder
are uniquely charismatic, as is Dreiser's Cowperwood
character. Others are ineluctably drawn to their fascinating charm
that is greatly enhanced by their breathtaking tendency
to take risks, to accomplish vast projects (often by shrewdly
exploiting and manipulating others), and by their larger
than life personal profile. While life appears to many, if
not most, as on ongoing struggle against insecurity and
implacable external forces, the narcissistic personality
appears, at most times, to be a supremely confident master
and manipulator of those same universal external forces
that appear to so frequently trouble, overcome or even dwarf less
towering personalities. The ability to fascinate others and
obtain their consistent admiration without appearing to
truly need others, while at the same time using and
exploiting them, is a literally compelling story, a story
of vast compulsions and historic dimensions.

Love and knowledge accumulate. Time and actions don't.



Notebook: 1/30/92
Published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
*****************************************

Fahrenheit 911 for free {click here}

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

"Still writing my paper for tomorrow's panel on witchcraft..."


Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here}
***************************************************

Thoughts are an intrusion, but not that much
of an intrusion. What is a true invasion is a
misperception, a falsehood, a lie.


notebook: 1/1/88
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*

Notes from *The Aztec Empire* Show
10/22/04

Guggenheim Museum- E. 89th & 5th Avenue
Half price- $9 Friday after 6pm
THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM EXAMINES THE ART AND
LIFE OF THE AZTECS
Friday, October 15, 2004–Sunday, February 13, 2005


*
Since the truly fictive is only a relatively small part of fiction,
the "fiction" of fiction is itself a fiction.

*
The sequence of societal developmental phases.
*
A sculpture with layers of faces, one opening
out on the other by means of small doors,
like Chinese boxes.
*
The Aztec warrior is in the
shape of a bird, a armored angel.
*
Faces that are looking out at a world
invisible to ordinary consciousness,
available only to shamanic consciousness.

*
The "compelling" aspect of cruelty and
authoritarianism. Authoritarian domination.
A single word: power.

*
The sun is the origin of all that
is compelling. Energy- the
relationship between energy
and power.

*
Relief one
The 5 ages
1400-1521

*
Life-Death Figure
ca 1400-1520
Brooklyn Museum

*
Quetzacoatl
1500
Serpent with exposed
menacing teeth
chin sitting low to
the ground- overgrown
with vines-
Looking down into
another dimension
with insect/incisor teeth
over his teeth (fierce)

*
Passionate submission
to a greater power-
Bush's critics like
Pat Robertson-
who won't be robbed
of *their* private acess
to God- the ancient battle
for exclusive entitlement-
to God -access

*
Evil monsters play
a significant role in the
process of introducing brutality.
*

Dragons- and dominating'
cruelty- (Aztec aspect)
*
The horror of the open-mouthed
being- The "scream"

*
(Incredible sculptures)
The faces of dogs, rabbits, toads
looking out there at the "other"
dimension- locusts, grasshoppers,
fleas, also looking at the
same dimension.
*

The Aztecs- two classes- with wealth
-which must be exhibited- and
with no wealth permitted- the second includes
tradespeople and workers-
the far right dream?
The ultimate dream of all
addicts of power-
yourself and your slave/worshippers
*

the wind-god
Ehecatl
1300
1500

Bearer with Mask {click here}

The origin of the Greek wind-god AILOS
on Tinos, Greece-windy Tinos, where
we escaped the scorching heat one summer
only to listen to the window-shutters
of our hotel room bang
throughout the night- finally I had to tie
them back with boating-twine purchased
at a local store
*

Anthropomorphic mask
1325-1481

*
The cutting edge of narrative often turns
to blood- and is fascinated by monsters.



notebook: 6/14/87
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
*

The Aztec Empire-
press release- with photo {click here}

New York mag- metro.com review- with photo of Mictlantecuhtli {click here}

Keith Haring
New Wave Aztec-Sackler Center Oct 22 '04-Feb 6 '05 {click here}
**************
Robert Smithson's art was very influenced
by his interest in Mayan and Aztec imagery.
Check out his many fascinating writings on
his visits to Mexico-
in particular his *Mirror Displacement* piece in
his collected essays:
Robert Smithson {click here}

Yucatan Mirror Displacements {click here}

Smithson's films are also available to download and view on this excellent site!

**************
Jerome Rothenberg's translations
of Aztec poetry, originally published in
*Technicians of the Sacred*

"in the bark



tree of old age



stone patterns: starting

from the roots they

reach the highest leaves"

now on Ubu Web {click here}
**************
Mixtec Death God {click here}

*************
Frida Kahlo's Aztec influences-
also, a good essay on Aztec history on this site, especially in terms of gender imagery {click here}
*************
Further afield:
2004 Crop Circles
and Aztec imagery:
Crop Circles {click here}

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion.

talking here-on *Counterpunch*- about GW Bush and
Faith-based Deceptions {click here}

via, the irrepressible, wood s lot (Mark Woods){ click here}
********************************
later today: notes on the *The Aztec Empire*
now on view at the Guggenheim
********************************
Both Mitch Highfill and Lori Lubeski
offered superb readings yesterday afternoon
at the Bowery Poetry Club. An amazing bonus:
reading by Joe Elliot and Mitch of a wonderful
collaboration they've been doing, based on
a book of riddles from the Middle Ages.
These riddles poems were so engaging
most of the audience (most notably, Nada Gordon
and Sharon Mesmer, ) could not resist enthusiastically shouting
out their "answers"
Ah, if you weren't, you shoulda been there!

from Mitch Highfill's recent chapbook *Koenig's Sphere*
from *Situations, New York*

from
"18."

"Try that with no arms
or legs, and in your head
what you're not supposed to
feel, taking shapshots at
the fountain, another
original idea- flutes
into headphones, zebra
stripes and white concrete.
excuse me, sir, do yo ahve
a light? Yes, I am only
light..."