On My Desk


Paul Gauguin, *Noa Noa* , NIcholas L Brown, 1919

"Tehura, immobile, naked, lying face downward flat on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear. She looked at me, and seemed not to recognize me, As for myself I stood for some moments strangely uncertain. A contagion emanated from the terror of Tehura. I had the illusion that a phosphorescent light was streaming from her staring eyes. Never had I seen her so beautiful, so tremulously beautiful. And then in this half-light which was surely peopled for her with dangerous appariations, I was afraid to make any movement which might increase the child's paroxysm of fright. How could I know what at that moment I might seem to her? Might she not with my frightened face take me for one of the demons and specters, one of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights? Did i really know who in truth she was herself? The intensity of fright which had dominated her as the result of the physical and moral power of her superstitions had transformed her into a strange being, entirely different from anything I had known heretofore."

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Sylvia Plath reads-, Caedmon, 50 minute cassette

The Poetry of Sylvia Plath/Stanford




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Anne Sexton: the voice of the poet, 60 minute cassette, 64 page book

"Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here,to the suburbs of Boston to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
on Friday on Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die."

Anne Sexton reads


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Ernesto Priego, who makes his home in Mexico City, now a student in Britain, opines on mouth-watering
Fish and Chips, a la Roland Barthes


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Mark Young, who makes his home in Australia, muses on the oddities of discovering John Cage's *X writings* at book fair in Rockhampton, and takes note of how much I am enjoying his *Falsely Goethe* (Otoliths). By the way, when Kimberly Lyons, Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan were visiting here last (speaking of mouth watering) to feast on Toni's awesome baked chicken and fries, and store bought Key Lime pie-at the moment Gary was talking about Tom Beckett, Kim had opened Mark's book to his poem that refers to Tom's *Unprotected Texts* gamma ways

(from *Falsely Goethe* by Mark Young)
"*Day twenty-one*

Today the
postman brought
me Tom Beckett's *Unprotected
Texts*. Special delivery.
Bubble wrapped
inside a plain
brown envelope. I
opened it up. That
print smell was
wonderful."


""Day ninety-six*

Today the
postman brought
me a new edition of *The
Selected Works of
Signumd Freud.* It's
full of what
appear at first glance
typos- though on
reflection perhaps
deliberate. Esp. when
you find such lines as
'...he dreamt his
mother fucked
him into bed.'"

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