*King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe* by Richard Foreman
opened at Ontological at The St Mark's Poetry Project, 2cd
Avenue and 10th street (212)533-4650 on January 8th and will
continue until April 18th. If you go by the list on the playbill, this
is the 40th play of Foreman's to be produced.


Don't miss it. It is a joy to behold,
though its subject is, of course,
among the most obnoxious possible.
At the end of the play, Richard's recorded voiced intones
over the loudspeaker that the audience,
in lightly applauding, will
not , in fact, be applauding the subject of the play.


Foreman has this to say
on the first page of the playbill:" I always
feel that my overriding obligation is to
make a complex compositional
object that gives aesthetic pleasure...
though I am anti-Bush and anti-
war- I don't find it artistically satisfying to simply
'preach to the converted'....
The solution I attempt in "King Cowboy
Rufus Rules the Universe" is to put on stage,
not George Bush
himself but a foppish English
gentleman who, while seeming a
figure out of the past- yet
dreams of becoming an imitation
George Bush- acquiring that
same power and manifesting
similar limits of vision..."

Toni and I went with
Nada Gordon (ululations) {click here} and Gary Sullivan (Elsewhere) {click here}.
While Toni has probably been to at least 15 of these plays,
and I have probably been to at least
25, this is the second for Gary and Nada.
All four of us left the theater feeling exhilirated
as I said so to Richard, who happened to trot
by as we were leaving. By the way, Richard
has been present at virtually every
performance of his plays that I have seen.

Lately, Foreman's plays have moved closer to
music and this work featured a number of songs,
a couple of them sung in a hauntiingly light,
lovely voice by the superb Juliana Francis, who plays Susie Sitwell.
The lead player, Jay Smith, who
plays gun-toting King Cowby Rufus in a huge cowboy hat,
is hilariously funny. He manages the extremely difficult task
of making every line sound like what they are,
lines of poetry. This is surely one of the best
lead player performances in one of Foreman's recent plays
since Tony Torn starred in *Now That Communism
Is Dead My Life Feels Empty.* I notice that Jay Smith
had a role in that play. I can't help mentioning, that still,
after many years of absence from Richard's plays,
I miss the presence of his brilliant wife Kate Manheim,
(Rhoda of "Rhoda in Potatoland" among many others).
Her genius is as yet revealed in the
performance of every lead actress in
Foreman's works.

As in most of Richard's plays, the audience plays an important
role. The stage lights always shine equally on the
audience and the stage. In this one,
Jay Smith frequently climbs a set of stairs
that leads out into the audience. At one point he urges himself,
to return to the world of the
stage and imagination where "nothing
is real." No doubt this is allusion to the clear
fact that to George Bush nothing appears
to be real.

While the witty, complex, visually awesome
stage set (constructed my Michael Darling
and Paul DiPietro) remains constant throughout
the play, there are literally scores of scenes
as in every Foreman play. In this case, as I mentioned
to Richard afterwards, the transitions were so smooth
that they were, amazingly, nearly invisible. This is a result,
no doubt, of the long experience Richard has as a director
of his own plays. This brings about the strange paradox
that, although each scene lasts only a few minutes, the
transitions are never disruptive because the choreography
of these transformations is rhythmically entrancing. Which
returns me to the musical aspect of Foreman's work.

As we were leaving, Gary mentioned the fact that, although
the play is political satire, it is still extremely abstract. As we
know, music is the most abstract of the arts. It seems to me
that Foreman is among the greatest abstractionist of our era, and
this in an era with many great abstractionists, from Rauchenberg
and James Rosenquist to Gertrude Stein to
Jackson MacLow and John Ashbery, to, at some
their best moments, the Beatles. It is for this reason, perhaps,
that Foreman's work keeps evolving closer to music- and pure poetry-
(TS Eliot's "April is the cruellest month" is quoted twice-
perhaps partly referring to the
fact that the play closes in April,) and the play also includes a
quote from my favorite of all books of poetry *The Duino Elegies*
"Who, if I shouted among the angelic orders, would hear me", although
I prefer the the McIntyre translation of Rilke's most famous line,
"Who, if I shouted among the hierarchies of angels, would hear me?"
What more apropos line could a poet utter in the Age of King Bush?

**
Richard Foreman/EPC Home Page {click here}

from *The Notebooks of Samuel Butler*

from "Truth and Convenience"

...The arrangement of our ideas is as much a matter
of convenience as the packing of goods in a druggist's or
draper's store and leads to exactly the same kind of difficulties
in the matter of classifying them. We all admit the arbitrarinesss of
classifications in a languid way, but we do not think of it more
than we can help- I suppose because it is so incovenient to
do so. The great advantage of classification is to conceal the
fact that subdivisions are as arbitrary as they are.

"Classification"

There can be no perfect way, for classification presupposes
that a thing has absolute limits whereas there is nothing that
does not partake of the universal infinity- something whose
boundaries do not vary. Everything is one thing at one time
and to some respects, and another at other times and in other
respects. We want a new mode of measurement altogether; at
present we take what gaps we can find, sent up milestones and
declare them irremoveable. We want a measure which shall express,
or at any rate recognize, the harmonics and resemblance that lurk
even in the most absolute differences and vice-versa.



"Attempts at Classification"

are like nailing battens of our own flesh, and blood upon ourselves
as an inclined plane that we may walk up ourselves more easily; and
yet it answers very sufficiently.

A Good Read

Found poetry by Chris Murray
right now on Texfiles {click here}

***********
Cybergenerosity

Prolific August Highland boasts the largest collection
of poetry on the web. His new minil-mag is online now at
Highland's Mini-Mag {click here}
and includes work by Tom Bell, Stephen-Paul Martin,
Daniella Gioseffi, Harry Polkinhorn, Suzi, August Highland
and 30 others

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

Ridley Scott's *1984* ad for
McIntosh
Great Scott! {click here}

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

Talking Trees

right now on The Cassandra Pages {click here}

************
Brian Kim Stefans' prose poem
"We Make"
Free Space Comix {click here}

I consider it a great misfortune that nature
has not granted me that indefinite something
which attracts people. I believe it is this lack
more than any other which has deprived me of
a rosy existence. It has taken me so long to
win my friends, I have had to struggle so long
for my precious girl, and every time I meet
someone I realize that an impulse, which defies
analysis, leads that person to underestimate me.
This may be a question of expression or
temperament, or some other secret of nature,
but whatever it may be it affects one deeply. What
compensates me for all this is the devotion shown
to me by all those who have become my friends-
but what am I talking about?

Letters of Sigmund Freud #93
to Martha Bernays
January 27, 1886

I don't mind when A Certain Blogger {click here}
helps themselves to the links I spend literally
dozens of hours hunting down, checking out and
choosing and posting over a period of a year,
but then to put them on their blog and not even bother
to edit and choose from them, or to give me credit for the list
or to even highlight my blog....shhheeeez!

Mexican Army Burns Down Zapista Village
right now on Indymedia {click here}

Historical take on friendship leagues right now at
Dovester{click here}

This just in from fark.com {click here}
Promising Study of New Fast Treatment for Heroin Addiction {click here}

Nada's views right now on ululations (Nada Gordon) {click here}

Boing Boing {click here} ,
one of the most visited blogs on the internet,
reports on the mysterious
murders in Juarez, Mexico.
Heriberto Yepez {click here)
has been desperately reporting for
months, and possibly longer, that these ghastly events
have been largely ignored in the US...

8/22/91

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

9/4/91

Luck and love have something in common-
they benefit from- and elicit-
unique forms of devotion.

9/14/91

The narcissist always needs to be placed
on a pedestal.

You are the pedestal.

Mark Young's poem in Pettycoat Relaxer #3 {CLICK HERE};

"It's
the risk you take when
writing about the future;
having it reviewed at a
point that is closer
to the concept than the
conception".

Notebook: 5/18/79 [continued from 1/29]

...No, I'm not
too afraid to hug you in English,
its we were afraid to talk in
French & make love in English, or
in both languages at once,
hearing the thought, for example,
in Spanish, heard like a Peruvian
folk song, pictured in
painted abstraction,
not to be said in blacks &
blues, written &
spoken, lightly transparent.
Fissures, I know, when naked &
holding we were children again,
not yet speaking only English,
but the languages we
brought with us- Italian,
German, Polish, Russian &
French. Licking you, kissing
you, biting you was all in
Italian once, but you felt
in in Engish so I tried to
translate it back into French
in broken American which you
would certainly never hear &
understand. But this way there
would somehow be a record of it,
though no matter how fast I
write it in English it would
gloss over every bit of the
Italian gestures you were feeling
in Boston Engish. Written
English, which singled out your
musically abrupt, practical gestures-
first I saw them as rough,
later efficient & mechanically
beautiful, but, since you couldn't
melt in Italian or Spanish or
French I found a German
Jew who understood my
French but insisted on speaking to
me in 19th Century English, prim
& proper & this angered me,
so I thought only in French &
thus escaped part of the rage,
though my German was good
enough to fight with & my
French made good conversation for
the German drinking you did.
It wasn't schizophrenic, what
we were doing, it was
a United Nations having a big
fight with jammed
circuitry, so that in one ear you
might be getting French &
in the other ear English, while
I would be decoding it all in
Italian, Russian & Polish,
once in awhile recording a
snatch of it in abstract
English-American, of course,
fragmented by Freud's
associational German, which
was good, especially during
analytic sessions, when you
didn't talk at all & I spoke
in several languages consecutively &
in that way all at once.
You only pretended to understand,
you only pretended to be you in
English while I saw you & I
together in a French film with
English subtitles. The plot,
dragged out endlessly, is full
of disguised messages, coded out
refractions, juxtapositions of
French & English, The Italian
version of the movie had
Scandinavian actors & Spanish
light.

I feel an anxiety about our
conversation- you're leading it so
steadily in Italian & while I'm
translating it into French, I'm answering
you in English which is not half
as fast as your Italian. If I speak
in French you listen. Once, when I
thought you were listening to me in
French yhou were actually probably
hearing it in Engish, because you
were answering me in English, directly &
clearly in honest English tones. Yet I would
have liked if we both could have
spoken in French, or Italian, or
both of them together. But you insist
on speaking to me quickly in Italian,
which patiently I translate into
English thinking
about your meanings seriously & exactly.
I should talk to you strictly in
Italian & ask you to answer me in
Italian, if we do talk again so
seriously & so long- so afterwards
if we make love we should make love in
Spanish & kiss in French & make love
much more in Spanish. Then we
should speak only Italian & slowly,
slowly in Italian & not translate it back into
anything.

Delighted to co-star in Alli Warren's {click here} dream.

Check it out- this dream is funny!

Notebook: 5/18/79 [continued from 1/28]

Gradually these symbols
enter into an orchestral architecture,
varieties of scales and contrasts:
small buildings & enormous cars.
At home, the letters, they're not in
ordinary English, bespeak thousands
of images of our moments together.
A puppy died, that distance woke me
out of my revery, actually made
me strong enough to leave. Stop
making me feel guilty, English, I'm
not your victim, I won't be
transparent motion for you, scattering my
energies aside, an onslaught of
conflicts. Too much gravity in
English, too much clumping
around, too much stumbling, walking,
running & hiking. In French,
English is quiet. Its
stillness outlines my future,
a private horoscope, portions
of memory, English a shortcut
to meaning, French an elongation
of thought, or thought preceding
thought, space for manifestations,
small quotes capture monolithic
presences, shape a steep angle to
the immediate token word. I
was also still talking to you
in English, thinking in French,
elaborating a labyrinthine dialogue
between 3, 4, 5 even 6 women,
thunder clasps their throats, pleasing
them sexually separately.
Maybe we really split
when you destroyed that housedress
you knew I loved the best, you
didn't want to tell me in Engish
how good you felt about me, you
had to hide it in your Boston
accents, while I was translating
all of it into French, dreaming it
into hieroglyphics I thought were
all about someone else- no, no.
Not a formula, something to
digest & simplify, too complicated
to organize. Sure,you got me
to shower in English, but the
conception, which will initially
appear confusing, cacaphonous,
will eventually explode into
French, imagining itself as a
Babel of voices and tongues- frozen
like the flat skyscrapers seen from
the Brooklyn shore
at twilight.

(to be continued)

Gratefully received today
from
Carl Annarummo
*$4.00 Poems*

"thank you Paul Auster.
now I'd like to enter
a nine ft. radial bouncy
ball and bounce myself
into outer space..."

Mr Annarummo edits *Pettycoat Relaxer*
and his poems may be found at
the Mollusk {click here}

Once again, Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here},
hits the (blog) spot, focusing now on the
causes of "the resistance to theory," in a piece titled
"Eclipses."
**
Wittgenstein as blogger... right now on Mikarrhea (Michaela Cooper) {click here}
**
Awesome! Cup Of Chicha {click here} comes through with links to info on David Markson
and a new link for *Solipsistic* in the same posting!
**
Divide and conquer...Antonio Savoridan {click here}
opens a new blog for his poems Respite and Nepenthe {click here}
**
Mirror mirror on the wall...by the light of the silvery
Moonshine Highways (Amy Bernier) {click here}
**
Transubspamtiation on ululations (Nada Gordon) {click here}

**
Thanks to Josh Cory for letting
his students roam free in blogland,
including *fait accompli*,
and to Jonathan Mayhew for
introducing some of my writing
to his *theory* class.

Notebook: 5/18/79

It took me a long time to
realize that you didn't like my
body. Even if it were a cover
for something else, a whole series
of contrasts, I wonder if now I'm
talking to you through someone else.
My art, to get back to you. I
add things on to memories. English
is anguish- a public memory.
The memories we shared- here is a
book of that, a bunch of snapshots
handed to you like flowers. Of an
evening, an evensong beginning on
a harsh note should be recognizable
to you, but would be less and
more spoken to you in French. I've
never been in love with you in
English, I'll trade languages with
you privately. A dumb song, so
many notes of which, fogging the
windows, tipping back and forth the
focusing of meanings- again, a
map disappearing into history,
fading, found, melting regularly
into political absence, not names,
before and after in harmony.
French is prepositional, but your
language is English, its tune
belongs in a gas station managed
by a mustachioed attendant.
It's your baby now, your car,
I mean really her car, her cargo
of gifts bearing me along so
slowly- a book of words the best
gift of all. You didn't realize of
course that not speaking French with
you finally came to symbolize the
dissolution of our relationship and that
was a powerful thing to happen, to
let myself float along like this
struggling endlessly with your absence,
with your multiplicity and the harsh
precise tones of my mother tongue.
English, you burst open
in a welter of voices, chorus
of voices rising over the traffic's
monotonous breathing. Before the
pronouncement, all that angry
repetition, the moldy collection of
papers, I got angry with the
way someone cleverly simplified
your gestures, speeding them up,
flashing them sharply, cracking them
loudly in the tension of two
people silently communicating inside
the hum of a descending elevator.
Out in the street English is also
silent, that is, language consists
of messages in silence, translated
partially into several languages-
Italian, Spanish, French, Chinese,
Arabic- possibly a little
Hindustani & Greek & Russian.
Bass voices, a welter of
synapses clicking reminders-
weather, hunger, rage, appointments,
money...

[to be continued]

This just in, Black Spring (Menno ter Braak
with beat_read, Steve Tills) {click here}
is blogging regularly again, back again
last summer, with things to say
about the (U.S.) culture of fear, Bush, Kerry, Dean.

Bibliography for "The Narcissistic Personality"
*=highly recommended


Otto F. Kernberg, *Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism*
"The Treatment of the Narcissistic Personality" (Chapter 8),
Jason Aronson, pp.227-262 (1975)

Otto Kernberg, ibid, "Clinical Problems of the Narcissistic
Personality", pp. 263-314

Otto Kernberg, ibid, "Normal and Pathological Narcissism" (pp. 315-346)

*Heinz Kohut, *The Restoration of The Self*, "The Termination of
The Analysis of Narcissistic Personality Disorders" (Chapter 1)
International Universities Press, pp. 1-62

10. Countertransferential Issues

*Malcolm J. Marks, "Professional Narcissism in Psychotherapy" in
*Countertransference*, Herbert S. Strean, editor, (New York: The
Hayworth Press, 1985) pp. 95-109

*Harold Searles, "Oedpal Love in the Countertransference",
*Collected Papers on Schizophrenia* (International
Universities Press, 1965) pp.l 284-303

Otto Kernberg, "Further Contributions to the Treatment
of Narcissistic Personalities" (international Journal of
Psychoanalysis, Vol 55, pp. 215-40-1974)

eeeeeeeyoooooo
yuck
the republican national committee
is advertising on my
site meter

The *Poetry Project Newsletter* for February/March is out
and contains a rave review written by poet Joe Elliot for
Charles Borkhuis' new book *Savoir-Fear* published by
Meeting Eyes Bindery (Spuyten Duyvil). Here's a taste from
"Bad Infinity", the closing poem in the book:

"god is not dead I thought
he's just another resurrected sign
on the simulation circuit
like the rest of history

wry sewage overflowed
from a half-forgotten dream
big world breakdown I am coming
from the land of detritus interruptus
to your perfectly contained club med shore
eyes permanently slit
and a rusty razor between my teeth
icy repetition hemorrhaging cartoon nights
bloody thunder talk to me"

In the review, by the way, Joe Elliot takes a swipe at the harshest "nice
guys finish last" poet of all time, Bruce Andrews: "Bruce Andrews's
work, for example, is justified insofar as it is funny. All those
nasty consonsants and juxtapositions are hilarious and freeing and train
the ear not to accept the less freeing. However, how far forward they move
the cause of social justice is incidental..."

To get a taste of this terrific book, and meet and talk with
its author, why not go to his reading with blogger Katie
Degentesh at the Poetry Project on
Wednesday, February 18th at 8 pm? We all know
how funny and terrific her writing is. What a combo!

For $18 bucks you can attend the reading ($8) and buy the
book ($10) and probably get it signed, knowing how kind a
person Charles is. And if you haven't yet had the pleasure,
hear and meet Katie Degentesh, one of the wittiest and most
popular bloggers we have and find out exactly what the fuss is all
about!

Besides, the Poetry Project could use the money. They lost
their NEA grant this year.

The Poetry Project is located at St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street, New York City 10003
THE POETRY PROJECT {CLICK HERE}
Lets hear it for Anselm Berrigan for keeping this grand poetry institution alive,
exciting and significant for contemporary poetry.

Atrios on WNYC

Possibly every blogger except me knows about this blog
but I heard him on WNYC on a show about political blogging
last night (Frank Rich also chimed in with some intelligent ideas
as usual) sort of debating Andrew
Sullivan. His ideas are
interesting, plus, he got 80,000 hits in one day last
week- but don't hold that against him. Scroll way down
to a post called Bush vs. Dean and see if you
think the video clip looks like Bush getting drunk at a wedding
in 1992.

Eschaton {click here}

from *The Notebooks of Samuel Butler* (1835-1902)

"Fascination"

"I know a man, and one whom people generally
call a very clever one, who, when his eye catches
mine, if I meet him at home or an evening party,
beams upon me from afar with the expression of
an intellectual rattlesnake on having espied an
intellectual rabbit. Through any crowd that man
will come sidling towards me, ruthless and irresistible
as fate; while I, foreknowing my doom, sidle also
him-wards, and flatter myself that no sign of my
inward apprehension has escaped me."

::fait accompli::
(((((BLOGLINK)))))(((((CRUSH)))))((((((LIST))))) (New Links)
(((((THESE)))))(((((BLOGS)))))(((((ARE)))))(((((HOT)))))


Almost Successfully (Michael Bogue)

Blaugustine (Natalie D'Arbeloff)

The Chatelaine's Poetics (Eileen Tabios)

Crag Hill's Poetry Scorecard

Heaven (Mairead Byrne)

Luminations (Ben Basan)

Muladar, Movedizo, Muladar (Heriberto Yepez) (Spanish/English)

Nemski.com

New Pages (Guide to Blogs)

Nobody Here (Jogchem Niemendverdriet (English/Dutch/Japanese)

random items (German/English)

Rob McLennan's Blog

Twists and Turns (Michael Gates)

Under Mind (Brennen Lukas}

Visions of Johanna (Johanna Rauhala)

Eratio (Gregory St. Thomasino)

Sifry's Alerts (David Sifry)

Scriptorium (Carlos Arribas)

Drunken Slugs (Nicole Cordrey)

dbqp: visualizing poetics (Geof Huth)

Vanishing Points of Resemblance (Tom Beckett)

Hoarded Ordinaries (Lorianne Schaub)

Ought (Ron Henry)

Paula's House of Toast

sodaddictionary part II

...something slant

God of The Machine

and
Froth (Marianne Shaneen) {click here} is back!!!

*************************************************************************************
This just in from Johanna Rauhala (Visions of Johanna)

Saturday, January 24, 2004
Yep, I've come out from underground turnips and rutabagas, and plan to post occasionally on this blog. (Sorry about the confusion with the name "Suze" . I have a work-related blog and I was using that as a pseudonym. But it's really me, Johanna!) And it's true- I'm pregnant! Almost four months. Scary/excited/scary/excited/scary/excited.
More links coming.
# posted by J : 5:54 PM

Deja Vu Dep't

Just now I went into my Site Meter (what
else is new?) and saw an unusual link,
checked it out and found out it went to a blog called
Visions of Johanna {click here}
whose most recent link is about the birth of her baby!
For a second I wondered if Johanna Rauhala had brought
back her blog with its earliest name (if you remember
she changed it to *Rutabaga* before retiring it
some months back.) But this is someone who
started her blog this past September and who
signs off with the name Suze.
Welcome, *Visions of Johanna*
and thanks for the link!

Hmmm....Maybe it's getting to be
time for a new (((((fait)))))(((((accompli))))
((((((HOT)))))((((((BLOG))))) list. Tomorrow
is one of those quiet days in Blogland,
it's a Sunday....Why not tomorrow?

In the midst of writing several papers, Josh Corey
opines on anxiety, narcissism and the value of
blogging- and takes issue with some major
academic players!


He writes "This search for community is part of the reason
I feel I must reject the priestly convictions of one
of the commenters on Holmes' original post, Aaron McCollough.
I don't want to reprint it
without his permission, but I think what he says
pathologizes my "paradoxical desires" (for transcending the
system and for being rewarded by the system),
rather than recognizing that this pathology is
a reaction to a paradoxical system. Again, to go
back to Nick Piombino's "Blogging and Narcissism" post,
these are actual social problems that turn into psychological
problems. McCollough's solution seems to be that one
should accept one's role as unacknowledged legislator
and opt out of the system entirely...."

While Cahiers de Corey (Josh Corey) {click here}
is finishing his paper for class,
you have a small window of time to catch up
on this interesting discussion, before Josh's next post,
which may take you elsewhere...

Speaking of Elsewhere (Gary Sullivan) {click here}
don't miss Gary Sullivan on K.S. Mohammad {click here} and Tina Darraugh.

Dean's Dilemma

I've been thinking a lot about the hullabaloo created
on tv over the last few days about an emotionally
demonstrative speech Howard
Dean gave to some of his supporters after coming
out third in the Iowa primary that has been extensively
interpreted as "over the top." Dean himself acknowledged
its "nuttiness" (I don't think so) but appropriately refused
to apologize. Apologize to whom for what?

The passage below is from my
chapbook *The Boundary of Theory*
published by Cuneiform Press
early in 2001. The text was talk given at SUNY/Buffalo
on September 27, 2000. Kyle Schlesinger published
the chapbook and interviewed me shortly thereafter
and included the interview in the chapbook.

"One theory I noted for the (suggested) successes of
Bush during the televised debates was his lack of
surface anger. Aside from the familiar McLuhanistic
theories of the "coolness" of the television medium,
perhaps a more basic explanation for the apparently
pervasive lack of emotion is the manipulative power
of remaining "cool." Coolness, in our culture, implies
self-control, conviction and confidence. Perhaps one
of the most familiar images for indoctrination during
the Second War were those clips of Hitler and Mussolini's
frigteningly rageful speeches. I think indoctrination in our
time has more to do with talk that is so lacking in
listening, introspection and respect for the speaker that
the give and take of discussion is reduced to the effect
of canned dialog, complete with laugh and applause tracks.
This is where narrative structure comes in, for me.

I associate narrative structure with predictable outcomes,
even when the outcomes are predictably unpredictable. The
more predictable outcomes become for the practiced viewer
(and we are all now incredibly practiced viewers) the more
outrageous the endings have to become, in their soon to
be predictable ways. I'm thinking at the moment of the
"surprise" ending(s) of the (relatively) recent *Reindeer Games*.
I feel that Bush, the cooler his is, the more frightening the
implied violence becomes. Thus his popularity with U.S. males.
So perhaps what is being repressed, better yet, disguised,
is the relationship between emotional reaction and violence,
thus the heightened effect of ruthlessness. Only a truly
ruthless person can be trusted to be predictably violent.

What appeals to me about disrupting narrative structure
is the transgression of automaticity. The "automatic"
and the machine gun are apt contemporary images for
the internally terrifying sensation of violence exactly
because "reaction time" has been effectively eliminated.
No time for pity or sympathy. Just plug 'em. Simply stated:
narrative structure=violence. Or, as I put it in *The Boundary
of Blur*: 'The cutting edge of narrative often turns to blood
and is fascinated by monsters.'"

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

Has it reached a point that manipulation
is the only reality, and heartfelt openness
is considered...what...crazy? Why? As I
suggest above, it appears now that unless a politician
is sufficiently cool, they will not appear to be sufficiently
manipulative (=powerful) to lead a nation
more and more run by people mainly concerned to
appear more covert and manipulatively shrewd than
the next representative. This is enhanced by the covert
insistence that all citizens follow orders
and control any desire to think and feel for themselves
which includes the unstated expetation that one dare not
spontaneously expose one's feelings whatever they might be.
It is no surprise that Howard Dean found a home
among the blogs. Clearly there are fewer and fewer places
left to openly state a dissident point of view
where numerous others might have a chance to listen and respond
if you are not a member of the "vast right wing conspiracy"
that Hllary Clinton once spoke about so passionately. She's
quieter now. I guess she has to be.
Big Brother of the Patriot Act is watching.

Cup of Chicha {click here} makes
the point that *The Butterfly Effect* is a "bad" movie.
But lots of cinemaniacs like
me and Toni occasionally enjoy grade B movies,
especially grade B science fiction movies. Though
admittedly this movie is sounding a bit more like
grade F. Sometimes it is advisable
to let such films "ripen" for
awhile to be able to endure them- or, if they
are really rotten, maybe let them dry out a little.

An LRB article focussing on Oulipo and Harry Matthews
London Review of Books {click here}
via the consisitently informative blog Language Hat {click here}

Today, a movie called *The Butterfly Effect*,
starring Ashton Kutcher, will open that is about
someone who time travels by reading their own
journals. I don't exactly know what to think about
this. Certainly no one had ever heard about this movie
or its premise when I started *::fait accompli::spellbound
speculations:: time travel* on February 11,
2003. From that time on, I began writing frequently about my idea
of time travel, and blogging my journal which often
deals with time and time travel since the 70's. Time
travel is not a new idea, but doing it through journal
writing is something I never thought or heard about
before I began doing it. Also, I wonder if anyone else who
reads *fait accompli*, especially from early on, would make similar connections
with the premise of "The Butterfly Effect" that I do.
Then I start to think, maybe these people lifted my idea and rightfully
owe me some money, or at least a credit? But in
these days of artistic appropriation, maybe
their lifting my idea should be considered cool...I dunno...
It's a rather common dilemma, isn't it?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this, is related to why I
waited so long to publish most of these journals- although
my book *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
is also culled from my journals
and deals with time travel in some of the pieces.
Truthfully, I've enjoyed the
privacy of my strange little experiment all these years.
Now a couple of movie producers turn my idea of time travel
through synchronistically connecting with early journal writing
into something "mainstream", tranforming it into something as accessible
and omnipresent as *The Gap.*
Yuck. On the other hand, if more people
start thinking about this particular possibility of time travel--
perhaps it will it become less
fiction and more reality? Who knows?
Only time will tell...ha-ha.


Anyway, here is a piece I blogged on *fait accompli* on 4/18/03:
******************************************************

I began to recognize the fact that some degree of evidence was likely to exist in the most recent notes I took. Chances are, going backwards in time, I would find fewer and fewer marked examples of what I was looking for. (Also, I have to take heed of who has succeeded me in breaking into the room, to discover its contents and who might have been there. Your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to try to remember and picture the inhabitants.)

Meanwhile, he could be there now, chuckling to himself that my ideal typewriter was all I ever really wanted out of it- not the words themselves, just that totally portable, ever ready to respond, trusty machine. Some joke.
(7/22/87)

The Cassandra Pages {click here} quotes Martin Luther King and discusses nonconformity (Wednesday, January 21)

Thanks to the following blogs for
new links to *fait accompli* and our
blogging and narcissism discussion
Eratio (Gregory St. Thomasino) {click here}
Sifry's Alerts (David Sifry) {click here}
Scriptorium (Carlos Arribas) {click here}
Mysterium (Carlos Arribas)
Twists and Turns (Michael Gates){click here}
Chimera Song Mosaic (Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo)
Equanimity (Jordan Davis)
Hoarded Ordinaries {click here}
Porthole Redux {click here}
including Drunken Slugs {click here} reflecting on "narcissistic voyeurism" , "sollipsism" and "community"
as related issues for bloggers.

Here's another fine site
brought to my attention by Gregory St. Thomasino
Eratio Postmodern Poetry {click here}

The excellent new edition
Sidereality {click here}

is now available
with a new look designed by Clayton Couch and Greg Couch.
Edited by Clayton Couch and Lewis LaCook.
*************************************

Technorati has a new beta page.
Go check out your links at
Technorati Beta Page {click here}


Thanks to Sifry's Alerts (David Sifry) {click here}

Vulnerability on Ice


The reservoir in Central Park is
almost completely iced over now.
The ducks and seagulls have settled
into the few little melted patches that
opened up because of the daylight sun.
Yesterday I noticed
a bedraggled swan among the ducks and gulls
in one open patch
near the jogging path
and I was very surprised. I have
never seen a swan there before-
they usually go to the large lake
in the Rambles. Last year one died in that lake
although nobody knows why for sure.

A couple of years ago, after 9/11, I got
into the habit of going down to the
lake in the Ramble, particularly after
very cold spells, to feed the birds. The
colder it gets, the less food the birds get,
and though technically you are not supposed
to feed them- maybe because they
should learn to go elsewhere to get
their food in winter-
- I'm not really sure
why it's not allowed- I do it anyway.

Actually, I got reminded of this
practice during the past two winters when I saw the
Lucas Samaras show
recently at PaceWildenstein Gallery.
(32 East 57th St, 212-421-3292)
consisting mostly of powerful,
very large computer generated photographic
images of Central Park.
In one. Samaras pictures himself
as part bird, part human. These works
brought back some of the thoughts and feelings
I had when feeding the ducks, gulls and swans
day after day, mulling over the state of the world,
looking again and again at the downtown skyline.
Samaras himself was at the gallery photographing
the installation when I was there,
a coincidence that led me to studying the images
even more closely, as he appears, often
nude, in many of the images. This, also and
alas, may be why he fled the gallery shortly
after taking the pictures, who knows.
Maybe he was just in a hurry. And I could
well understand why the actor in a
drama of their own creation might
not want to be observed
backstage by the audience.
(Probably Samaras was documenting
the show because it closed on Sat 1/17.)
Here’s an article about Samaras with some
images- and for some reason, I just keep
bumping straight into the topic of narcissism.
Of course, I don’t agree with Roberta Smith’s
use of this term, but here’s a recent article
on Samaras: Roberta Smith on Lucas Samaras {click here}


A couple of winters ago I learned
how to toss hunks of bread to the seagulls
as they flew towards me as I was stationed
on the shore of the lake. After a
few visits the flock of seagulls learned how to line
up and fly around right by me one
at a time to get the pieces of bread
tossed up to them. When they are
really hungry they fly by very close to
catch it. Today it was a little like a
scene out of "The Birds" by Hitchcock,
and Toni, though completely into feeding the birds,
was understandably a bit concerned that
they might soil our coats as they flew by,
they seemed so extremely
eager to get the bread,
much more anxiously than I had ever seen before,
they were flying by so close and so
excitedly. There have
been many truly well below freezing
days and nights of late and the park
has been rather sparsely visited
at least here uptown in the 90’s.

I remembered today that I would
frequently get ideas for *fait accompli*
while I was feeding those birds. Today I thought
about power and greed, and human vulnerability
and the coming election.
I realized that I liked Howard Dean not only
because he is against war but also because he
studied science in order to be a doctor.
I don't see how this country
can use science and technology
to heal our wounds and protect
the country and its resources
by depending mainly on forms of
Christian mysticism to guide us.
I can well understand how religious
feeling and experience
can mean a lot to many individuals and groups
and help to bring people together in
a caring way. But the separation of church and state
was a doctrine not only developed for reasons
of protecting the diversity
of religious practice, but also for
insuring that governmental
decisions were based on reason, not “faith.”
And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know
that rocket science (the only type of science that
Bush seems to be interested in) is by far
not the most crucial
priority for the needs of the world
at the moment.
(By the way, we heard the comedienne
Reno discuss this topic brilliantly and
hilariously just this past Friday evening
at the Bowery Poetry
Club).

No matter how Bush tries to
impress the world with the United States’
power to conquer other countries
and outer space, I haven't forgotten
for a moment that 9/11 took place
on Bush’s watch, with all that information available
for predicting such attacks in the technological
informational pipeline.

Birds on a icy lake in a park,
people living in a cold and threatening world,
we are all only too vulnerable.

The fantastic in art and fiction
from The Cornell Digital Collection
The Fantastic in Art and Fiction {click here}
via (solipsis)//:phaneroemikon (Lanny Quarles) {cllick here}

**
Did you know that

Lanny Quarles lives in Portland, Oregon
with his wife Kara and their two cats
Patchen and Anise?

Ben Affleck discovers major new way to use Google.
Via Harlequin Knights (Joseph Mosconi) {click here} (scroll down on Tuesday, 1/20)

Notebook: 2/1978

No matter who I am
nothing can completely
allow this silence.

I, who speak, can only repeat
who- not that which becomes
what we are now in relation to together-
I add. But I am not this personal
being who questions, who marks the
equations of what I have added
to your listening- to be
continually prior to it, to be
listening to this one, this I,
before I have imagined a later
answer, our exchange must be
immediately postponed. Set
before you immediately

2/28/78

Get rid of your be-longings
he cackles at me- I listened
to him once & followed his
call a long time ago. I
can speak.

3/10

To prepare for the reading I
looked up the word labyrinth
in the thesaurus

3/16

"I can stare."

Correspondences, coincidences,
criticisms, decisions,
cannibalisms, canizba (a sound
I don't yet recognize the meaning of,
going before and through.)

Before is not just the past.
Before is an emphasis of just
past. The recorded definitions.
The unspeakable ceremonies avowing
each letter going from one carved letter
to another inscription.

It took place near a marble
monument, stone anyway, which
is so dense with time it surrounds
itself with a wide air of silence,
of association. These vague structures,
reminiscent of so much that came
before, the many possible resemblances
to familiar objects of childhood,
like the height of the sink in relation
to your growing, or the red hot
glare of morality whicih can be
frozen into your heart by anger.
Against the pain of that yielding,
next to this serious weightiness is
juxtaposed the translucence of
the art of 1885-1912, the
fruitful years preceding the war.
That dream seems comical now

::fait accompli:: very pleased to announce our inclusion on
New Pages Guide to Weblogs and Daily News Sites {Click Here}

This just in from: Buffalo Poetics {click here}


SMALL PRESS CULTURE WORKERS:
A Conference on Small Presses in Ithaca, NY
February 7, 2004
Small Press Culture Workers is a forum for poets,
publishers, and editors of small, independent presses
and magazines as well as publishers of artist's books
to investigate the sub-economic force of small press publishing.
Cultural work made possible by artists
and editors committed to building and sustaining
community, beyond simply marketing and
consumable products, will be examined
through a variety of papers and talks
given by panel presentations.
Presenters include:
Charles Alexander, Chax Press
Allison Cobb, co-editor, POM2
Jennifer Coleman, co-editor, POM2
Rory Golden, Executive Director, Center for Book Arts
Brendan Lorber, Editor, Lungfull!
Jennifer Savran, LunaSea Bindery and Press
Juliana Spahr, co-editor, Chain, Subpress
Buzz Spector, former editor of White Walls, Chair, Department of Art, Cornell University
Mark Weiss, Editor, Junction Press
The conference includes panel presentations, small press book fair, gallery exhibit: "Pages," curated by Buzz Spector, at the Ink Shop/Olive Branch Press and a group reading by the poet/publishers in attendance as part of the West End Reading Series February event.
The Clinton House, 116 N. Cayuga Street,
Ithaca, NY.
Contact Jane Sprague for further information
regarding registration, lodging and conference
details at janesprague@clarityconnect.com or
(607) 564-3617. http://www.palmpress.org/culture_workers.html
Posted by: Kyle / 1/6/2004 08:32:10 PM

Bibliography for "The Narcissistic Personality"

8. Idealization and Transference

Heinz Kohut, *The Analysis of The Self*, Chapter 4,
"Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects of the Idealizing
Transference," "The Idealizing Transference Distinguished
From Mature Forms of Idealization"" pp. 74-78 (International
Universities Press, 1971)

Heinz Kohut, ibid, "Varieties of Indealizing Transference" pp, 78-85

Heinz Kohut, ibid, "The Process of Working Through and Other
Clinical Problems in the Idealizing Transference," pp. 86-104

for my comments on the James Rosenquist show at
the uptown Manhattan Guggenheim Museum
*Debussy on Canvas: Rosenquist at the Guggenheim*
scroll down to Saturday, January 17
********************************************
(This list has been updated to include recent links)

My essay "Blogging and Narcissism" was posted on Sunday, January 11th, in response to Ernest Priego's January 11th essay "Primary Passions". My sincere thanks to Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here}, Boynton {click here}, Paula's House of Toast {click here}, Wood s Lot (Mark Woods) {click here}, The Cassandra Pages {click here}, This Journal (Brother Tom Murphy) {click here}, The Well Nourished Moon (Stephanie Young) {click here}, Bellona Times (Ray Davis) {click here}, Ought (Ron Henry) {click here} , Blaugustine (Natalie D'Arbeloff) {click here}, Cahiers de Corey (Josh Corey) {click here} , Mairead Byrne, Sheila Murphy, Gregory St. Thomasino, Topher Tune's Times (Christy Church) {click here}, Blue Kangeroo (Jean Vengua) {click here} , Blogmatrix Rss Feed for January 14 {click here} , Live Journal {click here} , Moonshine Highways (Amy Bernier) {click here} ,...something slant {click here} , and Savoradin.com {click here} for recent links and kind words.
If I missed anybody, thanks to you too, and
please let me know so
*fait accompli* can publish an
acknowledgement.

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

Bibliography for "The Narcissistic Personality"

7. Forms of Narcissistic Pathology

Otto F. Kernberg, *Internal World and External Reality"
"Normal Narcissism in Middle Age," pp. 135-154 (1987)

Otto F. Kernberg, ibid, "Pathological Narcissism in Middle Age"
pp. 135-154.

Arnold H. Modell, "A Narcissistic Defense against Affects and
The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency" *International Journal of
Psychoanalysis," Vol. 56, pp 275-82 (1975)

Alice Miller, "Depression and Grandiosity as Related Forms
of Narcissistic Disturbances, " International Journal of
Psychoanalysis, Vol 6, pp 61-76 (1979)

Check out: Nobody Here (Jogchem Niemendverdriet) (English/Dutch/Japanese) {click here}

[via, and check out Twists and Turns (Michael Gates) {click here}]

**
Boynton's Labyrinth of Links

Boynton Kills Age {click here}

and

Boynton & Blogging Writ Large (BBC- Style)

The Age of Boynton {click here}

(Evidently, the product of something called the Mixmaster)

**

Also, don't miss the ice angel on
The Cassandra Pages {click here}

This Week in Blogland

Sunday, January 18

Is this your lucky day?
Professor Wiseman's guide to good luck- BBC News {click here}
via Caterina {click here}

Who strikes me as a lucky person.
Did you know that Caterina started blogging when
she was recovering from an illness- and now gets
2000 hits a day on her blog?
That she is an artist and lives in Vancouver?

**
from Equanimity (Jordan Davis) (click here}
Saturday, January 17:
"Since this is the undercurrent of pain and envy that
drives so much of poetry culture, it's almost a relief
to have it out in the open. Almost."
**
Friday, January 16
(solipsis)//:phaneroemikon (Lanny Quarles) {click here}
opines on narcissism and
publishes a poem by tex files (Chris Murray) {click here}
who names Word Placements (Clayton A.Couch) {click here} the texfiles poet of the week!
**
Thursday, January 15
Savoradin.com {click here}
tells about 12 blogs he would take with him to a desert island (many of them new to us)
and *fait accompli* makes the cut! Thanks Tonio!

**
Wednesday, January 14
ululations (Nada Gordon's) {click here} 40th birthday

**
Tuesday, January 13
Overlap (Drew Gardner) {click here} reports on
art in Washington, D.C.

**
Monday, January 12
Bellona Times (Ray Davis) {click here} passes on some thoughts by Lawrence L. White regarding Yvor Winters on Yeats:
"Yeah, Yeats is a dope. You know what? Poetry is dopey.
Getting up in front of everyone (even if behind the screen
of the printed page) & singing w/out music is at the least an
unusual gesture. I'd go as far as call it preposterous. Certainly
one should never risk the resulting social censure w/out the excuse
of drunkenness or misanthropy."
More:God In The Machine {click here}
**
Looking for "Blogging and Narcissism"? Click Here and Scroll down to
Sunday, January 11...

Bibliography for "The Narcissistic Personality", continued
*Highly Recommended

5. Adolescence- The Turning Point

Peter Blos, "Adolescence", "The Ego in Adolescence" (Chapter 5)
The Free Press, 1962, ppp. 168-195

Annie Reich, "Early Identifications as Archaic Elements in the Superego" (1954)
in *Psychoanalytic Contributions*, pp. 209-236

*Annie Reich, ibid. "Pathologic Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation" (1960),

Erik H. Erikson, *Identity and the Life Cycle*, "The Problem of
Ego Identity" (Chapter 3), pp. 120-158

6. Idealization and Mastery

*Karen Horney, *Neurosis and Human Growth* (1950), "The Search for Glory"
(Chapter 1),pp. 17-39.

*Janine Chassguet-Smirgel, "The Development of the Ego Ideal"
in *The Ego Ideal*, Norton, 1985, pp.26-45

*Heinz Kohut, "Forms and Transformations of Narcissism", Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, Voll 14, pp. 243-72
pp. 288-311

Carlos Arribas, of the lush, luminous blog
Mysterium {click here} has opened a poetry blog aptly titled
Scriptorium {click here}

Debussy on Canvas: Rosenquist at the Guggenheim


When you live with an artist in love with galleries,
museums and art shows you go to a lot
of them and spend quite a lot of time
listening and looking and nodding repectfully
without having a clue as to what the art is
all about. But tonight's visit to the Guggenheim
Museum brought an entirely different sort of
experience. The James Rosenquist retrospective {click here}
was a competely pleasureable
experience, a joy to behold. Here are a few more of
the images from the Rosenquist
Retrospective {click here} but even this selection of images
doesn't capture the range and excitement of these
paintings, many of which can take up an entire huge
wall.

Rosenquist's work rarely seems to be about pain or sadness,
though one large painting includes a version of Picasso's
Guernica. This may be the first artist I have ever seen
who could be visionary, while working in such a large
scale without being tragic or agonized. Rosenquist work is
light without being lightweignt, when there is irony it
is not puncturing, but is harmonized into an overview
that includes lush beauty and sensuality. Rosenquist
is cinematic to an exciting degree, and while we see many
of the familiar images of Pop Art, this work employs such
themes without a cartoony sense of strained humor, and
somehow I didn't feel the art to be blaring even when many
images employed in the work were. There are innumerable
references to art history. In one painting from 1966, Rosenquist
attaches a broken pane to the painting in a clear reference
to Duchamp. Yet these references do not come across as
either labored or ironic, they show a witty, even cinematic
kind of reflexivity of the artist's formal process such
you might observe in a great filmaker like Robert Altman
(I saw "The Player" recently; and have long been a fan of "Three Women");
Rosenquist uses art historical references the way a good
filmaker refers consciously or unconsciously to film history
and weaves them respectfully, but unintrusively, into the whole.
Also, while not always offering the vertical scale that might
reflect the scale of the paintings in the most complimentary way, the
Guggenheim offers a horizontal overview of many paintings
at a time which shows Rosenquist's complex, layered development and
cinematic qualities to great effect.

Rosenquist shows lots of wit and insight about time and history. In
1947, 1848, 1950, R depicts three kind of ties in
1950's tv style black and white. This painting was made
in 1960. Rosenquist seems supremely sensitive to technology's
continual reshaping of the way the eye receives color. Toni mentioned
Walter Benjamin and I thought that Rosenquist was doing
deconstruction long before the advent of Jacques Derrida.

As in the best collages, there is no need here to avoid narrative,
but also no ongoing need to recount history in either a sentimental
or a journalistic way. In this use of fragmentation, some elements
of harmony, whether about movement, color or tone, are always
insisted on- this is the classic aspect. As a result, as with my
favorite composers, notably Chopin and Debussy, the melodic
line goes anywhere from memorable to hypnotizing; but there is
always melody and there is always grace
Pleasurable melody remains the most memorable
of the sometimes fragmented and abstract,
yet never incoherent forms of narrative.
R is never maudlin, most particulary in his use
of color, which never precludes the phantasmagoria
of tv, cinema, advertising, notably neon- and there are numerous
references to the black and white era of tv and cinema- these are
lush and redolant with recent history and its overlay with the present.

The show closes on January 25th. Friday nights at the Guggenheim
are pay as you wish, and since the tourists have gone home, and
it is cold, you probably won't find it crowded; we didn't, and the
two hours we spent there went by in a minute.

Think daring political action
Think daring film creation and curating
Think daring writing and blogging
Think Froth (Marianne Shaneen) {click here}


Froth {click here}
is back
with that revolutionary attitude
we've all been missing!

Welcome back to blogging Marianne!

My essay "Blogging and Narcissism" was posted on Sunday, January 11th, in response to Ernest Priego's January 11th essay "Primary Passions". My sincere thanks to Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here}, Boynton {click here}, Paula's House of Toast {click here}, Wood s Lot (Mark Woods) {click here}, The Cassandra Pages {click here}, This Journal (Brother Tom Murphy) {click here}, The Well Nourished Moon (Stephanie Young) {click here}, Bellona Times (Ray Davis) {click here}, Ought (Ron Henry) {click here} , Blaugustine (Natalie D'Arbeloff) {click here}, Cahiers de Corey (Josh Corey) {click here} , Mairead Byrne, Sheila Murphy, Gregory St. Thomasino, Topher Tune's Times (Christy Church) {click here}, Blue Kangeroo (Jean Vengua) {click here} , Blogmatrix Rss Feed for January 14 {click here} , Live Journal {click here} , Moonshine Highways (Amy Bernier) {click here} ,...something slant {click here} , and Savoradin.com {click here} for recent links and kind words.
If I missed anybody, thanks to you too, and
please let me know so
*fait accompli* can publish an
acknowledgement.

Bibliography for "The Narcissistic Personality"

*(Highly Recommended)

4. Object Relations

*Sigmund Freud, "Contributions to the Psychology
of Love. A Special Type of Object Choice Made By Men"
(1910) in *Collected Papers volume 4*, pps. 203-216

*Annie Reich, "Narcissistic Object Choice in Women" (1953)
in *Psychoanalytic Contributions* International Universitiies
Press, pp. 179-209

Marjorie Taggert White, "Self-Relations, Object Relations
and Pathological Narcissism", The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol.
67-pp. 4-23

*DW Winnicott, *Playing and Reality*, "The Use of an Object
and Relating Through Identifications", (Tavistock, 1971 pp.86-94)

Bibiography for "The Narcissistic Personality"

1. Historical Overview

Lord Chestefiield (1756) "Choleric, Good-Natured People", ("The World
Thursday, September 30, 1756, No. 196, pp. 371-376.

Syney E. Pulver, "Narcissism: The Term and The Concept" in
*Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 18,
pp. 319-41.

Arnold M. Cooper, "Narcissism" from *American Handbook of
Psychiatry,* edited by S. Arieti, Chapter 15, ppl. 297-316.


2.

Psychoanalytic Foundations of the Concept of Narcissism

Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism: an Introduction" (1914)
*Collected Papers* Valume IV, pp. 30-59

Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917)
*Collected Papers* volume 1V, pp. 153-172

Robert D. Stolorow, "Toward a "Functional Definition of Narcissism"
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol 565: pp: 179-85, 1975

Karl Abraham, "A Particular form of Neurotic Reisistance Against
The Psychoanalytic Method" (1919) *International Journal
of Psychoanalysis*, Vol. 56: pp: 179-85

3. Developmental Issues

Melanie Klein, "Envy and Gratitude" (1957) in
*Envy and Gratitude and Other Works* 1946-
1963*, 176-235

Sigmund Freud, *The Ego and the Id,*, "The
Ego and the Super-Ego (Ego Ideal)"
(1923), Norton Edition edited by James
Strachey, pp. 22-36

Sigmund Freud, ibid., "The Two Classes of
Instincts" pp. 37-47.

Karl Abraham, op. cit. "Contributions to the
Theory of The Anal Character", pp. 370-393.

Karl Abraham, Ibid., "The Narcissistic Evaluation
of Excretory Processes in Dreams and Neurosis" p 318-322

(to be continued)

I received an interesting letter from a blogger about
"primary narcissism."

Following is an example of recent technical work
in the field of narcissism. Reading psychoanalytic
theory in most instances is similar to doing crossword
puzzles- it can be extremely engrossing, but when you're
done you wonder whether any of it applies to real life.
The other aspect is, that when you read this material, you
can start to think you suffer from every syndrome. If you
think you do, probably you don't. You're just being too
conscientious. So, be careful. A little knowledge, as they say,
is a dangerous thing. With a few striking exceptions, most
people face similar dilemmas and struggle with similar
issues; it's their resources, social circumstances and support
networks that vary so much more greatly.
Also, psychoanalytic theory of this type is
like a lot of poetry, when I come to think about it.
Fascinating to contemplate, but unconnected to everyday
thought and experience. With very few exceptions, life
is more like "The Dream Life of Walter Mitty" than anything theory
or poetry tells us. Still, I enjoy reading more
than almost everything else. Who cares if it applies to
anything much. Maybe I don't want it to.

Anyway, soon I'll publish the bibliography of my course on
narcissism. Here's an appetizer, if you have the stomach
for such things:

The following is an excerpt from an excellent article about the
kind of theory I go in for. But there are as
many psychological
theories as there are varieties of Heinz soups.
They all look good on the labels, but when you taste them it's another story.

"Dark Epiphany: The Encounter With Finitude" by D. Carveth, PhD. {click here}

Anyway, Dr. Carveth, a Canadian
psychoanalyst, seems like an
interesting guy. You might check out his home page
if you are interested and have a moment.

"However, in a sense, all this is beside the point.  For whatever Freud may have meant by "primary narcissism" and Mahler by "symbiosis," by "secondary narcissism" and the "subjective object" Freud and Winnicott do not mean to refer to absolute undifferentiation at all; they are referring to a state in which the cognitively differentiated object is emotionally experienced primarily through projections of the subject's own phantasies and self and object representations and predominantly in terms of the subject's pressing needs.  And they mean to contrast this sort of narcissistic object-relation to one in which the subject is more able to get beyond such projections and egocentric demands for need-satisfaction and to recognize and make empathic contact with the real otherness of the object. "

from Conchology (Gabriel Gudding) {click here}

Friday, January 09, 2004

Go not [of your own accord] to the readings of any authors , nor appear [at them] readily.
But, if you do appear, keep your gravity and sedateness, and at the same time avoid being morose.
-- fr. _The Enchiridion_, by Epictetus

********************************
::fait accompli's::
recently updated Bloglinks
including
links to

Cassandra Pages
[[[[[[-[[[[0{:}0]]]]-]]]]]] (Mark Lamoureux)
Media TIC
Negative Velocity
Luminations
Heaven (Mairead Byrne)
Unpleasant Event
Home Is Not
nemski.com
Rob McLennan's Blog
Muladar, Movedizo, Muladar (Heriberto Yepez)
Smartypants
MGK (Matthew Kirschenbaum)
under mind

and many others
are now available
on the *fait accompli*
sidebar- below the
listings-
and at the Suny/Buffalo
Electronic Poetry Center at
Blogs (EPC) {click here}

��Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here}
responds on Monday, January 12 with his "Resistances, Responses," to my response, "Blogging and Narcissism" to his Sunday, January 11 essay, "Primary Passions"

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


Wish I'd Said That Dep't

"The broken heart of native
birth...
homesickness
for cold
standoffishness."

Read it now on
Moonshine Highways (Amy Bernier) {click here}

*****

Backpacking, backtracking,
time traveling with
Boynton {click here}
on a lattice of links, through a looking glass,
down a rabbit hole
to find a tam, that may
or may not be lost,
Joyce, St. Francis
and a few other things
that dogs (and blogs)
and memories can do...

(*Found*)

*****
Cahiers de Corey (Josh Corey) {click here} features an interesting collection of quotes from the German Romantics

*****
Consumptive. org {click here} via The Cassandra Pages {click here} reports that the second all-internet *gridblog* is on for January 15 and the topic is "ritual"

Blogging and Narcissism


From Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here}

"Not unlike psychoanalysis and some forms of
so-called postmodern fiction and art, blogging
works within a double-bind: in the end, blogs
may not be speaking about anything else but
themselves. In other words, the only space to
discuss the possibilities and consequences of
blogging may be the blogs themselves. One
should not forget the theoretical, political
dangers this would imply.
So, a resistance to blogging
would be called for."

Ernesto Priego's critique of blogging is well worth
considering, and would be more troubling if
"narcissism" itself was something truly worth
worrying about. There is one sense that it is
worth worrying about, and that is to the extent
that it prevents bloggers from acting as a group
in our own behalf, and on behalf of the issues
we are concerned about as a group.
As Foucault points out in a book that Ernesto
himself recommended to me on a recent book
buying spree at St Mark's bookstore that we
enjoyed together when Ernesto visited here briefly,
the issue to be concerned about politically is power.
Blogger narcissism is worth discussing, but the
narcissism of our political leaders might be
even more worth discussing.

As Howard Dean has already demonstrated,
there is a great political potential in blogging,
and it might be even greater if we got a few
more literary issues dividing us out on the
table. The greatest danger to bloggers is
the danger of divisiveness, and among the
dangers of divisiveness to all of us and
each of us is self-divisiveness.

Dangerously narcissistic people aren't likely think
about their narcissism, talk about it, or least of all,
write about it. So in my opinion, Ernesto is
not at all a candidate for worrying about his
narcissism. Calling someone a "narcissist" is
particularly contemporary version of a put-down,
kind of like calling someone a "paranoid" or a
"sociopath." But in everyday experience, to the
extent that most people who worry about such
things have anything to be concerned about,
it is not about their assertiveness but their
lack of assertiveness, their passivity. Most
forms of vulnerability are relatively easily
dealt with by addressing the issues with
those concerned. For example, when
recently I was upset by not being invited
to a certain group poetry reading two friends
of mine explained that most people simply ask
to be invited; certainly I should know better after
so many years that this is the case. This is an
example of narcissism, that led to some hurt
feelings and a self-pity party. But it's far from
a psychological disaster, and nothing to be
afraid of talking about, on this blog or anywhere
else. It is exactly this kind of talking that solves
the problem.

Blogging is essentially anti-narcissistic, particularly
for writers since it brings the blogger in contact with
others, and because it has the potential to cause the
writer to feel and be more independent. Narcissism,
for writers and artists mostly has to do with a lack
of parity between fantasy and reality. All writers
suffer from feelings of inadequacy and this is largely
a result of several reality issues; for one thing,
writers do not receive much money for what they do,
and secondly, there are so many competing claims for
the quality of writing work that it is extremely
difficult for writers to get a grip of the value
of their work to others, and sometimes even to
themselves. These are essentially actual social
problems, not individual psychological problems,
but these intense social problems for writers can
easily and do frequently become psychological
problems. Writers are led to attempt to manipulate
the essentially non-existent "market" for essentially
non-existent "market share." There are many
attempts, from Pushcart prizes to Nobel prizes to
alleviate the agony for specific worthy
(in some cases, perhaps, not so worthy) individuals
but this can bring at best only temporary
satisfaction for the writers and their followers.

I am hesitant to point to myself as a example
because, of course, this will immediately position
me as an potential object of Priego's thesis, but I
will say as I have said by now countless times
before that blogging has been of great help to me,
as I feel it has to many others, in taking more
control of my opportunities to work. Mostly
writers have to apply to publishers and curators
of reading series for an opportunity to work.
Now, because of Blogger and Google I am
able to make my work available to practically
anyone. Why is it more narcissistic to work
as a writer than it is as a stockbroker or a
dentist or a psychotherapist? Why wouldn't
anyone who loves to work in their field not
want an opportunity to work as much as they
want? This is what blogging makes possible,
and the community of bloggers that I have been
participating with, that includes Ernesto,
have made possible for each other
in little over a year.

Unlike many groups of writers, this blogging
community it seems to me has remained
open to new bloggers, and while some bloggers
seem concerned to keep their circle of supporters
exclusive, the vast majority are concerned to
increase their incoming and outgoing links.
This is unprecedented. In recent months I have
seen a growth of internationalism in blogging which
is also largely unprecedented. There is great potential
political power in this, as was seen in last year's
international demonstrations against the war against Iraq.

I have never been part of a writing circle as open,
supportive and encouraging as the circle of bloggers
I read every day and write about all the time.
A few issues have been unpleasant, but these are comparatively
rare, and usually the problem can be worked out.
Every single writer's group I have been part of has
eventually submitted to some form of manipulation by specific individuals.
While the writers and publishers have nearly always employed
such manipulative means of helping specific writers usually
with no harm intended to anyone else, but the result has always been to
exclude the quieter and less self-assertive writers,
who in many cases, of course, happen to be women,
but in other cases are just poets who don't
have the stomach for the extensive self-promotion virtually
*always* necessary to build up any degree of notice in this field.
What does "mainstream" recognition result from if not bigger and
better self-promotion? As a result, the small-press writers who have
no stomach for the more flagrant types of self-promotion cluster around
smaller publishers are better writers because they are less capable of
the kinds of self-promotion called for to achieve mainstream status. Please
tell me the exceptions. I would love to hear of them!
But very little of this has much to do with narcissism and
everything to do with ambition. The two are connected, but
not inexorably. There is no simple formula for this. As any philosopher
will gladly tell you, everything is a trade-off.
I can assert without hesitation: every single poet who now enjoys
any form of name recognition has it because they have
been extremely active in seeking to get it.
Usually the author likes to pretend they it just happened
of itself. Who wouldn't? And who in any field tells
all their "professional secrets." This is in the nature of
competition, which is the real culprit, and not usually narcissism.
Competition is the topic everyone knows about
but nobody is talking about, for lots of reasons. But more
on that another time.
The fate of every poet similar in behavior to
Emily Dickenson is identical: obscurity.
This introverted kind of behavior might or
might not suffer from just as much narcissism
as extroverted behavior because narcissism
is not caused by or result from external behavior. Not in
adulthood, anyway.
Narcissism is the result of faulty self-esteem regulation, the origin of which
is trauma in childhood. Narcissists don't benefit much
from either obscurity or fame because external
recognition or external manifestations of their
talent do not make them feel any better
than the privacy and quietness the anonymous
poet might enjoy for their own reasons.
Like pouring water into a bucket with a large hole in it,
admiration or very energetic private
production will not help a narcissist because
the self-esteem regulating mechanism is not
influenced by external behavior. The internal
mechanism is not influenced by behavior,
but rather is in the sway of early experiences
which have damaged the wherewithal to feel
better about oneself by means of self-assertion.

So the bottom line is that blogging will not help
a narcissistic writer very much or hurt one,
or cause a not so narcissistic writer to become
narcissistic. Like so many other psychological
syndromes, it largely resides in the unconscious.
It is because of the unconscious nature of
psychological problems that psychoanalysis
came into existence. And as anyone knows
who suffers from such issues, even with
treatment and much work they have a stubborn
tendency to resist change. Like narcissism,
"resistance" is unconscious.
Blogging might help or make things worse,
but only because the sufferer is doing many other
things-unconsciously- to try to help or make things worse.

In another post, I plan to list part of the bibliography
I offered in the course I gave to psychoanalytic students
on narcissism about ten years ago
at a psychoanalytic training institute.

Never Neutral (Ernesto Priego) {click here} features
an interesting discussion of blogging and narcissism today.

I plan to respond shortly.

First, lunch.

**
Frank Sherlock at the Bowery Poetry Club
discussed on Overlap (Drew Gardner) {click here}

**
Nada Gordon and Laura Moriarty readings at Stephanie Young's series
as discussed by Limetree (Kasey Silem Mohammad) {click here}

As reported on
Mike Snider's
Formal Blog and Sonnetariam {click here}
On Tuesday, December 30th Jordan Davis'
Million Poems (Jordan's Poems) {click here}
reached poem #1000

Nevermind {click here}
"I believe I am happy with my dreams and my illusions, with laughter in the
eyes of those I love, with the rain and the absence of sky, with... [here my French
fades out...but I keep trying...]

Thanks to Media TIC- actualite de blogs et des blogs (French/English) {click here}

More and more French blogs with names in English... Viva la France! Buck Fush!

Forget about the bloggies and reviews.
All you need is Instant Audience Soundboard
Soundboard {click here}


And Boynton!!! {click here} How does she
know the exact moment when I need a lift or a laugh?

Which is only one reason why
I click on Boynton it every single day!!!

from a scrap of paper:11/20/98

shampoo
coffee

*

Leaving things in place I
don't necessarily get
further. Sometimes I
have to let them drift,
or move them around to
see them again.

The stillness
dares you to move.

What overules me is
still me, even in its
opposition.

I read to challenge
my mental capa-
bilities as much as

*******************
written on an envelope:

Robert Musil Diaries
Basic Books, NY 1998

"The individual
human being was
founded on a basis of
order in public life;
this is why he is helpless
when he cannot recognize
it any more."

p. 383

Notebook: 7/15/86

"Here"
"What is it?"
"It's all the books, magazine articles, everything
in print in the world."

Take a stop towards the good &
you open yourself up to plenty of evil.
(This to be included in the Blake piece)

Image of running around the hallways of all the
scientists- encouraging them

____________________________________________

The people are treacherous, because the
road is treacherous.

W need a Woman God, O, Fates

Where in this hierarchy will you put her?

On the ashes of the miraculous.


Ivory
_____

Coast

{The map of Africa
according to America}

Notebook: 9/2/92

A tunneling, an enclosure. [The fact that
9/2/92 repeats] The fact that 9/2/92 disappears.

Whatever you do, don't force it.
Whatever you do, don't just wait.

Going, going, gone.

A hideaway, a just dessert. A hill, a
hole, a hollow. The deserving one. Who
moves.

You're not communicating it, so I don't see it.
What do you mean, not innocent? I felt sure
it was just that that he liked. Well, maybe it's
just too sophisticated & I couldn't catch on.
Several riders holding on to the same subway strap,
only now the straps are made of metal and
there's nothing to call them. Go on, you just go on.
On living, on loving, to get it, to laugh.

This just in Dogs Have Personalities {click here}
from Boynton {cllick here}


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

BBLOGS

Baghdad Burning {click here}

Bellona Times (Ray Davis) {here}

Bemsha Swing {here} (Jonathan Mayhew)

Bloggedy Blog Blog (Katie Degentesh) {here}

Blue Kangeroo {here}(Jean Vengua)

Bogue's Blog (Michael James Bogue) {here}

Boynton {here}

Brand New Insects {here}(Shanna Compton)

The Brutal Kittens (James Meetze) {here}

Notebook: 4-29-84

stir (stem, chase, demure, eject, flimsy,
fortunate, attract, race, course,
sample, stave, afford, retract, trace,
can't) press (represent, transfer,
rapid, pair, report, progress, great,
tear, earth, greet) torque (round,
state, ignore, necessary, comment, metric,
syllable, comma, background, creature, glyph,
left, ennumerate, tend) defend (daughter)
difficult (satisfied) venture (tree)
lissome (mammery) target (stem)
precise (incite, incision, sword, swim,
microcosm, symmetry, sin) let (being)
familiar (refurbish) suture (next,
example, zero, onyx, nibble, bent, neither,
rather, hermit, spendthrift, tuft,
tincture, reside, empty, trigger,
future, symbol, take, crimson, north,
heathen, texture, furtive, vehement,
vehicle, curate, relagate, grip, particulars,
steps) pressure (prim, delicate,
delegate, stretch, sure, shape, ship,
hip, hope, hype, yip, plus, pope,
loop, pool, owl, flow, word)
silos (store, torch, church, house,
sound, doors, wars, race,
sift, tilt, taught, true,
drift, graft) purchase (pause,
reason, rebirth, myth, message,
seige, geiger, height, hilt, tease,
sympathy, hybrid, billow, wheeze,
censored, censured, sugared, region,
nether, either,learn, natural,
mural, tiger, broth, castle, cinch,
church, hose, hills, this, roof,
penumbra, oars, ruse, world,
telephone, totter, fuse, field)
passage (gap, halt) soft (flood,
food, deaf) feat (test, stood)
nephew (whew, west whether)
horse (harrow, stood) stem (lecture,
call, lake) callous (list, stitch)
time (immense, immeasureable)

I took transdada (kari edwards) {click here} - "Which art form are you?" test
and got:

You are Poetry. You are often the most emotional of the arts.
You are introverted, in that you tend to let people
come to you rather than trying to get their attention.
You get along well with Music and Literature.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Dep't, part 2

I just received a very kind letter from someone who
is both committed to a substantial involvement in contemporary poetry
and works for Google, who assures me that I shouldn't be so alarmed by that
article I linked to yesterday from the Google Weblog. I'm
pleased to hear this, and also to have my hopes sustained
that Google has every intention of continuing their
very generous policies towards blogging in
general and towards contemporary poetry
and poetics in particular.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Dep't

Read about the upcoming Google *IPO* (initial public offering:
for the lucky few unenlightened about this yucky area)
Google Weblog {click here}
In a morose mood, figuring it's all over
soon anyway, I googled "poetics blogs most hits" Poetics Blogs Most Hits {click here}
and found out my Confessions of A Blog Artist {Sidereality-click here}
is #9
out of 812.
(If you google *Nick"
*fait accompli* is now about
#50.)

Where will poetics will fit in
when Google and Blogger go
mega-corporate? Probably the
same direction as similar categories
in Barnes and
Noble: less and less shelf space
the longer the store is around.

Hoping for the best, though...

"If a poet is gifted, there are some distinct advantages to being slightly paranoid."
Carl Rakosi
Read the full piece (Selected Prose and Day Book) by
Carl Rakosi available right now on
Wood s Lot (Mark Woods) {click here}

El texto es ya un espacio extra-terrestre.
(The text is already an extraterrestrial space.)
muladar, movedizo, muladar (Heriberto Yepez) {click here}

Notebook: ca 1986

Notes for

Public Domain

1
{To delay creating the book
an undertone}

Preoccupation here with getting the words out freely
that surround the concept of "delay"
Rereading, even with that fragment will remind me of the
rest of the story.
To do or not do something has an impact on the reality
you are thinking about

Creative jumps

I note an "undertone" quality to the way the
words are uttered. What I consider finished &
unfinished business- determines exactly how I
follow through.

Poetry and psychoanalysis direct themselves to a
great extent on that which is underlying.

I gather a great deal from the meanings of
people's behavior that they don't have in their own
point of view. Art allows itself to spread out
its materials more than other types of construction.
To delay assigning a fixed value & allow the
value to emerge over time. Art collides with
time- language descends into past & future,
the ocean of time through its physical
manifestations which are fixed in some ways
unlike the spoken manifestation. We listen to
what people say partly to hear the evolution of our
individual relation to language as a whole.
The effort of granting public domain status
to ones expression of language moves that position out
of its immediate impact on speech-
in writing one's rhetoric one freezes it.
The impact is expected to continue. The
value of poetry, like all art, cuts across time.

Happy to announce my poem "Review"
has been published!
See it right now on
Poetic Inhalation {click here}

Thanks to Andrew Lundwall, Star, and
whoever else works on PH.

Nice job!

Human Verb (Noah Eli Gordon) {click here}
now presenting an interesting Duration press selection titled
"Notes towards the spectacle."


**
See why James Meetze (The Brutal Kittens) {click here} has my vote for the poet
most likely to ignite a new poetry movement
and why *The New Brutalists* are anything but

The Harbor of Tranquility

The more holding firm is wanted,
the more letting go is needed
to continue the dance.

Los personajes, estela de dobles; incógnita famila psíquica;
secuencia de fantasmagorías. Dalias inverosímiles.

Heriberto Yepez
muladar, movedizo, muladar {click here}

I still think my homophonic translation
would have been better than
Babel fish, but I clicked on it anyway and got:

The personages, wake of doubles; psychic incognito famila;
sequence of fantasmagorías. Dalias improbable.

Will miracles ever cease?
Chimera Song Mosaic (Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo) {click here} is back!

****

This Public Address 3.0(Jeff Ward) {click here}
holds forth on 19th Century photography;
Emerson; and
that perennial favorite on the
contemporary literary Crush List,
Walter Benjamin.
**
Inspired by Jeff Ward's writing on 19th century
photography I wrote the following comment:

You write: "Photography’s significance, and photographs
themselves, always seem to beg for explanations."
Doesn't this have to do with "the shock of recognition"
though Edmund Wilson may not have been
thinking of photography when he employed this phrase.
Technology that brings people suddenly more in touch
with each other and amplifies everyday life leaves much
room for wonder.I realize very well that this refrain has
been repeated far too often, but it seems the same can be
said for blogging and web publishing on the whole.
For some reason, I see a kinship between
photography and blogging. Where print media
exagerrate the timelessness
and universality of writing, blogging, like photography,
captures some of the quickly evaporating
warmth of human contact.

Guess who...

"... that piano goes vertically through the wall when pushed
by a comicbook hero... intent on saving the planet from a rigorous
poetics of laughter... my salvation comes in small packages... my
address feels funny... if you want me... look for me... whistling
the day into blinky fright... look for me shouting hard candy"
posted at 2:23:51 PM

Brother Tom (Finish Your Phrase) {click here}
...of course

"Maybe it is the nature of the machine
that forces these inhuman historical
organizations; so that civilization
as in West is in long run self-
defeating."

Alan Ginsberg
letter to his father
1/23/57

I'm delighted to report that
Ernest Priego (Never Neutral) {click here} has translated my poem
*Perhaps The Dream of Writing*
from my book *Light Street* into Spanish.