Green Integer Review- Contradicta collaboration with Toni Simon
Green Integer Review
**************
Nada Gordon Decorates The World
Ululations
Distribution Automatique
Monday, November 3
Phillip K. Dick Predicted a Black President
In 1966, Phillip K. Dick published The Crack in Space which had, as one of its characters, a black Presidential candidate, Jim Briskin.
From Phillip K. Dick's 1966 novel The Crack in Space:
"But it was inevitable. Sooner or later, there would be a Negro president....'I don't agree with you,' Briskin said, 'I think there'll always be a hate organization like CLEAN, and there'll always be people to support it.' After all, CLEAN had a point. they did not want to see a Negro president, and wasn't it their right to feel like that? Some people did, some people didn't; that was perfectly natural. And, he thought, why should we pretend race is not the issue? It is, really. I am a Negro. Verne Engel is factually correct. The real question was: how large a percentage of the electorate suported CLEAN's views? Certainly, CLEAN did not hurt his feelings; he could not be wounded; he had experienced too much already in his years as a newsclown. In my years, he thought to himself acidly, as an American Negro.
A small boy, white, appeared at the booth, with a pen and a tablet of paper. 'Mr Briskin, can I get your autograph?'"
******
Otoliths issue 11
In 1966, Phillip K. Dick published The Crack in Space which had, as one of its characters, a black Presidential candidate, Jim Briskin.
From Phillip K. Dick's 1966 novel The Crack in Space:
"But it was inevitable. Sooner or later, there would be a Negro president....'I don't agree with you,' Briskin said, 'I think there'll always be a hate organization like CLEAN, and there'll always be people to support it.' After all, CLEAN had a point. they did not want to see a Negro president, and wasn't it their right to feel like that? Some people did, some people didn't; that was perfectly natural. And, he thought, why should we pretend race is not the issue? It is, really. I am a Negro. Verne Engel is factually correct. The real question was: how large a percentage of the electorate suported CLEAN's views? Certainly, CLEAN did not hurt his feelings; he could not be wounded; he had experienced too much already in his years as a newsclown. In my years, he thought to himself acidly, as an American Negro.
A small boy, white, appeared at the booth, with a pen and a tablet of paper. 'Mr Briskin, can I get your autograph?'"
******
Otoliths issue 11
Saturday, November 1
"Debt springs eternal in the human bank"
"Interior Demolition" (mp3 on Penn Sound)
[From Light Street, Zasterle Press, 1996]
Interior Demolition
"Interior Demolition" (mp3 on Penn Sound)
[From Light Street, Zasterle Press, 1996]
Interior Demolition
Tuesday, October 28
Saturday, October 25
Sunday, October 19
Contradicta
There are parts of ourselves that allow no effect, either from ourselves on the world, or the world on us. These parts are the hinges on which we allow the portals between ourselves and life to swing, open or closed, as need be.
******************
Nothing is the place in which everything breathes or stands, moves or falls.
There are parts of ourselves that allow no effect, either from ourselves on the world, or the world on us. These parts are the hinges on which we allow the portals between ourselves and life to swing, open or closed, as need be.
******************
Nothing is the place in which everything breathes or stands, moves or falls.
Friday, October 17
Anny Ballardini's Fall Folio
"Don’t blame me!... It all started on Alan Sondheim’s WRYTING-L list. Dirk Vekemans has to be blamed. His Autumnal poem made the long list of answers that followed. I therefore had the idea of gathering the poems. Not only, I also forwarded an invitation to the WOM-PO and New Poetry List, and to several chosen Poets. Here is the Harvest in its colorful unfolding. I do hope you will all enjoy it."
fieralingue
*********************
Nico Vassilakis on Mike Burakoff's video of Free Fall
Verse in the eye
When you’re drawn to focus. When you’re moved to veer. The trigger’s pulled before you know the question’s near. So ask what looking gives you and twist the eyes reply. The function of its thinking immediate, yes, immediate. This the staring won’t deny. Your brain answers while swerves align, as-best-it-can-it-should, that it knows a further capsule driven, I say driven, further into focus. That your eyes dart here and there as things of interest do & that coming here and leaving have left a stain on you.
"Don’t blame me!... It all started on Alan Sondheim’s WRYTING-L list. Dirk Vekemans has to be blamed. His Autumnal poem made the long list of answers that followed. I therefore had the idea of gathering the poems. Not only, I also forwarded an invitation to the WOM-PO and New Poetry List, and to several chosen Poets. Here is the Harvest in its colorful unfolding. I do hope you will all enjoy it."
fieralingue
*********************
Nico Vassilakis on Mike Burakoff's video of Free Fall
Verse in the eye
When you’re drawn to focus. When you’re moved to veer. The trigger’s pulled before you know the question’s near. So ask what looking gives you and twist the eyes reply. The function of its thinking immediate, yes, immediate. This the staring won’t deny. Your brain answers while swerves align, as-best-it-can-it-should, that it knows a further capsule driven, I say driven, further into focus. That your eyes dart here and there as things of interest do & that coming here and leaving have left a stain on you.
Wednesday, October 8
Issue #1 Faux Anthology
I would just call it-The Unbearable Lightness of Issue #1. There is something about that huge sudden ironic parody that calls for instant recognition of the non serious nature of the intervention. This is the "unbearable lightness of blogging" as I have termed it, par excellence. A poetry circus wagon blows in, warm wind and ill wind, spins a few sails, shakes a few tails and blows out: a party with real laughs, a few growls and roars and some intense conversations where you recognize a lot of people, don't know some, you figure "everybody" was there, but of course that's not literally possible. The feeling is, maybe they were out of town or something, or just couldn't make it, but not that they were deliberately excluded. I know I would have felt left out had I not been mentioned. But since I was I do get into that lightness, but it is a blue lightness while still feeling nostalgic for the more private days of the whole long stretched out thing- getting an invitation, figuring what to send, waiting to hear, then getting accepted. But in this party atmosphere it's just all so quickly thrown together, no time, so quickly check how my poem was dressed and acted, ok, did I see some friends, yeah, their poems are ok. So then it's over, and there's the hangover of- what did I do, did I actually write that thing, no way, nobody did, a computer wrote it. After all, it is the era of the machine. So what did I say- I'm not sure how I feel now. Then the party really starts and everyone talks about it for days. No, not like a reading or an opening, more like a bash, or an old fashioned happening where people were only half aware of what was going on. Maybe all the evidence has already been put away and the place has been swept up. Maybe a few people actually kept their party favors and others left and forgot them. But now there's a memory, that Godot thing that gets talked about. People have been saying that we are in a time warp in that in New York now, that we are in a repeat of the Weimar era. Maybe this Godot thing is our cabaret- rude, crude, risque, funny, a little dark, with music by Kurt Weill and a set by Kirchner, Grosz or Hannah Hoch. I had even written in the comment section of Issue 1, "There has been talk of a poetry bailout. Is this it?" It looks like the powers that be are plotting to send the whole batch of us poets and day workers out onto the streets as in *The Threepenny Opera* while "citibank" robs everybody blind. And then we'll listen to the barrel organ sound, in the city while the sun sinks low.
*****************************
On a trade basis, the "Godot team" is making hard copies of the anthology available. You send a chapbook and postage and it's yours. Here's the link:
Sending for Godot
****************************
After writing that line I had to go and reread the poem I was thinking of by Alfred Noyes:
The Barrel Organ (1938
I would just call it-The Unbearable Lightness of Issue #1. There is something about that huge sudden ironic parody that calls for instant recognition of the non serious nature of the intervention. This is the "unbearable lightness of blogging" as I have termed it, par excellence. A poetry circus wagon blows in, warm wind and ill wind, spins a few sails, shakes a few tails and blows out: a party with real laughs, a few growls and roars and some intense conversations where you recognize a lot of people, don't know some, you figure "everybody" was there, but of course that's not literally possible. The feeling is, maybe they were out of town or something, or just couldn't make it, but not that they were deliberately excluded. I know I would have felt left out had I not been mentioned. But since I was I do get into that lightness, but it is a blue lightness while still feeling nostalgic for the more private days of the whole long stretched out thing- getting an invitation, figuring what to send, waiting to hear, then getting accepted. But in this party atmosphere it's just all so quickly thrown together, no time, so quickly check how my poem was dressed and acted, ok, did I see some friends, yeah, their poems are ok. So then it's over, and there's the hangover of- what did I do, did I actually write that thing, no way, nobody did, a computer wrote it. After all, it is the era of the machine. So what did I say- I'm not sure how I feel now. Then the party really starts and everyone talks about it for days. No, not like a reading or an opening, more like a bash, or an old fashioned happening where people were only half aware of what was going on. Maybe all the evidence has already been put away and the place has been swept up. Maybe a few people actually kept their party favors and others left and forgot them. But now there's a memory, that Godot thing that gets talked about. People have been saying that we are in a time warp in that in New York now, that we are in a repeat of the Weimar era. Maybe this Godot thing is our cabaret- rude, crude, risque, funny, a little dark, with music by Kurt Weill and a set by Kirchner, Grosz or Hannah Hoch. I had even written in the comment section of Issue 1, "There has been talk of a poetry bailout. Is this it?" It looks like the powers that be are plotting to send the whole batch of us poets and day workers out onto the streets as in *The Threepenny Opera* while "citibank" robs everybody blind. And then we'll listen to the barrel organ sound, in the city while the sun sinks low.
*****************************
On a trade basis, the "Godot team" is making hard copies of the anthology available. You send a chapbook and postage and it's yours. Here's the link:
Sending for Godot
****************************
After writing that line I had to go and reread the poem I was thinking of by Alfred Noyes:
The Barrel Organ (1938
Monday, October 6
The Art of Prediction
It is fascinating that Nassim Nicholas Taleb the author of The Black Swan, the biggest best selling non-fiction book of 2007, who is extremely skeptical about the value of predictions, could have published this statement last year:
"As if we did not have enough problems, banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan and the ludic fallacy than ever before with "scientists" among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm J. P. Morgan put the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties Risk Metrics, a phony method aiming at managing people's risks, causing the generalized use of the ludic fallacy...A related method called "Value at Risk" on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading. Likewise, the government-sponsored institution Fanny Mae, when I look at their risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry, their large staff of scientists deemed these events 'unlikely.'"(p.225)
It is fascinating that Nassim Nicholas Taleb the author of The Black Swan, the biggest best selling non-fiction book of 2007, who is extremely skeptical about the value of predictions, could have published this statement last year:
"As if we did not have enough problems, banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan and the ludic fallacy than ever before with "scientists" among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm J. P. Morgan put the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties Risk Metrics, a phony method aiming at managing people's risks, causing the generalized use of the ludic fallacy...A related method called "Value at Risk" on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading. Likewise, the government-sponsored institution Fanny Mae, when I look at their risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry, their large staff of scientists deemed these events 'unlikely.'"(p.225)
Saturday, October 4
Friday, September 26
Between: The Art of Collaboration, by Douglas Messerli
Green Integer Blog
Some years ago, Douglas Messerli invited a group of poets to send him poems linking his work to theirs, in many instances writing through poems he had written incorporating their work into his. As part of a mammoth ongoing memoir project, each book encompassing one year of his life, Douglas here writes about the year 2000, the year in which he launched this project, that included a poem of my own, based on work of his.
*
Some months ago, Geof Huth courageously blogged about his open heart surgery, a post that included photos of the event. Here Douglas MesserIil writes about his recent prostate surgery, an operation that strangely followed his writing a beautiful piece about his father's death of that disease.
Green Integer Blog
Some years ago, Douglas Messerli invited a group of poets to send him poems linking his work to theirs, in many instances writing through poems he had written incorporating their work into his. As part of a mammoth ongoing memoir project, each book encompassing one year of his life, Douglas here writes about the year 2000, the year in which he launched this project, that included a poem of my own, based on work of his.
*
Some months ago, Geof Huth courageously blogged about his open heart surgery, a post that included photos of the event. Here Douglas MesserIil writes about his recent prostate surgery, an operation that strangely followed his writing a beautiful piece about his father's death of that disease.
Wednesday, September 24
Saturday, September 20
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger: Sharon Mesmer on Poetry and Theory in The Brooklyn Rail
"Poetry has become an overscheduled toddler run ragged by ambitious, bickering parents, its very existence a compromised simulacrum of their disharmonious projections and expectations". In this article, Sharon Mesmer identifies an issue that has also been troubling me for a very long time. The causes have been argued and discussed by poets and others for years. Mesmer focusses on the addiction to "debate" as one of the problems, a topic I have taken up on *fait accompli* countless times. The last time I wrote about this during the presidential debates of 2004 it was becoming very clear to me that the "debate" model was failing to inspire and sputtering to a halt.(Time March's On, 3/2/04) This year Obama and Biden are likely to impress and the other team to depress. But in the poetry world, it's getting tiresome. Don't get me wrong. The 70's poetry debates, following the breath of expressive freedom of the 60's, were invaluable, even, at times, beautiful to contemplate. But after more than 25 years of echoes, the model is wearing thin. If there ever was indeed a "politics of poetic form" that political point has been more than made. It has been paddled around to death and is now choking off the poetry, or at least focus on the poetry. The assumption is that creating controversy creates interest. In the case of contemporary poetry, the reverse is happening. Instead of making the poetry scene vibrant, it is making it soggy. The arguments are not snappy, they are stale. Although Sharon doesn't say this, and may not even be thinking this, to me this debate form in poetry is a masculine, tennis or racket ball oriented adaptation of dealing with issues of concern to poets. Game over. What would I substitute? Responding to the work of specific poets thoroughly, carefully, lovingly, angrily, lightly, whatever. Making observations and arriving at conclusions based on actual poems, not the strategies of your "team" with the endless arguments about the dynamics, the advantages and disadvantages, the importance and unimportance of "types" of poetry. Let's give it a break, guys.
"Poetry has become an overscheduled toddler run ragged by ambitious, bickering parents, its very existence a compromised simulacrum of their disharmonious projections and expectations". In this article, Sharon Mesmer identifies an issue that has also been troubling me for a very long time. The causes have been argued and discussed by poets and others for years. Mesmer focusses on the addiction to "debate" as one of the problems, a topic I have taken up on *fait accompli* countless times. The last time I wrote about this during the presidential debates of 2004 it was becoming very clear to me that the "debate" model was failing to inspire and sputtering to a halt.(Time March's On, 3/2/04) This year Obama and Biden are likely to impress and the other team to depress. But in the poetry world, it's getting tiresome. Don't get me wrong. The 70's poetry debates, following the breath of expressive freedom of the 60's, were invaluable, even, at times, beautiful to contemplate. But after more than 25 years of echoes, the model is wearing thin. If there ever was indeed a "politics of poetic form" that political point has been more than made. It has been paddled around to death and is now choking off the poetry, or at least focus on the poetry. The assumption is that creating controversy creates interest. In the case of contemporary poetry, the reverse is happening. Instead of making the poetry scene vibrant, it is making it soggy. The arguments are not snappy, they are stale. Although Sharon doesn't say this, and may not even be thinking this, to me this debate form in poetry is a masculine, tennis or racket ball oriented adaptation of dealing with issues of concern to poets. Game over. What would I substitute? Responding to the work of specific poets thoroughly, carefully, lovingly, angrily, lightly, whatever. Making observations and arriving at conclusions based on actual poems, not the strategies of your "team" with the endless arguments about the dynamics, the advantages and disadvantages, the importance and unimportance of "types" of poetry. Let's give it a break, guys.
Friday, September 19
Wednesday, September 17
The 2cd Annual Welcome to Boog City Festival Complete Listings
I will be reading on Sunday, September 21st
Unnameable Books
456 Bergen St.
Brooklyn
Free
1:00 p.m.-Julia Cohen
1:15 p.m.-Tisa Bryant
1:30 p.m.-Ana Božičević
1:45 p.m.-Yoko Kikuchi (music)
2:05 p.m.-Corrine Fitzpatrick
2:20 p.m.-Nick Piombino
2:35 p.m.-Stacy Szymaszek
I will be reading on Sunday, September 21st
Unnameable Books
456 Bergen St.
Brooklyn
Free
1:00 p.m.-Julia Cohen
1:15 p.m.-Tisa Bryant
1:30 p.m.-Ana Božičević
1:45 p.m.-Yoko Kikuchi (music)
2:05 p.m.-Corrine Fitzpatrick
2:20 p.m.-Nick Piombino
2:35 p.m.-Stacy Szymaszek
Friday, September 12
Free Fall/A.I.R. Gallery History Show/Nicholas Manning reviews Mark Young's Selected In Jacket/New Books from Otoliths
The video of my collage novel Free Fall-video and music by Mike Burakoff- is now up on Nicholas Manning’s poet's video blog, The Continental Review
Nicholas Manning has also posted a short announcement and appreciative comment on his weblog: The Newer Metaphysicals
Thanks to Nicholas Manning for posting the video and to Mark Young for publishing the book under his Otoliths Press imprint.
***********************
A.I.R. GALLERY: The History Show
Archival materials from 1972 to the present
Curated by Kat Griefen & Dena Muller
at Tracey/Barry Gallery, Bobst LIbrary,
Open Monday - Friday 10am-5pm
70 Washington Sq. South, 3rd Fl.
September 16 - December 12, 2008
Opening & Panel at Tracey/Barry Gallery
Tuesday, Sept. 16, 6pm – 8pm
“How A.I.R. Changed the Art World: Feminist Intervention Over 37 Years”
Panelists: Dotty Attie, Carey Lovelace, Carolee Schneemann, Corinne Robins & Joan Snitzer
**************
Nicholas Manning reviews Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming: Selected Poems in
Jacket
*************
When the original emailout for this September septet of new books from Otoliths reached four pages, I decided it was time to compromise, to send just the basic details out, & post the extended play with full blurbs & jpegs of the front covers to my blog, gamma ways . The direct URLs for the books are given below. The full catalog can be found at The Otoliths Storefront Otoliths .
Mark Young
E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: The Final XIV Interviews + One
Tom Beckett (curator)
372 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-1-8
$19.95 + p&h
URL: Final XIV Interviews
The Evolution of Mirrors
Martin Edmond
108 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-6-3
$12.50 + p&h
URL: Evolution of Mirrors
When You Bit...
Adam Fieled
72 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-3-2
$12.50 + p&h
URL:When You Bit
Longfellow Memoranda
Geof Huth
148 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9804541-9-2
$13.50 + p&h
URL: Longfellow Memoranda
Novaless
Nicholas Manning
160 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-2-5
$13.50 + p&h
URL: Novaless
Tales From The Hinterland
Caleb Puckett
60 pages
Cover design by Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-4-9
$10.00 + p&h
URL:Tales from the Hinterland
RED
Marilyn R. Rosenberg
56 pages, full color, 9" wide x 7" high, coil bound
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-5-6
$19.95 + p&h
URL:Red
The video of my collage novel Free Fall-video and music by Mike Burakoff- is now up on Nicholas Manning’s poet's video blog, The Continental Review
Nicholas Manning has also posted a short announcement and appreciative comment on his weblog: The Newer Metaphysicals
Thanks to Nicholas Manning for posting the video and to Mark Young for publishing the book under his Otoliths Press imprint.
***********************
A.I.R. GALLERY: The History Show
Archival materials from 1972 to the present
Curated by Kat Griefen & Dena Muller
at Tracey/Barry Gallery, Bobst LIbrary,
Open Monday - Friday 10am-5pm
70 Washington Sq. South, 3rd Fl.
September 16 - December 12, 2008
Opening & Panel at Tracey/Barry Gallery
Tuesday, Sept. 16, 6pm – 8pm
“How A.I.R. Changed the Art World: Feminist Intervention Over 37 Years”
Panelists: Dotty Attie, Carey Lovelace, Carolee Schneemann, Corinne Robins & Joan Snitzer
**************
Nicholas Manning reviews Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming: Selected Poems in
Jacket
*************
When the original emailout for this September septet of new books from Otoliths reached four pages, I decided it was time to compromise, to send just the basic details out, & post the extended play with full blurbs & jpegs of the front covers to my blog, gamma ways . The direct URLs for the books are given below. The full catalog can be found at The Otoliths Storefront Otoliths .
Mark Young
E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: The Final XIV Interviews + One
Tom Beckett (curator)
372 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-1-8
$19.95 + p&h
URL: Final XIV Interviews
The Evolution of Mirrors
Martin Edmond
108 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-6-3
$12.50 + p&h
URL: Evolution of Mirrors
When You Bit...
Adam Fieled
72 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-3-2
$12.50 + p&h
URL:When You Bit
Longfellow Memoranda
Geof Huth
148 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9804541-9-2
$13.50 + p&h
URL: Longfellow Memoranda
Novaless
Nicholas Manning
160 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-2-5
$13.50 + p&h
URL: Novaless
Tales From The Hinterland
Caleb Puckett
60 pages
Cover design by Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-4-9
$10.00 + p&h
URL:Tales from the Hinterland
RED
Marilyn R. Rosenberg
56 pages, full color, 9" wide x 7" high, coil bound
ISBN: 978-0-9805096-5-6
$19.95 + p&h
URL:Red
Wednesday, September 10
Contradicta
Those long accustomed to unqualified success-- or to unquestionable failure--tend to share one quality in common: an air of indifference.
*******
We are nothing more or less than the sum of our enthusiasms.
******************
Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming Selected Poems 1959-2008 (Meritage Press)
$24 at Lulu
These poems, read together in this excellently selected book, speak and sing to and of and with each other. Their humor and humanity, frankness and wealth of example and reference work together to create an appetite of readerly curiosity to want to keep reading and thinking, laughing, and connecting, and with this a desire to get to know the poet more, to come back to particular poems more and more.
Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths and Otoliths Books and lives in Rockhampton, Australia
"Chaos Theory Does Hollywood"
"Have just watched Blade Runner
on DVD, enjoyed it as I
always do even though
a small part of me sits there
running a reality check. It's
the risk you take when
writing about the future:
having it reviewed at a
point that is closer than the
conception. Pan-Am
didn't even make it to 2001
let alone the time this movie
is set. The arse has fallen out
of the yen & though Sony
still owns Columbia not everytone
speaks Japanese & most of the
noodle bars are owned by
immigrants from Vietnam or
Mainland China. Two days ago
I bought an album by Youssou
N'Dour & the next day
Senegal surprised by beating
France in the opening round
of soccer's World Cup. Maybe
that's the way to influence
the universe. Don't just
make the movie, change
something small in the
real world & eventually
the film may be seen
as cinima verite by the time
its time has come. Forgo
those fastfood franchised
tie-ins. Instead give
everyone a butterfly to kill."
Those long accustomed to unqualified success-- or to unquestionable failure--tend to share one quality in common: an air of indifference.
*******
We are nothing more or less than the sum of our enthusiasms.
******************
Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming Selected Poems 1959-2008 (Meritage Press)
$24 at Lulu
These poems, read together in this excellently selected book, speak and sing to and of and with each other. Their humor and humanity, frankness and wealth of example and reference work together to create an appetite of readerly curiosity to want to keep reading and thinking, laughing, and connecting, and with this a desire to get to know the poet more, to come back to particular poems more and more.
Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths and Otoliths Books and lives in Rockhampton, Australia
"Chaos Theory Does Hollywood"
"Have just watched Blade Runner
on DVD, enjoyed it as I
always do even though
a small part of me sits there
running a reality check. It's
the risk you take when
writing about the future:
having it reviewed at a
point that is closer than the
conception. Pan-Am
didn't even make it to 2001
let alone the time this movie
is set. The arse has fallen out
of the yen & though Sony
still owns Columbia not everytone
speaks Japanese & most of the
noodle bars are owned by
immigrants from Vietnam or
Mainland China. Two days ago
I bought an album by Youssou
N'Dour & the next day
Senegal surprised by beating
France in the opening round
of soccer's World Cup. Maybe
that's the way to influence
the universe. Don't just
make the movie, change
something small in the
real world & eventually
the film may be seen
as cinima verite by the time
its time has come. Forgo
those fastfood franchised
tie-ins. Instead give
everyone a butterfly to kill."
Monday, September 8
Saturday, August 30
Contradicta
I've never yet read a book or a poem or seen a film or a play that truly captured what it feels like to live. If one of them did, few would read it or go. it would veer too often and too rapidly from being profound one moment and idiotic the next, mesmerizing one moment and anticlimactic the next, exhausting one moment and energizing the next, inspiring one moment and horrifying the next, etc.
***********
Not everyone likes writers or artists who try to be different, but many do. It's the ones that succeed at it that nobody likes.
I've never yet read a book or a poem or seen a film or a play that truly captured what it feels like to live. If one of them did, few would read it or go. it would veer too often and too rapidly from being profound one moment and idiotic the next, mesmerizing one moment and anticlimactic the next, exhausting one moment and energizing the next, inspiring one moment and horrifying the next, etc.
***********
Not everyone likes writers or artists who try to be different, but many do. It's the ones that succeed at it that nobody likes.
Friday, August 29
Hardy Hip-Hop
I found this poem by Thomas Hardy and couldn't help but copy it out and post it here and on the poetics listserv. Jerome Sala and others described it as rap-like, Maria Damon compared it to Iggy Pop.
Thoughts at Midnight
Mankind, you dismay me
When shadows waylay me!-
Not by your splendours
Do you affray me,
Nor as pretenders
To demonic keenness,
Nor by your meanness,
Nor by your ill-teachings
Nor your false preachings,
Nor your banalities
And immoralities,
Nor by your daring
Nor sinister bearing;
But by your madnesses
Capping cool badnesses,
Acting like puppets
Under Time's buffets;
In superstitions
And ambitions
Moved by no wisdom,
Far sight, or system,
Led by sheer senselessness
And presciencelessness
Into unreason
And hideous self-treason....
God, look he on you,
Have mercy upon you!
part written 25 May 1906
(published in Hardy's last book of poems "Winter Words in Various Moods")
I found this poem by Thomas Hardy and couldn't help but copy it out and post it here and on the poetics listserv. Jerome Sala and others described it as rap-like, Maria Damon compared it to Iggy Pop.
Thoughts at Midnight
Mankind, you dismay me
When shadows waylay me!-
Not by your splendours
Do you affray me,
Nor as pretenders
To demonic keenness,
Nor by your meanness,
Nor by your ill-teachings
Nor your false preachings,
Nor your banalities
And immoralities,
Nor by your daring
Nor sinister bearing;
But by your madnesses
Capping cool badnesses,
Acting like puppets
Under Time's buffets;
In superstitions
And ambitions
Moved by no wisdom,
Far sight, or system,
Led by sheer senselessness
And presciencelessness
Into unreason
And hideous self-treason....
God, look he on you,
Have mercy upon you!
part written 25 May 1906
(published in Hardy's last book of poems "Winter Words in Various Moods")
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