|
"A note to Pound in heaven: Only one mistake, Ezra! You should have talked to women"
--George Oppen, _Twenty Six Fragments_
Archives:
xoxo Hey, E-Mail Me! xoxo
ManY PoETiKaL HaTs LisT:
Holly's Pirate-girl Hat,
chrismurray in a straw hat,
Michael Helsem's Gray Wyvern NOLA Fedora.
Duchamp's Rrose Selavy's flirting hat.
Max Ernst's Hats of The Hat Makes the Man.
Jordan Davis' The Hat!
poetry. hks' smelly head baseball cap.
Samuel Beckett's Lucky's
Black bowler hat,
giving his oration
on what's questionable in mankind,
in *Waiting for 'God-ot'*.
my friend John Phillips's 1969
dove gray fedora w/ wild feather.
Bob Dylan's mystery lover's Panama Hat.
Bob Creeley's Black Mountain Felt Boater Hat.
Duke Ellington's Satin
Top Hat. Acorn Hats of Tree.
Freud's 1950 City Fedora.
Joseph Brodsky's Sailor Cap.
Harry K Stammer's Copper Hat
Hell. Lewis LaCook's bowler hat(s).
Tom Beckett's Bad Hair Day
Furry Pimp Hat. Daughter Holly's black beret.
harry k stammer's fez. Cat
in the Hat's Hat & best
hat, Googling Texfiles:
crocheted hat with flames.
Harry K Stammer's tinseled berets.
Tex's 10 gallon Gary Cooper felt Stetson cowboy hat.
Jordan Davis's fedora.
Dali's High-heel Shoe Hat. Harry K Stammer's en-blog LAPD Hat
& aluminum baseball cap. cap'n caps. NY-Yankees caps. the HKS-in-person-caps
are blue or green no logos nor captions.
Ma Skanky Possum 10's nighttime cap.
moose antler hat. propeller beenie hat.
doo rag. knit face mask hat. Bob Dylan's & photographer Laziz
Hamani's panama hats. Mark Weiss's Publisher's Hat.
Rebecca Loudon's Seattle-TX-Hats'n'boots.
Ever-Evolving Links:
Silliman's Links
Dominic Rivron
Unidentified
Br Tom @ One & Plainer
Dan Waber: ars poetica anthology
Dan Waber: altered books anthology
chris daniels: Notes to a Fellow Traveller
Chris Daniels: Toward an Anti-Capitalist Poetry
David Daniels: The Gates Of Paradise
subterranean poets: Beijing Poetry Group
Charles Alexander/Chax Press: Chaxblog
Headlines Poetry: the latest weblog entries
Henry Gould's AlephoeBooks
Julie Choffel's Understory
Tom Murphy's former one
Jean Vengua's New Okir
Roger Pao's Asian-American Poetry
Tom Lisk: Oilcloth and Linoleum
Kevin Doran
Reb Livingston's Cackling Jackal Blog
Janet Holmes: Humanophone
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Mark Young's gamma ways
Brian Campbell: Out of the Woodwork
Shanna's DIY Publishing Blog
Galatea Resurrects: a Poetry Review
Tom Beckett
John Sakkis: BOTH BOTH
New Francois Luong:Voices in Utter Dark, KaBlow!sm is...
Old Francois Luong: Voices in Utter Dark
Margin Walker: Andrew Lundwall
Free Space Comix: the latest BK Stefans blog
Adam Lockhart, Experimentalist Composer
Antic View: Alan Bramhall & Jeff Harrison
lookouchblog: Jessica Smith
MiPOradio
Web Log -- Charles Bernstein
Google Poem Generator: Leevi Lehto
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Feral Scholar: Stan Goff
worderos: Tom Beckett
In Galatea's Purse
Japundit
Quiet Desperation: Jim Ryal
Luca Antara: Martin Edmond
Brief Epigrams: Ryan Alexander MacDonald
Radio My Vocabulary: 4 pm Sunday Poetry Streams
Mark Lamoreaux: [[[0{:}0]]]
Hot Whiskey Blog
louder
Nick Bruno: They Shoot Poets Don't They?
Joe Massey: Rooted Fool
Kate Greenstreet: every other day
heuriskein: Tom Orange
Chiaroscuro Metropoli: Tom Beckett
Behrle's latest spout!
Fluffy Dollars: Michelle Detorie
Jane Dark's Sugar High!
The Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
(Charles) Olson Now: Michael Kellaher & Ammiel Alcalay
kari edwards' TranssubMUTATION
Notes on the Revival: Jeremy Hawkins
PurPur: Petrus Pokus
Snapper Missives: Scott Pierce
A Sad Day for Sad Birds II: Gina Meyers
Great Works: Peter Philpot
zafusy: experimental poetry journal
Writeboard: a collaborative writing tool
John Latta: Rue Hazard
KP Harris: Croissant Factory
Stephanie Young's New Site
Stephen Vincent's New Site
Portable Press@Yo~Yo Labs
Square America
Amy King's blog
Robert: Peyoetry Hut
Muisti Kirja: Karri Kokko
Karri Kokko's Blonde on Blonde
Yummeee Blog (recipes)
Nice Guy Syndrome: Tim Botta
Left Hook
Del Ray Cross: anachronizms
Juan Cole: Informed Comment
BuzzFlash - Daily Headlines, Breaking News, Links
Aaron McCollough
Chris Lott's Cosmopoetica
Chad Parenteau
Little Emerson
Fever, Light--by Sawako Nakayasu
Second Wish
Nomadics
Alison Croggon
Radical Druid
Ron is Ron: the Ron Silliman Cartoon by Jim Behrle
Dagzine: Positions, Poetics, Populations: Gary Norris
Shadows within Shadows: Tom Beckett
Self Similar Writing: Jukka Pekka Kervinen
The Little Workshop: Cassie Lewis
Sky Bright: Jay Rosevear
Poesy Galore: Emily Lloyd
Lisa Jarnot's Blog
Poetry Hut: Jilly Dybka (has moved here)
Pornfeld: Michael Hoerman
Seven Apples: Justin Ulmer
Hi Spirits: Andrew Burke
Bacon Bargain!: Joe Massey
Ivy is here: Ivy Alvarez
Whimsy Speaks: Jeff Bahr
Umbrella: Jeff Wietor
Chicanas! (Susana L. Gallardo)
Masters of Photography
Blog of Disquiet: Gary Norris' Teaching Blog
Suzanna Gig Jig
Bad with Titles: Jay Thomas
Spaceship Tumblers! Tony Tost
Desert City: Ken Rumble
E-Po
Zotz!
Optative Mood: Tim Morris
ecritures bleues: Laura Carter
The Ingredient: Alli Warren
Skanky Possum Pouch
Slight Publications
Jewishy-Irishy: Laurel Snyder
Sea-Camel: Alberto Romero Bermo
Growing Nations: Jordan Stempleman
Tom Raworth
Entropy and Me: Hal Johnson
Scott Pierce: Snapper's Junk
Chicano Poet: Reyes Cardenas
Semio-Karl M&M
Stephen Vincent
Hoa Nguyen/Teacher's & Writers
a New Word Placements
Narcissus Works: Anny Ballardini
Richard Lopez
Tributary: Allen Bramhall
The_Delay: Chris Vitiello
Jukka Pekka Kervinen: Nonlinear Poetry
Lanny Quarles: Phaneronoemikon
Clifford Duffy: Fictions of Deleuze & Guattari
DagZine
Carrboro Poetry Festival
Steve Evans: Third Factory
DEBORAH PATILLO
SKANKY POSSUM PRESS
Tim Peterson: Mappemunde
WOOD'S LOT
Geof Huth: DBQP
Ann Marie Eldon
Jim Behrle: The Jim Side
Ray Bianchi:Postmodern Collage Poetry
Never Mind the Beasts
Diaryo
New Broom
Flingdump Scattershot
Tony Tost: Unquiet Grave
Grapez
SB POET
Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming
|||AS/IS2|||
Li's A Private Studio
Anny Ballardini's Poet's Corner
Tom Beckett: Vanishing Points
Dumbfoundry
BadGurrrlNest
Jean Vengua's Okir
Hear-it dot org: info on hearing problems
Tim Yu's Tympan
James Yeager's Modern Lives
Tony Robinson: Geneva Convention
Daniel Nestor's Unpleasant Event
Ex-Lion Tamer
Carlos Arribas: Scriptorium
David Nemeth
Ela's Incertain Plume
Mairead Byrne's Heaven
Catherine Daly
Black Spring
Br.Tom's Finish Yr Phrase
Shin Yu Pai: makura-no-soshi
Harry K. Stammer: Downtown LA
Corina's Fledgling Wordsmith
Jilly Dybka's Poetry Hut
Ben Basan's Luminations
Katey: Chewing on Pencils
YaY!! Eileen Tabios: Chatelaine Poetics !
Jill Jones: Ruby Street
Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVox
Bill Allegrezza's P-Ramblings
Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere
GoldenRuleJones
Poetry_Heat
Bookslut
Chickee's SuperDeluxeGoodPoems
As-Is !
John Latta's Hotel Point
Sawako Nakayasu's Ongoing Show
Shanna Compton's Brand New Insects
Crag Hill
kari edwards: transdada
Fluss
Michael Helsem's Gray Wyvern
Word Placement
Bogue's Blog
Jordan Davis: Equanimity
Robert Flach's Unadulterated Text
Michelle Bautista
Ironic Cinema
Mike Snider
Farewell Tonio!
In Through the Out Door
The Blonde Brunette
Awake at Dawn on Someone's Couch is Toast
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen:Non-Linear
Xpress(ed) !
Chris Lott's Ruminate
Venepoetics
Laura: Yellowslip
Stick Poet Super Hero
Mighty Jens!
Radio UTA: Toni's Thursday Poetry Show
Tim Morris: Lection
Gabe Gudding
Constant Critic
Sappho's Breathing
Waves of Reading
Jhananin's Insite
Fanaticus
AdvExpo
Stephen Vincent
Stephanie Young: New Well Nourished Moon
Kasey Silem Mohammad's Newest Limetree
Lanny Quarles: (solipsis)//:phaneronoemikon
States Writes
Rebecca's Pocket
Simulacro
Braincase Links
Sentence
Sor Juana
73 Urban Bus Journeys
Poeta Empirica
poetry for the people: canwehaveourballback?
Ernesto Priego's Never Neutral
Nick Piombino's Fait Accompli
Weekly Incite blogresearch
Jim Behrle's first monkey
Jim Behrle's Monkey's Gone to Heaven
David Kirschenbaum's Boog City
Not Nick Moudry
Laurable
David Hess Heathens in Heat
Jack Kimball's Pantaloons
Li Bloom's Abolone
Ron Silliman
Chris Sullivan's Bloggchaff
Chris Sullivan's Slight Publications
Chris Sullivan's Department of Culture
Kasey S. Mohammad's Old-New Limetree
Kasey's Old Limetree
James Meetze: Brutal Kittens
Cassie Lewis: The Jetty
Joseph Mosconi's Harlequin Knights
Nada Gordon's Ululate
ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
Steve Evans: Third Factory
Noah Eli Gordon's Human Verb
Jean Vengua's Blue Kangaroo
Sawako Nakayasu: Texture Notes
Free Space Comix: BK Stefans
Crosfader
Malcolm Davidson's eeksy peeksy
Marsh Hawk Press group
Catherine Meng's Porthole Redux
Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey
Very Nice! Shampoopoetry
UTA's Lit Mag: ZNine
Wild Honey Press
Jacket
JFK's Poetinresidence
Malcolm Davidson's Tram Spark poems
HYepez: RealiTi
HYpez: Mexperimental
Aimee Nez's Gila Monster
BestMaX: Jim Behrle's jismblog
Cori Copp's Littleshirleybean
Jordan Davis: Million Poems
Eileen Tabios: Corpsepoetics [see Chatelaine above]
YaY! Liz's Thirdwish
Ultra Linking
Henry Gould's HG Poetics
|
Saturday, September 06, 2003
Well, I think I swore off these quiz things last time one circulated poetry blogtown
but here we go anyway:
(darn it, and now I can't get the code to paste from there to here, but:)
*I am at Dante's first level of hell.
Not quite at "Repenting Believers,"
and not quite at "Lust" (wooooo, not quite?);
rather just right at "virtuous non believers." (yeah, right: non believers is okay but virtuous, um, well ...*
That is, I'm kinda generic, I guess.
I can still like cartoons, though, right?
Thanks much for the cool Dante quiz, Nada. .
chris at
2:36 AM
|
Friday, September 05, 2003
Dept of 1991 "IMAG i
nation littered ..."
Here's an awkward blog of autobiog info (not my favorite mode since the "I" category as a meaningful and/or authoritative source is so culturally and often also personally fraught) attached to a poem of mine published in LOGOS, the University of Rochester's literary magazine, in Spring 1991,** when my children and I had been there for 3 semesters (I mention it as an "us," all of us, because it was that kind of life project). A great photo of my son, aged 18 months, boxing with an inflate-able Mickey-Mouse knock-over figure, is also in that issue, gracing the masthead page (p. 2).
I had returned to school in 1986 when the children were small (very small: I had the youngest in the middle of one semester--fall '86--and still managed to write the papers, keep up the grades; now I do not know how I did it & would not recommend it except to say that it can be done if one has to go that route to 'getting a life' as it were: I was single parenting 3: it was an extreme situation, a little outside the box even for that already economically and socially estranging role. I would not have elected that course unless necessary.).
We lived on welfare in subsidized housing in Cottonwood, AZ; I worked part time at the community college I attended, in the adiovisual and radio department setting up equipment and monitoring automatic broadcasts & televised courses. Of course I couldn't make enough to pay for much child care. Most of the single parent women I lived around worked as cashiers in Safeway or the new Walmart. If I weren't in school, that's where I would have been: that's what was there, and still is.
But materially for the literary minded one percent of that population, things seemed to be looking up: we were able to move from Sedona/Cottonwood, AZ to Roch NY primarily because I had been offered academic scholarships to Univ.of Roch. (also my family lived in Roch). There, I was completing courses for the major in English, minor in creative writing, and worked on the editorial committee for the lit mag (LOGOS) (that was volunteer work; my paying job was as a reception, phone, filing, and data entry clerk in the Financial Aid Office. Child care costs took more than I made, student loans allowed us a life).
As a writer I was playing at the time with every notion of the fragmented, fractured, and the moving--in all senses of that term: moving as movement, as action; moving as emotionally suasive; moving as that pragmatic sphere of experience where one uproots self and belongings to settle elsewhere, an experience that is difficult enough on ones own but is extreme when alone with three children. Of course we got through that situation of moving (and went on to move across country several times by sheer denial of direness on my part and plenty of good luck), in part because we are privileged as compared to many others in the world who undergo similar things and much worse.
One very gendered item seemed in abundance at the time of our move from AZ to NY, and then stuck around in real life play, and then prominently in the imaginative lives of my children, 2 girls, 1 boy: so many Barbies and their horrifying (to me) legacy! Even twelve years ago this surreal figure had been over-troped and criticized to no effect and for too long, I now think. As a parent I was appalled: on principle I wouln't buy these doll-toys for the children. But all their relatives did, and glorified this figure to the point of pukedom, I thought, never sure then or afterwards what to think of to counteract the effect or never sure what to do with such unwanted gifts that resonate around formations of individual identity, interactions with community, and social formations generally. Let alone that the consumerist implications were so ominous. Barbie was so stupid. But so successful. It boggled me. All her success seemed to feed another phenomenon at the time: this was right around the time of the big push for GI Joe dolls for boys: and then, guess what?--a war (the first Oil-Gulf War) was drummed up and manufactured in real life to fit this other horrifying figure of social imagination and expectation.
This was all way too much for a poem, but somehow a poem dealing with some of this seemed necessary. But this was when I wrote everything out carefully by hand several times: each poem had lots of work poured into it, each was a condensation of sorts. Versus now, where a poem lands on a screen basically as is and has little to do with condensation, at least not from any outward impetus or constructedness. If it is there now it is because some vital workings that go into making a poem have become so internalized--and I suspect have also undergone no little "mystification" in the strong sense meant by John Berger in Ways of Seeing--that they cannot be easily noticed in the self's watchdog missions. Maybe that's not a bad thing sometimes, I don't know (or care much about that at this point).
In addition to fragments, fractures, moving, and Barbie-bits, I had also been meditating on "imagination" at the time (as lately, too, since postings around blogs reminded me last week, which in turn reminded me of this old poem of mine).
Imag
i nation littered the
children's closet is
Barbie head leg
arm the torsos
lacking these dis or
orient so direct
unloose perfections.
Might we ask Marilyn?
Rout
inely Barbie
the children deconstruct
and dialogue to
assemble re
her by their
same accident
how forgotten
they how took her
a part
bringin her on
like a truce
their solemn
face piece
where peace
by piece she
is born
on their stretch
her of tissue
just paper old
courtly pages
bear Barbie like
tiding mystique
until translated.
She
always falls
through their
tissues. Her fails
weight the my
kitchen floor:
arm legs bouffant
eye hair thuds
aqua up at me
from all tiles
mosaic veiled
fresco stained glass
clut clut her
strut t t t t
I never know what
to make o f her.
Walk Walk Walk
at the uni
verse
city. Greek
four stat
yous at add
missions door.
One less head.
Talk.
While the children hurried
right and
left looking
for the lost head.
Navigation??????
Call Call
Security.
And mothers fast
buy murmurs
enroll children
beautiful rooms
murmur
they mean statues.
So lately the children
have set
up Barbie in the scale
down exact replica
John Deere Loader.
Pieces gaze inanimate
her images at
o f sell
ves she sees
on her very own Barbie TV
until the children play
hers, attend, enliven,
their own
voices.
chris murray (1990-1991), Rochester, NY
It always feels weird to read an old poem of ones own, at least for me. It feels like the wool barely combed but nonetheless made into heavy socks worn because it is just cold out there, ya kno? If I could change anything here now? It's scratchy on the tender skin. So I guess I would argue a little with this poet and what she meant at the poem's end by "their own/ voices." To say the least, that heavily individualized and self appropriated notion of voice as expressive, or as anything at all, has undergone a lot of "fragmentation, fracture, and moving" (this piece is already so self-referential that I guess it won't matter if I quote myself one more time while making a conventional gesture toward closure, no?) since this poem was written.
*Note:
I spent some time last night trying to search out the literary whereabouts of some of the other folks I have since lost touch with who also served on LOGOS that year, especially Felice Banker, David Iverson, and James Whittaker. If anyone happens to know them or how I might contact them, please let me know: cmurray@uta.edu. Thanks.
chris at
2:27 PM
|
Thursday, September 04, 2003
Hey! Coffee Haus + Poets + Creative Writing faculty brought to you by UTA (toni manning, jenn cooper, and me!): Poetry & Live jazz playin, every Thursday, startin tonight. Right Here in Arlington, TX!
Also: poetry readings broadcast on the radio!: Thursdays throughout fall semester, from 4-5pm, featuring a different poet each week, organized by toni manning (you rock, sweetie!). Check it out:
UTAradio
chris at
8:44 PM
|
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Today's List: Seven Things Reflexive With All My EM
Dashes Sparkling Just Below This
ABCsUrFACE Things are
cooling off around here without heat--oh you
only need to hand out the sheaf of answer forms
one time
give all
quizzes it's quicker that way less work--
if your mailbox is near
limit--Christine! You need
to call me now [who are you?]--nowadays
most prefer medium-well--WE ARE SO HAPPY
THAT OUR HOUSE IS GOING TO GO
THROUGH!--SEE THROUGH THIS TURQUOISE
DEAR LOOK
THEY FILL THE CAVITIES WITH GOLD AND
POLISH THE ROUND
JAG WE LOVE SO SMOOTH
OH THANK YOU thank you
THANK YOU I LOVE IT
--The cashier in the Minimart said so today.
--Overheard while walking past 2 science profs on campus yesterday.
--Message yesterday from Office of Information Technology.
--Phone message today from unidentified bill collector.
--Waiter, steakhouse, last night.
--Friends buying a first house, yesterday.
--Gift last night of turquoise bracelet from daughter just back from Arizona visit.
chris murray hmbl.thx.2hcic
chris at
7:58 PM
|
from Carolyn Forche :
"The Angel of History *
"There are times when the child seems delicate, as if he had not yet crossed into the world.
"When French was the secret music of the street, the cafe, the train, my own receded and became intimacy and sleep.
"In the world it was the language of propaganda, the agreed-upon lie, and it bound me to itself, demanding of my life an explanation.
"When my son was born I became mortal. ..."
(3)
"Because One Is Always Forgotten **
"When Viera was buried we knew it had come to an end,
his coffin rocking into the ground like a boat or a cradle.
"I could take my heart, he said, and give it back to a campesino
and he would cut it up and give it back:
"you can't eat heart in those four dark
chambers where a man can be kept for years.
"A boy soldier in the bone-hot sun works his knife
to peel the face from a dead man
"and hang it from the branch of a tree
flowering with such faces.
"The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands."
(23)
"Dulcimer Maker***
"Calf-deep in spruce dust,
wood curls off his knife,
blade wet, bare bulb light.
"The finish of his hands
shows oil, grain, knots
where his growth scarred him.
"Planing black oak
thin to flow sounds.
Tones of wind filling
bottle lips.
"It is his work trying strings
across fresh-cut pine.
He sings into the wood, listens:
tree rings, water!
The wood drinks his cloth,
its roots going to the depths of him,
spreading.
"He wants to build a lute for music
carved on Sumerian stones, a music
no one has heard for three hundred years.
"For this he will work
the oldest wood he can find.
It will not be as far away,
as unfamiliar."
(14)
*Carolyn Forche, The Angel of History(New York: Harper Collins, 1994)
**Forche, The Country Between Us. (New York: Harper Row, 1981)
*** Forche, Gathering the Tribes. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1976)
chris at
3:30 AM
|
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
From Barbara Anderson** :
"Eagle 21
The dwellings of South Texas
shimmy by me: the hand lettered facade
of Sammy's Country Store & Art Gallery,
laundry waving like flags
of surrender from all those
whose houses face the tracks
that line America: a world
of lost dogs, graveyards,
and abandoned cars
where skinny grazing horses
repeat themselves
like the Hank Williams refrain
we sang along to last night
when the generators died
between Texarkana,
Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas.
Floating on anonymous,
rusted ribs, it was easy
to sing of loneliness,
to start from anywhere
and introduce ourselves:
Diesel Driver, Crime Reporter,
and three-year-old Benjamin
who swore he saw a ghost
when the lights went out
and a milk-white nightgown
walked by in moonlight.
"I want to go home," he cried.
Not me, just beginning to belong--
recognizing the strangeness
of every stranger's face as my own,
a face in the window,
one of those I used to wave to
when a train orbiting
seemed nothing less than a miracle--
that dimly lit planet
with its glassed in aliens.
Better to be one of those who move,
while still, turning pages
in the complimentary magazine
whose back cover features
a soaring silver eagle advertising,
NOT EVERYONE WAS MEANT TO FLY.
And I agree with everyone
sitting by me: All those
adlibbing lyrics
to a couple of untuned guitars,
something about vacancy
& horses--an emergency
plausible enough
to pull the lever
from the windows
& watch the ghosts
of morning
tumble back in."
(52)
Barbara Anderson, Junk City. New York: Persea, 1987
chris at
1:31 AM
|
Monday, September 01, 2003
From Women's Life in Greece and Rome :
"18.
To Artemis (AP VI.273.G)
"Artemis, goddess of Delos and lovely Ortygia, set down your sacred bow in the Graces' laps, wash your skin clean in the Inopus, and come to Locri to deliver Alcetis from her hard labor pains."
Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, transs. & eds., Women's Life in Greece & Rome: a Sourcebook in Translation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982, 1992. p. 7
chris at
8:07 PM
|
From Paulo Freire (translated by Myra Bergman Ramos)** :
note: this is part of online readings for English 3371-002,
Fall 2003, UTA, cmurray@uta.edu
"As women and men, simultaneously reflecting on themselves and on the world, increase the scope of their perception, they begin to direct their observations towards previously inconspicuous phenomena:
'In perception properly so-called, as an explicit awareness
[ Gewahren], I am turned toward the object, to the paper, for
instance. I apprehend it as being this here and now. The apprehension is a singling out, every object having a background in experience. Around and about the paper lie books, pencils, inkwell, and so forth, and these in a certain sense are also _perceived,_ perceptually there, in the _field of intuition_; but whilst I was turned towards the paper there was no turning in their direction, not any apprehending of them, not even in a secondary sense. They appeared and yet were not singled out, were not posited on their own account. Every perception of a thing has such a zone of background intuitions or background awareness, if _intuiting_ already includes the state of being turned towards, and this also is a _conscious experience,_ or more briefly a _consciousness of_ all indeed that in point of fact lies in the co-perceived objective background.' [Freire quoting from Edmund Husserl, Ideas--General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London, 1969, pp. 105-106)]
"That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at all) begins to _stand out,_ assuming the character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men and women begin to single out elements from their _background awareness_ and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their consideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition.
"In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. Although the dialectical relations of women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that teh form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, teh teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on themsleves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action.
"Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis come into conflict. Banking education [Freire's critical model so named because students are understood as empty +accounts+ to be filled with knowledge=currency] (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem posing education [Freire's critical model so named because unlike the Banking model it is interactive, based on sharing ideas as equally as critical consciousness can make possible] sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.
"Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming--as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality."
** Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970, 1996. pp. 63-65
chris at
5:51 PM
|
From Armand Schwerner **
"the two voices of lizard"
"--be personal, tell it straight, the small detail
in its complexity, the dirt
you have to eat, the noises of cereal
of the children cracking
into your silence
"--keep your own counsel, don't give it away
cheaply, noble
rider on the poet's mule
"What an old struggle, it would bore me
if it weren't the substance itself of all my days
it's true the statues in the parks are for children and birdshit
but a spat! a minor marital belly-curdling
spat! would you make
a poem of that?
o to be stegasaurus
now that misery's here, on my back
two rows of bony plates, imagine
a stegasaurus pleading
Get off my back, to his plates!
Why they are his very blessedness,
Near the end
of the Age of Reptiles, those plates
got heavier all the time
and pushed him into the ground, or
something like that. He was fat
and got fatter. O how wonderful
to be driven into the ground
a little more each day
and nothing nothing nothing to be done
except relax and sink
to make time for the next Age. Ah to sink
like that and make a contribution,
maybe to become coal
even or something like that. I keep
my counsel, I feed upon plants, the four spikes
on my tail keep attackers away, I am
a fierce father when attacked. Between nothingness
and grief I choose the grief
of the stegosaurus, pointing
like all long grief
to nothingness. Yes I live in a bad
time, I remember the lizards, clumping
in an awkward phoomph among their wasting
vegetables."
(48)
"Adam the wing"
Flyboy in the fishfilled air
_____he floats up there, past
_____master magic boy
up with Adam the Wing, mad
_____pastor of playing things;
_____letting them go is like having them
_____come back. this. this. see. all.
_____gone. see. now.
It is now. Crowding
_____behind his blue eyes
_____the forktailed fish, stars
_____for scales, not letting up
_____in their crazy night swimming, I know
it was less pressure threw down Caesar
_____in his reddening gown
(49)
**Armand Schwerner, Shorter Selected Poems, San Diego: Junction Press, 1999.
chris at
2:14 PM
|
Dept of Dramatical Philosophy:
Curtains: to Switch or Not to Switch--
The "Monty Hall problem" :
"A decision problem associated with the American television game show host Monty Hall. Contestants are shown three closed curtains. Behind one is a prize, behind the other two are lemons [qualifier: the choice to post this has no relation to my poem called "Lemon, 1"]. They pick a curtain [though are not yet shown what is behind it]. Monty Hall (who knows where the prize is) then pulls one of the other curtains, revealing a lemon, and contestants are then asked if they would like to switch to the remaining curtain, or stay with their original choice. There seems to be no particular reason to switch, yet in fact switching doubles the chances of winning: your chance if you stay is what it always was, namely 1/3; the remaining cutain has a probability of containing the prize of 2/3. The problem was the subject of a minor scandal when several distinguished statisticians failed to see how this could be true. In fact it is true because there is now a significant difference between the curtain originally chosen, and the other one on offer, namely that Monty Hall avoided the second. The logic is more easily seen with a greater number of curtains. If there were 100, and you picked one, then by the time Monty Hall has pulled open 98 with lemons behind them, the chance that the remaining one that he did not pick conceals the prize is 99%."
**Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Paperback. Simon Blackburn, Ed. Oxford UP, 1996. p. 249.
chris at
1:58 PM
|
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Though I will not always be that way.
chris at
9:45 PM
|
Gitchur MaeJuur Self Revelation Rahaihhtcheer:
(Get Your Major Self Revelation Right Here)
The Truth revealed once and for all:
In one tiny linguistic
hiccup escaping
from a slight tear in my red
umbrella I have
discovered the meaning of my life:
I am all wet--absolutely
drenched.
chris at
9:28 PM
|
hah! goin walkin in the rain now. more soon...
chris at
8:24 PM
|
Hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger: Morph Us!
Those following the most recent re-combinant action of Arnold Schwarzenegger's body cells into the form of a supposedly apt Terminator-type politician with the state of California as the apple of his roving eye, might want to look into an essay written a few years ago about Arnold as cultural morph, an essay that now seems most Cassandra-like, foretelling in the sense of outlining a phenomenon that is very culturally scary beyond the problem of having one more actor in a position to represent what should be critical minded voting constituencies (but who wrote that gobbledegeek? How about if I change it to say just regular "voting people"?--thx).
The essay's authors are Linda Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz; title is "Morphing Identities: Arnold Schwarzenegger--Write Us." I first found it in a book used for a ph.d seminar I took while still a student, on trends in autobiography and cultural theories of such. At the time, I found the essay useful to ground my research project for the course, which resulted in the writing of an interesting exploratory-essay about figures of aliens & Terminators, social relations between my children & I, and the culturally estranging nomadics of single parenting--I should post that paper here, perhaps I will soon (if I can find it!).
This was a Martin Danahay (Hi, Martin!)** course here at UTA in 1998. The book is well known (and Martin has an essay in it on the academic CV as a form of cultural currency--or not!): Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Minneapolis: U of Minn Press, 1996. pp. 89-107). Actually the entire book is a *treasury of ideas*--do you recall that phrasing? : ) (note: sorry but i have to run right now, tho i will be back this evening to fill in some more on what this essay says and more importantly, how it does so. Further note: nah. if you want to discuss it with me just email me)
**Martin Danahay, with then grad student David Reider (who is now at North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I believe), has a book or is in a book on the NYTimes bestseller list (I know: I should look it up and be more accurate, fulfil the authoritative expectency here; I will in just a little bit of a while, when I have more time, more energy, a secretary, or some such...) essays on the cultural work of the films of The Matrix--worth looking into. Via his scholarly interests in the Victorians, Martin has also recently done re-edits--critical editions--on these classics of horror, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula. And anyway, besides all that good stuff, Martin's just a kick!
chris at
6:29 PM
|
Chantilly, Diesel, Rain
Raining here, not in utter seriousness but a little like wordplay, on and off, a downpour here, a few droplets and then some sunshine & etc. Temp was cool this a.m., but is heating up. It'll get steamy, but this is a good rain. I could tell last evening on my walk--the air is better. Suddenly after months of dust-oven conditions and indeterminant but powerful combustion engine- resultant-perfumes--not unlike the way it is when you are stuck in a crowded elevator going to the umpteenth floor and the otherwise likeable, intelligent woman wedged closest to you and chatting on about the weather is wearing some 70s wall of scent like Chantilly by the invisible sand bag-full, a scent of indeterminate but way too powerful origins and you have to keep breathing it in, out, in, out, hoping you will still be able to breathe by the time the door *yes* finally opens on your floor where a coolness can glide easily between you and the invisible wall of Chantillybags--the air smells clean. I imagine that at least the Chantilly didn't permanently alter or even scar people's lungs the way numerous extended days of "purple alert air" in urban settings must do.
Ah, so cheery today!--whole new world: green things that look like grass and even a few flowers. Some squishy whitish fungus-looking bulbs or bumps taking shape across the grounds here--toadstools (what a weird word that is) looking very amanita. Amazing what can grow with a little rain after such dry conditions!
Parking lot outside my windows just got spruced up the other day with new blacktop and paint. The contrasts are now marvelous again: red so red, white so very ashy pure white. Usually that blacktop smell dominates every other possible scent. It's like the drag of diesel fuel, or bus exhaust: if you grow up around it, it obtains a certain corner of comfort in your little house of personal nostalgias you'd rather ignore but once in a while must face up to because scent is such a trigger--hey, does the brain really know what it is doing with this?-- but I confess: something in me is forever in love with bus exhaust--I would have to think twice if they bottled it and sold it at the fine feminine counter in the entryway to any upscale mall store: diesel exhaust (and oh yes I just remembered:Jet A fuel! another fossil fuel love, but that is a story for another day...) always gives me fond memories of walking to Kodak Park Grammar School # 41, or John Marshall High School, past the mysteries of bulimic like skinny saint statues and so many stairs leading straight to the fantastically carved doors at Sacred Heart Cathedral, lunchtime pizza shops on Lake Avenue, and that long unwindowed brick wall of Kodak Park south of Red Wing Stadium (it was a whole city block long, this blank brick wall and we never knew what was on the other side--but is that little ball park even there still?). So as a younger and female member of the pecking order, diesel exhaust is cause for nostalgia about things like being chased by slightly older members of pecking order who more than once thought this girl still had some change left after lunch, and she eluding them somehow, or not, then getting pushed around the sidewalk by them in front of a kiosk full of staring secretarial and factory-worker observers who finally intervened while waiting for *the bus* to save them (by perverse extension, me too)-- its belch or fart of diesel exhaust after they boarded but the bullies had moved on and that bus started to roll away from the red-rock-type curb. I was suddenly free! It took my breath away, or I took a deep breath of relief that turned out to be diesel exhaust at about a three foot distance, ugh, but realizing I still had my lunch change--mom would not be mad at me! Ah such fond memories of growing up in Rochester, New York! Or anywhere urban, I suppose?
The rain and the cleaner air it brought here, now, have washed even the soot-oil sandbag cling of blacktop out of the moment, at least from the air five feet above and up over the ground. On the blacktop there are quaint little storybook puddles with brave ignorant birds trying to drink what must seem like clean water. No one to shoo them away. Even so, they'd be back. Maybe all that blacktoppery grime doesn't really bother these savvy urban birds very much.
chris at
3:03 PM
|
From Miyazawa Kenji* :
Politicians
All of them want to make a racket
here and there and everywhere
so that they can have a drink or two--
leaves of fern and clouds
the world is that cold and dark
But soon
such bastards
rot of themselves,
get washed away in the rain of themselves.
What remains will be hushed blue fern.
And that this was the Carboniferous Period of mankind
a transparent geologist somewhere
will record.
3 May 1927
(168)
The Crow
Under the ultramarine heaven
through the reflections of the highland snow,
a transparent wind is blowing,
moving the rows of dull brown larches,
each differently.
A crow, in the ultraviolet rays that burn him,
perches on the core extending unusually long from one of them
anxious to remember
a very old yellow dream.
The wind passes continuously,
the trees shake precariously,
the crow, like a rowboat
... he's rocking it himself...
drifts in the waves of the winter heat haze.
And yet the many snow sculptures
lie too quiet.
6 April 1924
(113)
*Miyazawa Kenjii, *A Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist,* translated by Hiroaki Sato. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.
chris at
5:13 AM
|
From Susan Griffin* "Our Secret" (as read aloud in my class: English 3371-002, Thurs., 8/28/03, 2:00 p.m., 304 Preston Hall, Univ. TX, Arlington):
"Lately I have come to believe that an as yet undiscovered human need and even a property of matter is the desire for revelation. The truth within us has a way of coming out despite all conscious efforts to conceal it." (381)
"There were seven from her [Lenke's] family who died there that night. The eighth to die was her father. He was sent to a different camp and died on the day of liberation. The story of one life cannot be told separately from the story of other lives. Who are we? The question is not simple. What we call the self is part of a larger matrix of relationship and society... . All lives that surround us are in us." (382)
"A story is told as much by silence as by speech. Like the white spaces in an etching, such silences render form. But unlike an etching in which the whole is grasped at once, the silence of a story must be understood over time." (384)
"The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven." (388)
" The nucleus of the cell derives its name from the Latin, nux, meaning nut. Like the stone in a cherry, it is found in the center of the cell and like this stone, keeps its precious kernel in a shell." (345)
*Susan Griffin, "Our Secret," excerpted in *Ways of Reading,* sixth edition, David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, eds. (New York: Bedford St. Martins, 2002), 345-392.
|
|
