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"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
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Saturday, October 04, 2003
New Audio-Texfiles Saturday Readings:
Guillermo Parra of Venepoetics Blog, "Caurimare"** :
 audio post powered by audblog
Caurimare
I
"las nubes en su callada musica," (Javier Sologuren)
Reading newspaper poetry
to ambit the flow
even though
information errs
Isabel's season
living in Caurimare
after twenty years
without the poem's disguise
or the swiftness of
cars threaded w/ noise
drums sound, then fade
the city's paranoia
& peaceful galleries
dispersed accordingly
w/ guerrilla tourism
beautiful citizen returned
w/ calm camera & observant
our modernist avenues under
hills or mountains grouped in
rhyming couplets, highway din
II
on avenues w/ trees older than
skyscrapers stretch toward my feet
of the eventual loss / degeneration
of the body, my back aches after
walking Sabana Grande boulevard
from Parque Los Caobos
"sampleos, loops, edicion"
twenty years since speaking
a child's caraqueno Spanish
on the radio love multiplies
its fountains w/ varied melody
no static in our city vision
III
I will stay in one language
while the city breathes
Speak to me in metaphor
Distance that font
resolve your airs
Insomniac bible
grace torn from
frantic city
With the poem returning
grief and applied sorcery
I thank surrealism's
Latin American task
But why is my mind?
IV
"El ancla de este sueno abre mis ojos a la vida" (Juan Sanchez Pelaez)
constance city, compact city of mine
poet living in Los Palos Grandes at the foot
Monte Avila, this city uncolonized though
only in print occasionally, even-metered
--te imaginas, Guillo? when the Spanish
first reached el Avila and looked out over
uncut valley below them, the Guaire
would have been translucent then
unlike our
currents, tribal fractures
meanwhile across the river
from Caurimare in the early 1980s
who wrote these allegories above
my unawareness, childhood sped-up
by capital, trans-Caribbean airplane
we studied, were unable to translate
**This four part poem, Guillermo writes via email, "is from [my] manuscript: Caracas Notebook. Caurimare is the name of the neighborhood in Caracas where my family lives."
chris at
8:55 PM
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More shaped from the light flex of life, smoothest of felt material, sensuous & woven, "sable" wordlings from Eileen Tabios, the **Texfiles Poet of the Week** :
From "Immediately Before," in Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole***
"... She is not without experience. Once, she watched the spill of air in the rain forests of Brazil. For weeks, she watched air fall between the separation of branches, the quivering of leaves, atop immeasurably tall trees. She marveled then, I can never tire of looking up. She felt herself become an ancient statue of a warrior on horseback, fists raised while indomitably looking straight ahead.
"Intention never suffices. But it is not without merit. She scolds herself, Be nice. Be nice. He will be a kind lover. He will be a generous provider. Then she collects herself at hearing how she has misapprehended her tenses. She already has made that decision that opened an interior closet to a Russian sable coat."
(93)
** P. S. Yes, it is YaY!!
*** Eileen Tabios, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole. New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2002
chris at
3:03 PM
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I love these, Lanny!
THiS, a Garden of De--WoW: cineposturingsm.jpg
alongside this
poem:
"...autoonomic structure...
the 'thinking' strip as a set of [Yes!] optooracular
nodes throughout an abstractional space-time.
Epiphenomenal modulation filter."
--Lanny Quarles, "Pos/T/uring Cinema Strip (Fictional Construction)"
chris at
1:15 PM
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Friday, October 03, 2003
Dept. of the Texas Novel: "I was in danger of having to turn in my Texas passport,
because I'd never read an Elmer Kelton novel."--Tim Morris, Lection, 3 Oct 2003
Check out Tim Morris's Lection post of today, a review of Elmer Kelton's novel, Ranger's Trail. And if you've been in deep contemplation lately over questions of book blurbs and their higher purposes, note that this one is blurbed by none other than Texas governor, Rick Perry.
Something to consider: what about the zero sum game existing both mean & redeemed, eg., Texas, all at once containing itself as a sort of self-history, but of today.
Go, Tim!
chris at
2:37 PM
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Dept. of the novel in California: "Gorilla Mothers Confront Schwarzenegger!!"
This alarming news just in from Stephen Vincent:
"I just heard third hand that different contingents of a group called the
Gorilla Mothers (GMs) are wonderfully and outrageously confronting Arnold as he takes his four bus campaign for California Governor tour north towards Sacramento. At each campaign stop, the Gorilla Mothers - apparently a new generation of the legendary Gorilla Girls - strategically positions groups of 50 to 100 fully costumed black and brown Gorillas in front the Candidate's podium. Taking a cue from Claus Oldenberg's early work, each Gorilla is wearing a huge hat in the form of a thick pink and white marbled paper meche breast, each one topped with a very sensuous looking conical tangerine nipple.
"The Gorilla Mothers are reported to being carrying signs that variously
read, 'We've got what you want, Arnold,' 'Grope & Speak,' 'Are we big
enough?' 'Don't Forget Us at the Polls.'
"At the first demonstration in Hollywood, the Mothers apparently flustered
Arnold almost to pieces. Straining to keep his eyes off the crowd of bobbing
breasts, he was said to keep repeating, as he has since yesterday, 'I will
be the champion of women. I will be the champion of women.'
"Can anybody down the coast confirm this rumor? The images haven't gotten on to Fox or CNN yet."
chris at
2:20 PM
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Rebecca Balcarcel, Radio UTA Poet!
Yesterday's Radio UTA and Coffee Haus readings were particularly engaging. UTA student and accomplished writer Robert Flach (check out his blog, Unadulterated Text) read from some fine pieces he's working on (one a villanelle!--and another, titled "Alike," is fine work with very rhythmic contrapuntal sound and sense movements); Tim Morris read a favorite poem from the journal, "Lyric," and Terri Vaughn read from a poem she says occured to her one recent morning, *it just came to me,* a fine piece about a Nicaraguan family who had moved to the US, a poem full of the descriptive materials, the courderoys and velvets, the watery and rocky materials of everyday life. And Vicki Sapp, with her usual unflappable wit, read from a new poem, a sort of *ode to the commode.* I read "Archimedean Fisherman," blogged earlier this week, as well as the Joseph Brodsky poem, "Anthem" (the "rational anthem") I like so much and put up on texfiles the other day.
I really enjoyed getting acquainted with Rebecca Balcarcel (Hi Rebecca!), Toni's Radio UTA-Coffee Haus guest poet this week. A Guatemalan-American poet, Rebecca Balcarcel is the mother of three young children and completed her MFA at Bennington; she now teaches writing at Tarrant County College, locally. Rebecca's chapbook, Ferry Crossing, was published last year by UNT Press (Univ. of North Texas, Denton).
Here is a (too brief!) sample of her work from the Feb. 2001 issue of Red River Review:
Eating breakfast slowly
in the living room --
dried peaches out of a tin --
she sees the oak still clutching its leaves,
and across the yard, an elm
naked in a circle of brown and gold
as if every leaf had dropped at once
from fright
or the tree had opened all its hands together
and let them go.
--Rebecca Balcarcel, from "Widow" [TOC #2, Red River Review (Feb. 01)]
Thanks, Rebecca, Toni, and all!
chris at
11:37 AM
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Thursday, October 02, 2003
YaY!--Dinner at Fei Xie's Friday night. Can't wait. They just bought a house and moved in so are having a dinner (with me!--I'm so happy everything is working out well for them). Fei says they are making hot pot. Yum!! More on that tomorrow...
chris at
11:58 PM
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A New Series: Texfiles Poet of the Week.
10/2/03-10/8/03: Eileen Tabios
I've decided to offer a Poet of the Week series, and in honor of her superb poetry, as well as her terrific editorial and critical expertise, I begin the series with Eileen Tabios, whose blog is Corpse Poetics, linked here and in my list of links to the left (scroll down).
Here is a beautiful work in prose poem form, an excerpt from Eileen's poem, "Eulogy," in the impressive 2002 book, *Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole* (Marsh Hawk Press) :
"You say you met yourself in the dark moss climbing the pink walls of Alhambra surrounded by old hills where people have perfected suffering. To gaze into a steaming cup of tea sources comprehension on questions not yet asked. Or it may transcend that, or it may not, or it may depend on the definition of regret. Or, it may depend on comprehension's reliance on sight. Though the flame trees of Tambobo have emptied themselves to silver limbs clawing the sky, the orange blooms stain every sunset that would begin the dark hours of rumination. A blind member of the French Resistance insisted on learning dance to obviate the strange rhythm of alien boots and unfamiliar odor of tobacco colonizing Paris. A sunlit sensibility pervades dreams with ease, consistently. "Now let us be fearless."
I am wowed by this poem in which every part is as stunning as the above. But as printed in Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, perhaps what makes this excerpt even more powerful is that it is the last part of the poem, thus offering it's final statement as summary for the longer, sectioned, work. Thanks, Eileen for your wonderful work.
chris at
12:17 PM
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Lucked out & Listening!--with Update on Status of Prevallet book order
UTA Bookstore has (good) music CDs at 50% off--no lie. They are getting rid of what they have because they are discontinuning this stuff. So me?--I accidentally found this out today when I went over there to check on the second book for my course, Engl. 3371, which is Kristen Prevallet's *Scratch Sides* (students: it's in now, y'all, so ya better go get your copy: assignments coming up in two weeks).
Yes, so I got half off on these I'm rolling through on the Listening tonight (it helps that it's also the first payday of this academic year, of course...) :
Peter Gabriel: (2002)
Alison Kraus+Union Station: "New Favorite"
Elizabeth Morrow on Cello: "Soliloquy"
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: "Greendale"
Macy Gray: "On How Life Is"
chris at
10:24 PM
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Hey! Check this out: Tornado Alley Countdown Love (title of one of my poem series)
now possible in *Super-Simulation*...
chris at
7:29 PM
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Stephen Vincent: a Tale of the Eye--the Digital Eye.
chris at
6:20 PM
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UTA Student Blogs = Some Waves of Reading
Let's have a little dialectical engagement: English 3371 (UTA) students problematizing the ("problem-posing") liberation pedagogy of Paulo Freire:
Waves of Reading &
Adv.Expo. &
Mighty Jens &
Fanaticus
chris at
5:53 PM
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Listening: Dirty Vegas.
Very nice, a whole lotta body rhythms, spec., heartbeat.
chris at
12:05 PM
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From Joseph Brodsky** :
"Anthem"
Praised be the climate
for putting a limit,
after a fashion,
to time in motion.
Of all prisons
the Four Seasons
has the best diet
and welcomes riot.
Asked for its origin
a climate cites oxygen,
but gives no reasons
for its omnipresence.
Detached like Confusius,
hardly conscious,
it may not love us,
but murmurs, "Always."
Being finite,
we certainly find it
promising and heartwarming,
though it's a warning.
A climate's permanence
is caused by the prevalence
of nothingness in its texture
and atmospheric pressure.
Hence, the barometer,
with its Byronic air,
should be, I reckon,
our only icon.
Since the accuracy of mercury
beats that of memory
(which is also mortal),
climate is moral.
When it exhibits
its bad habits,
it blames not parents
but ocean currents.
Or charged with the tedium
and meaninglessness of its idiom,
it won't seek legal
aid and goes local.
Keen on history,
it's also well versed in the mystery
of the hereafter
and looks like their author.
What I have in common
with the ancient Roman
is not a Caesar,
but the weather.
Likewise, the main features
I share with the future's
mutants are those curious
shapes of cumulus.
Praised be the entity
incapable of enmity
and likewise finicky
when it comes to affinity.
Yet if one aspect
of this highly abstract
thing is its gratitude
for finding its latitude,
then a rational anthem
sung by one atom
to the rest of matter
should please the latter.
(105-207)
** Joseph Brodsky, So Forth (New York: Noonday, 1996)
I am in love with this Brodsky poem.
chris at
11:17 AM
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From Shakespeare:
# 69
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend.
All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that [due],
Uttering bare truth even so as foes commend...
# 45
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, where ever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until live's composition be recured
By those swift messengers return'd from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of [Thy] fair health, recounting it to me.
&nbst&; &nbst; This told I joy, but then no longer glad,
&bnbst;&nbst;cuz we stay together.
I send them back again and straight grow sad.
chris at
12:13 AM
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
From UTA student writer (many thanks, too!) Matthew at Dinosaurblog--*In through the Out Door* :
O aUdiEnCe! :
"It was said in class that writing may benefit most from a blog
by adding the audience. Boy, was that right.
I've been thinking about the reading responses I'll post here.
And my thinking about writing here is very different
than it has been in the past. What I have written before
has gone into notebooks that, once full and therefore useless,
have gone in the garbage.
No audience.
So this will all certainly be different,
and I'm looking forward to writing
with a different mindset and where it will lead."
chris at
10:30 PM
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Damn, I admit
this world is so messed up.
And how can we...
Let's have somethin' a little better.
Let's have some love, okay?
Let's just make sure we can still do that
(if everyone made sure of, took responsibility for that, then, gee ...)
Listening (I am so lucky to have all this music!--if you have music suggestions please send them to me, and thanks!): Deep Forest,"Boheme" (is soooo fine...); Gregorian Chants; Al Green, "You Ought to Be with Me"; Miles Davis, "Bird of Paradise".
chris at
7:35 PM
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From Joy Harjo ** :
"The Poem I Just Wrote"
The poem I just wrote is not real.
And neither is the black horse
who is grazing on my belly.
And neither are the ghosts
of old lovers who smile at me
from the jukebox.
(58)
** She Had Some Horses New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1983
chris at
11:36 AM
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I heard from Michael Neff of Webdelsol
by email this morning,
confirming his commitment to host a poetics diaglogue at Webdelsol. He writes:
"I'm much looking forward. ... I think we should include non-poetry writers who are sharp and wise in the ways of lit. ... it might produce a really interesting counterpoint." (Michael Neff, Webdelsol, an email to Chris Murray, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003)
I'm going to ask him to clarify what/how/who he means by this, but if he
means generally that all kinds of writers should participate, then especially because of my and my students' recent questions about genre distinctions, boundaries, and criteria for definition, I definitely agree on this.
I have been in touch with Kent Johnson about all of this and continue to be.
Please email me to let me know your thoughts, questions, concerns & etc.
cmurray@uta.edu
I will be in & out of touch today due to work, but will get back to you by
tomorrow afternooon.
Thanks.
chris at
10:02 AM
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From Walter Benjamin ** :
"... The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are *still* possible in the [twenty first] century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable." (VIII)
"A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past--which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l'ordre du jour [summons to the order of the day] and that day is Judgement Day." (III)
** Theses on the Philosophy of History
chris at
3:08 AM
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what really rocks:
"... memory inherently (con)
(re) str (ucted) (ained) by time... "
chris at
2:15 AM
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Monday, September 29, 2003
In Which I Am So Contrary: Some Dialectics of *It's a Beautiful Day*
It's a beautiful day here in Dallas-area-Texas. Another beautiful day. And I am glad, grateful for it. Thought is funny though. It won't let the beautiful day be just a beautiful day. Other things intrude. Such as, lately, every time I think and write the phrase, "beautiful day," it glombs in my mind to that popular techno song, the one whose chorus (or maybe its only wording?) is that phrase.
And then again, considering various dialectics of the beautiful, here's something that has been on my mind for years, except I just now figured out a way to write it out for a poetic reason and form. It includes *more fun* with my trusty but testy, short-haired, four legged and often yapping pet, the *Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy,* the entry called "Archimedean":
Archimedean Fisherman
Numbers and carp are well behaved,
and radiate, Archimedes says:
When you sit a 4 down
with a 6 they shake hands
realizing that so many 2s swim
between them, and that walking
off together to the sandbar
they could have more 2s together
and be very happy. Beyond is Lake
Ontario, beautiful flat fresh beach, medical
waste stuck in its sand--continuous needles--
washing ashore daily though no industry
much less any hospital admits to dumping
in the Genesee River where at Lake
Avenue and Driving Park bridge there was
until 1992 a beautiful water trickle
which had been slowly draining
and carving itself a nice little fossil
eating existance out of the high
rock wall of the gorge, plunging with
freedom, a real sense of abandon,
to the river below ever since Kodak
first began to experiment with uranium
materials (I think in the 1950s). A homeless
man who camps in the gorge tells us all
about it when we are twelve, a long time
ago. Kodak is never approached over it
though we told everyone we knew,
though Kodak finally stopped dumping
it in 1992 when the Dictionary of
Philosophy says well behaved
numbers are Archimedean:
one day the homeless man from the river
stops fishing and eating the carp from
the Driving Park bend in the river
because he has contracted cancer
and died taking any two numbers,
however far apart they are,
so there will always be a river gorge
you can multiply to give
a beautiful result greater than
the larger of the two numbers
though this is not true
of infinitesimals.
chris at
6:47 PM
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Sunday, September 28, 2003
Hmmmm. "Desiring Machines" ** :
Citational thinking. No originals. Had to come back from walking because something from Deleuze and Guattari keeps trying to re-cite itself in my mind, keeps pressing parts of itself into my thoughts. So had to come and look it up:
"In desiring machines everything functions at the same time, but amid hiatuses and ruptures, breakdowns and failures, stalling and short circuits, distances and fragmentations, within a sum that never succeeds in bringing its various parts together so as to form a whole. That is because the breaks in the process are productive, and are reassemblies in and of themselves. Disjunctions, by the very fact that they are disjunctions, are inclusive. [cf Blanchot, the problem posed at the level of the literary machine:] how to produce, how to think about fragments whose sole relationship is sheer difference--... without having recourse either to any sort of original totality (not even one that has been lost), or to a subsequent totality that may not yet have come about. It is only the category of multiplicity, used as a substantive and going beyond both the One and the many, beyond the predicative relation of the One and the many, that can account for desiring-production: desiring-production is pure multiplicity, that is to say, an affiirmation that is irreducible to any sort of unity."
My one complaint with this?--how can a "multiplicity" be "pure"? Quibbling, maybe, but in something trying so hard to hammer out an once-and-for-all theoretical answer, this misconstrual is misleading, seems lax.
More then:
"... desire is a machine, a synthesis of machines, a machinic arrangement--desiring machines. The order of desire is the order of production. All production is at once desiring-production and social production. We therefore reproach psychoanalysis [they are psychanalysts] for havingstifled this order of production, for having shunted it into representation."
"...Why was mythic and tragic representation accorded such a senseless privilege? Why were expressive forms and a whole theater installed there where there were fields, workshops, factories, units of production? The psychoanalyst parks his circus in the dumbfounded unconscious, a real P. T. Barnum in the fields and in the factory."
"Desiring-production and machines, psychic apparatuses and machines of desire, desiring machines and the assembling of an analytic machine suited to decode them: the domain of free syntheses where everything is possible; partial connections, included disjunctions, nomadic conjunctions, polyvocal flows and chains, transductive breaks; the relation of desiring machines as formations of the unconscious... such is the composition of the analytic field. "
"... the partial objects are referred to a totality that can appear only as that which the partial objects lack, and as that which is lacking unto itself while being lacking in them (the Great Signifier 'symbolizable by the inherency of a --I in the ensemble of signifiers')."
Indeed.
Whew. Good thing I did this.
**Deleuze and Guattari, Psychoanalysis and Capitalism.
chris at
2:02 PM
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A beautiful day here. Clean sky, little breeze. Temperate. Going walking.
Sounds: car alarms (2); rock and roll (cars); birds (pigeons); traffic back and forth.
chris at
1:05 PM
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YaY!! Texfiles Honored:
This little bloggie made the **Fait Accompli **All- Star Blog Link Crush List !**
This is a great honor: many thanks for your high esteem and all your encouragements, Nick Piombino!!
chris at
4:36 AM
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The "shirtless turn of pages
in the green brick...'-- Guillermo Parra
Guillermo Parra Posts his (1997) Interview with John Weiners,
and:
an important caution over current politics in Venezuela. Well, okay: this is more emphatic sounding from me than usual--indeed, it sounds all teacherly. The following quote is information profoundly worth emphasizing to promote more critical understanding of life in places not here. Also, at least for now until blogland succumbs to streamlining, & institutionalization its readings and linkings are one way that it can aid in understanding who, where, what, how, and why, things in the larger contexts of *World* are right now.
In order to begin to know or attempt to know real life outside CNN=PBS x CBS = ATT, and other official or institutionalized versions, look to the avant: here, blogland. Although we can't escape language and media completely, we sure can fiddle with all the conveyances at entry level, can't we? Blogland is entry level for now. On CNN News you will not get info that is new or interestingly combined toward new political thought; you will get adverts of news as product that try to convince you they are real news, and you will get adverts that are other product adverts. Infinite regress.
Seek instead the news from those who are reliable and have lived it or are close to the experiences, people, cultures and respected traditions of the place. Find it by looking to hear, then by listening.
In that way, this statement at Venepoetics blog is something to listen to:
“[U]ntil Chavez [political leader] leaves, Venezuela will only continue to deteriorate. Part of the problem is that most people have no real idea of what Latin America (much less Venezuela) is like. There are so many romanticized or colonizing ideas about what "those indians" do down there. If journalists and intellectuals in the US and Europe actually spent some time studying the complexities of Venezuelan culture and politics, they might start to understand that Chavez is merely another snake charmer. We've had a long history of caudillos (local chieftans or warlords) in Venezuela. All of them ruled through brute force and had no use for "intellectuals." Chavez is another one of these simpletons who is well-armed, well-paid (now that Venezuela's oil company PDVSA is under his grip) and who has probably read maybe a dozen books in his lifetime."
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