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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, September 04, 2004
 --image: Marketing Strategies
Poems on the Matter of Naming:
First, there is one of kari's, from hir long poem, "obedience." (thanks kari!--for this very provocative poem.) Then there is a found poem of mine, written after reading a strange poem about the imperative to name, at a Marketing site on Google not long ago (see link in last paragraph below, as well as in the poem, and the same is problematic in the site from which came the image above, opening this post).
Today, after i read kari's poem, i looked up that one of mine and posted it, too, because I liked the conjunctions I found between them on the matter of *Naming*. That's one of the benefits, too, of As-Is-- which is a fantastic group-blog, one of my favorites--the benefit being that seeing everyone's poems together creates a rhetorical evironment where the "moment of discourse" (see Foucault) becomes like or acts in ways that are recombinatory, thus, the poems often can be said to interact on multiple (subtle or at times also overt) levels in ways that are intertextual and create a cross-sectioning or webbing or weaving of new ways of thinking of more poems. It's quite pleasing.
As for the phenomenon of *Naming*: it is a continuous matter of concern for writers, in so many ways--for, we have to name things (that is what writers do, essentially), yet naming is also a way of limiting, placing, cutting something off or away from other things/people. It is a paradoxical phenomenon. (Following here is the link to the Marketing site mentioned above:) In consumerist culture, where the goal of marketing is to create and promote brands, often the worst part of exclusionary cutting off between things becomes so seemingly second-nature that our critical consciousness can easily become unaware of the consequential damage done by our apparent need to name in order to consume. Often not a pretty picture of human beings, cognition, everyday social life & culture. There is plenty to consider in all that, for all of us, but it is key to the knowledge of the consequences of naming that many suffer from it, everyday, in many ways. Naming seems necessary, and branding has contributed to that apparent necessity, in ways that are deceptive: not essential nor beneficial, though branding makes it seem so. Think racial profiling, eh? Or gendering. Or... the list goes on. Bureaucracy lives off this need to name. To categorize, to fix physical energies that are inherently fluid, in place. That may often be useful. But that use has also shown its less than admirable side in western cultural ways.
Well, I want here to say thanks to kari, once again, for being an inspiration in so many ways!
chris at
5:54 PM
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a cm poem:
Xs and /s on a page somewhere
i have come to
chew up yr language
to make more palatable
the L's & collaterals
(at the service
entrance
--Steve Jonas, CVIII, "Exercises for the Ear"
1.
X for the one going down first
and taking all the others down
with it
2.
rain on window crusts of light
barroom lathering a brown
breadish dust
this is a pretzel life
drama of the sogging volume
stop weeping!
no, that means you took both tries
to score
3.
a book Introduction tries to frame
universals
guttered: it swooped down into early
on the alley, fool
4.
the game has frames, see,
where the pins are reset
5.
It was a joke about blue
collars: on PBS he said
his wife was listening to radio bowling
 image via United Pinball
6.
my various personae turn to
get yr beer here--
take this spare
and put it where!
a ball rolls straight
down an alley
like a good my--
(my) car is busy using
up a universal
drive shaft
not made of letters
7.
that dusty dog
ever snoring into a tire of hot
squealing
drum pads
& what/
ever was the frame?
A ball rolls straight down an alley
to strike ten pins preset in a triangle:
king pin first
8.
memes of neon sodas & clear pink nailpolish
& packaged pretzels or Barbies in forms
that grew
familiar
as machine-round (I think
they are baked) variations on
Xs
9.
ten pins preset in a triangle
who twisted the lid off
the gallon of cherry red
I think I am going
to
be
sick machine-round strike on a page somewhere
variations on alphabet with memory ratchitings
10.
to lick
this salt off
white pebble-by-pebble
who (will) chomp /s out
of cherries until the only thing left
(infinitive: to do) is have that baby
or learn
to tie knots in stems
(they meant
do it with your tongue)
down a shining alley
how the ball will roll straight
It's a game, see.
--cm--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"Xs" poem copyright of chris murray~~~~~~~
chris at
11:59 AM
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Friday, September 03, 2004
Richard, as I read that you were carrying around my chapbook to read, I got this image in my head of lily-pads. Many thanks for reading my poems and for writing in such complimentary ways about them.
chris at
10:04 PM
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I. Turning Dali-Wheels: Relations Between Art and Writing/Between Creative and Critical:
Note: This is a comparative-critical project I am working on to explore the relationships between the critical and the creative in forms, modes, and venues of art/writing.--cm
1.
from Federico Garcia Lorca, Uncollected Poems : *
2.
from Frank O'Hara's "Short Reviews, 1953-55" (Mike and Dale's Press, 1999): **
Lorca:
Ode to Salvador Dali *
[here is an excerpt from the opening of Lorca's "Ode to Salvador Dali," written summer of 1925-March 1926, and published in Revista de Occidente, Madrid, April 1926]
A rose in the high garden you desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.
The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog.
The grays watching over the last balustrades.
The modern painters in their white atliers
clip the square root's sterilized flower.
In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg
chills the windows and scatters the ivy.
Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets.
Crystals hide from the magic of reflections.
The Government has closed the perfume stores.
The machine perpetuates its binary beat.
An absence of forests and screens and brows
roams across the roofs of the old houses.
The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon rises like a great aquaduct.
Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra
behead the sirens on the seas of lead.
Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.
A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.
Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors run away.
(287, 289)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: Thirty years later, after Dali's renown is well established and his approaches have both a traceable history and what is assumed as an evolving signature, as well as a continuous, critical discourse framing and traversing the art, the following is Frank O'Hara commenting in Art News, Jan. 1955 on Dali's showing at Carstairs Gallery. ** --cm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O'Hara:
Salvador Dali [Carstairs], the Marshall Rommel of Surrealism, prefaces his new show with an account of his recent "campaign" in Europe, where he finds the forces of figuration rallying everywhere against abstraction, hungry hordes presumably infuriated by the "Let them eat cake" of Riopelle. Are they turning to Surrealism? Dali himself is less of a Surrealist than before, more the metaphysical dream peddler, the comological dandy, the mathematical speculator whose terms are romantic ruins, wood, and women. His incessant preoccupation with time as an element of space, ticking from the surface into the perspective depths and back like a pendulum, is strangely moving; the famous "limp watches" are shattering into fragments in the same landscape that gave them birth; the artist himself, nude, conducts you into a beautiful candy-dream where your faithful dog is asleep at your feet and the woods and the vastly impressive passivity of megalomania, but it is not exactly a revolutionary's dream. He calls forth the minor or repressed admirations, sexual, tactile, sybaritic, technical--the subject is no longer of paranoiac importance--and makes a monument.
(21)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Federico Garcia Lorca, "Uncollected Poems," translated by Christopher Maurer, William Bryant Logan, Greg Simon, and Steven F. White, in Selected Verse: a Bilingual Edition. Christopher Maurer, ed. New York: FSG, 1995.
** What's With Modern Art? Frank O'Hara, Bill Berkson, ed. Austin, TX: Mike and Dale's Press, 1999.
chris at
1:13 PM
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Thursday, September 02, 2004
"Antonymical Transliteration" :
Check out this ZukFest! Now I'd love to see more of these. Keep On!
chris at
5:59 PM
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Prospects & Dwelling
 the yellow house you are viewing is not real. it has been altered. it is a representation. not of reality. it has been altered. to fit my screen to fit your screen. the picture your are is not a reality. the reality has been altered to fit the yellow house. it is not a metaphor. it is a yellow house. a random yellow house picture. the screen has altered you...
Closing on my (or soon to be my) little yellow house today... wish me luck, Y'all, & come on over for some tea, anytime!
chris at
11:51 AM
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Congratulations to Filipino Poet Angelo V. Suarez, first laureate of Struga--& acclaimed writer of Nymph of MTV!
So, where'd I hear about that?
Here: and this blog has got one of the best titles for anything, anywhere. Just makes me want to send some tough selves off to go learn how to forge steel wearing a Michelin, Goodyear, or even a Maaco bikini. Add to that (okay, I'm bizzaro!), it's also got some of the best bizzario, as well as some of the coolest surveys of the Po world in the moment ... : )
chris at
3:13 AM
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Dept. of GoFigure: Texas State Pronoun Rapport,
the State of English Grammar:
Oo-La-La: Fuh-Wah??--most
difficult to decide
what's right?--
as answer to the test
question (Dear
Q: Google Genie: what is "pronoun"?)??
for?
A:
chris at
2:41 AM
|
Or, B:
RIP Julia Childs: Googlism Topoi: Pronoun(z)=
XO, Y'All,
c
chris at
2:28 AM
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Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Calling on ANON
I received a note today from the curious Badgurrrlnest@yahoo.com, asking me to announce this :
CAll FOR SUBMISSIONS
Donate your poetry to the anonymous
group-blog, BadGurrrlNest
Hell, we pray
that you will let us be
more
anon:
% of benefits to society: **all work, posted anon**
% of benefits to poetry: **editorial committee, also anon**
Send poems and/or jpg image work to:
badgurrrlnest@yahoo.com
We love your anon
Your anon speaks
to the void
in us all
Your anon speaks
to the voice
in us lol
Go on,
lover: give us some
good anon
*************************************************
chris at
11:59 PM
|
from Federico Garcia Lorca's Tres retratos con sombra : *
Verlaine **
La cancion,
que nunca dire,
se ha dormido en mis labios.
La cancion
que nunca dire.
Sobre las madreselvas
habia una luciernaga,
y la luna picaba
con un rayo en el agua.
Entonces yo sone
la cancion,
que nunca dire.
Cancion llena de labios
y de cauces lejanos.
Cancion llena de horas
perdidas en la sombra.
Cancion de estrella viva
sobre un perpetuo dia.
(144)
*
[as translated to English by this volume's translator-team]*** :
Verlaine
The song
I'll never speak,
on the tip of my tongue fell asleep.
The song
I'll never speak.
On the honeysuckle
a firefly blinked
and the moon was pricking
the water with a beam.
It was then that I dreamed
the song
I'll never speak.
Song filled with lips,
flowing from far away.
Song filled with hours
whiled away in the shade.
Song of stars alive
in perpetual daytime skies.
(145)
* Federico Garcia Lorca: Selected Verse, a Bilingual Edition. Christopher Maurer, ed. New York: FSG, 1995.
** Note: Please forgive the lack of accents and Spanish lettering in this blog formatting.--cm
*** Translators of this volume: Francisco Aragon, Catherine Brown, Cola Franzen, Will Kirkland, William Bryant Logan, Christopher Maurer, Jerome Rothenberg, Greg Simon, Alan S. Trublood, John K. Walsh, Steven F. White
chris at
5:09 PM
|
For My Students' Reading this Week:
kari edwards: of poetry, prose and sexual being(s):
Here is a link to a good combination--the bio with a store of links to the writings--all at Drunken Boat # 6.
Then go ahead to read the entire issue of Drunken Boat, as well.
Also at Bill Allegrezza's journal,
Moria,
read it, too--it's great stuff)
the review of iduna by Eileen Tabios
(the Gabriela-Silang-Chatelaine-Poet).
chris at
10:48 AM
|
(Near) Visit with Ravi Shankar
I had a nice email from Ravi Shankar, of Drunken Boat, the other day--he suddenly found he had to travel to Austin for the day to attend some meetings, and wanted to see if we could say hi and catch up on poetry stuff. I was delighted to hear from him and of his visit, but I couldn't meet, since Austin's 3 hours or so from here, & I had to teach that day, as well as to spend some hours preparing to open the Writing Center. But I was happy to hear from Ravi, and would have liked to meet up and say hey. I really appreciated his warm note--if you have not met him, Ravi is one of the most gracious poetry folks you could be acquainted with--& his reading at Carrboro was superb! I enjoyed it so much.
And by the way, speaking of visitors, let me extend this invitation: please, folks, if you are going to be in Texas, do let me know, especially if it is in the DFW area, and we can arrange a reading or just say hello over tea & such (or a glass or two of other favorite beverages...).
So, since I could not meet with Ravi this time, then share it with y'all, I want here to share one of Ravi's compelling poems. This one is full of the material and actions of physics as well as music (many of Ravi's poems are of that sensibility: erudite & especially musical). In fact, this poem very artfully weaves the two things, the sensibilities of physics and music, nicely into synch. This one is from his book just out this year: Instrumentality (Cinncinati: Cherry Grove, 2004).
from Ravi Shankar:
Marine Pastel
Chromatic waves of sound wash vibrations into inlets,
Shape the place bacteria emerges from with unasked
Pressure merging atoms into and out of ionic bonds
So that microscopic life can develop from tidewater,
Disputing entropy by growing more complex in time:
Voices from an ocean teeming speak shells into spirals
That spell chaos, brackish and baroque, unpredictable.
Formed by weather, more habitual in retrospect
When limned in crystal or decomposing underground, nature
Is in medias ras forever, temporarily inhabiting a succession
Of forms: watery squiggles, phosphoric roots, magma-
Parched craters that distill briefly into veins of thought.
(67)
~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Ravi Shankar~~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
2:28 AM
|
Listening: absolutely fine mandolin and 5-string banjo pickin' accompanying Alison Krauss on *Forget About It*.
Here's a poem:
Tongue Twisters
silly snowy owl
no bygone wing's
worth a fowl
fling
the dizzy
of it more it
than
baby
baby baby
bay of by
what of
gimme
feathers putting love
by extra ffxx doo dah--
to say about it sometimes
else feather other bother
o granny corset!
accumulates in the now
very so
what?
verbiage decks the spectacles
with more than behind
walk-up
yellow light glow
the porch
against moth flit
(asking for no spore
change.
stuffing the kiss with moreover
in the however.)
someone said something
a bot heard
as partial.
oh the oakbark stipple
under reddening
I
your beloved
palm
of blood & five signal digits
what gets
tossed around
the seas of
mutual
walk this plank
of reprehensible
O surely
Hark! There is Aristotle:
there is another butt
pat of no dispute with now--
a). thought:
the who what-
for.
braided knot of else.
pass the salt, please.
plus: maybe
music me
some we.
--cm--
chris at
1:18 AM
|
Monday, August 30, 2004
on BAP 2004, & Dove's *All Souls*
I just wrote a lengthy comment over at Tony Tost's blog, Unquiet Grave, in response to his excellent discussion about BAP 2004. Tony's discussion responds to Jonathan Mayhew's categorizing of poets whose work is included in BAP 04 (poets, not the poems, I feel I should note that distinction). Rita Dove is there listed with Billy Collins in a category called "Mediocrities of the Moment."
Because of all that, I decided to go ahead and post Rita Dove's poem, "All Souls" **, because I really do like much of her work (especially *Mother Love* and the early stuff from *Thomas and Buelah*, including this more recent BAP 2004 poem. The category of "Mediocrities of the Moment" is a curious one that I don't think a lot of Dove's work belongs in (though I would agree that the work is uneven, some quite flat and perhaps born of some kind of poetic "mediocrity"). Dove's not trying in poetry to be particularly experimental, it should also be noted, though the poems can be witty, musical, and fractious in energetic ways that I like. On the other hand, I tend to agree completely that much of Billy Collins' work would fit such a category as "Mediocrities of the Moment."
I see Dove's poem below as a basic, human philosophizing and dialectical response in poetry to a life-catastrophe, a sort of -- 'okay I guess this experiential lyric questioning is what I *can* do after this catastrophe' -- & I never thought there might not be room in poetics for that kind of response in poetry--especially as pertains to ways given to the writing of everyday life. Collins's poems, by constrast, seem to me mostly smirky besmirches of everyday life & whinnying insincerity. It was only last summer (2003) that my literature students seriously wanted to *impeach* Collins from his post as Poet Laureate (see archives for texfiles from June-Sept, 03, and the same time's archives from Tim Yu's blog, Tympan, where the case was made and discussed at length).
Regarding BAP 2004, guest editor Lyn Hejinian discusses in her introduction, how, in part, she made her selections: she was, in a way, haunted by the "destructiveness" of the year 2003, what I take to mean the general cultural malaise of violence, war after war, the leaning upon of warring and divisiveness, at least as I interpret what I read in Hejinian's intro. I see Dove's poem, therefore, as certainly having great affinity in terms of what Hejinian, as (reader) editor, was responding to in selecting poems.
from Rita Dove, "All Souls" (BAP, 2004) *
Starting up behind them,
all the voices of those they had named:
mink, gander, and marmoset,
crow and cockatiel.
Even the duck-billed platypus,
of late so quiet in his bed,
sent out a feeble cry signifying
grief and confusion, et cetera.
Of course the world had changed
for good. As it would from now on
every day, with every twitch and blink.
Now that change was de rigueur,
man would discover desire, then yearn
for what he would learn to call
distraction. This was the true loss.
And yet in that first
unchanging instant,
the two souls
standing outside the gates
(no more than a break in the hedge;
how had they missed it?) were not
thinking. Already the din was fading.
Before them, a silence
larger than all their ignorance
yawned, and this they walked into
until it was all they knew. In time
they hunkered down to business,
filling the world with sighs--
these anonymous, pompous creatures,
heads tilted as if straining
to make out the words to a song
played long ago, in a foreign land.
(73-74)
from Dove's BAP commentary on the poem:
"Our house burned down after a lightning strike in 1998. During the subsequent rebuilding and refurnishing, I didn't have much inclination to write at all; it took about six months before the poems began to reappear--shy erratic blossoms poking their heads up through the ashes--and always without warning or, as far as I could tell, logic. The beginnings of *All Souls* arose at this time, the first scribbled entry in a brand-new notebook. I liked what was there--the cadences and authorial distance--but I didn't yet understand its urgency, its raison d'etre, so I put the draft away in a drawer. Then came 9/11, and somehow its haunting images of catastrophe sent me back to those abandoned lines. Endings, beginnings; to linger in regret or to move on: I found myself turning back to the front of that notebook, reconsidering what had been jotted down years before, in haste and incomprehension... and I finished the poem." (253)
* The Best American Poetry, 2004. Lyn Hejinian, guest editor. David Lehman, series editor. New York: Scribner, 2004.
** Dove's *All Souls* was first published in The New Yorker.
chris at
11:58 PM
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About The_Delay !
A very warm welcome to the provocative thinking-through-writing that is going on here regarding poetry and cultural being-in-language:The_Delay: Chris Vitiello's new blog. I really enjoyed meeting, talking with, and listening to the poetry reading of Chris at Carrboro Poetry Festival--do check out the audio file of his reading.
By way of welcome to bloggy-world, especially given Chris's interesting blogpost on Francis Ponge, here is an excerpt from Ponge's, "Vegetation" * :
The rain does not form the only hyphens between the earth and the heavens: another kind exists, less intermittent and much better woven, and whose fabric is not carried away by the wind however hard it shakes it. If sometimes it succeeds in a certain season in dislodging a few bits which it strives then to pound to dust in its eddying, we perceive in the final reckoning that it has dispelled nothing at all.
Looking more closely, we find ourselves now at one of the thousand doors of a huge laboratory, bristling with hydraulic apparatus of many forms, all much more intricate than the simple columns of the rain and endowed with an original perfection: all simultaneous retorts, filters, siphons, and stills...
--translated by William Rees--
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