chris murray's *Texfiles*

"A note to Pound in heaven: Only one mistake, Ezra! You should have talked to women" --George Oppen, _Twenty Six Fragments_





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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
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(Charles) Olson Now: Michael Kellaher & Ammiel Alcalay
kari edwards' TranssubMUTATION
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a New Word Placements
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|||AS/IS2|||
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ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
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UTA's Lit Mag: ZNine
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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, February 05, 2005

 

Check out the interview of Kasey Silem Mohammad over at Lance Phillips' Here Comes Everybody blog.


chris at 6:37 PM |

 

Hal Johnson's poem, Aftershock

Delighted to post the fine poem below, which I find provocative for the many layers that pinpoint and cross-section the dynamics of western culture, socio-political places and events, and the problem of the rhetorical (meaning both rhetoric as the dialectical means of everyday communication involving audience, and rhetoric as an historical discipline of study).

It's from Halvard Johnson (thanks, Hal!), who, in addition to his wonderfully expansive website, also blogs at
Entropy and Me
:


Aftershock

          --by Halvard Johnson--


Of the huge dead. Of upscale retail centers in our city.
      Of closing loopholes
in the corporate tax code. Of course, we'd welcome these
      or any images

based on legislation passed in several states, or news
      that the Weather
Underground's gift shop will remain open until 9 o'clock
      on warm summer

evenings. Far from charging sales taxes on the chemicals
      purchased by major
terrorists and agribusinesses, the government is thought
      to be preparing

a press release stating that it has no comment on that
      subject. Keeps our
economy and people moving, keeps one eye on the door,
      one foot on

the accelerator at all times-until offered a discount
      of 15% off the regular
admissions price for R-rated features. I particularly
      admired this old

hardware store with its nineteenth-century fixtures.
      He gently wipes it
with a tattered sleeve, saying, "I will be true to
      the wife."

Because too many students threw pennies in the pool,
      its water
was no longer blue, and the conferees had to spend
      the night sleeping

on the hard-wood floor of the basketball court, tossing
      fitfully, dreaming
of road and site improvements that would cost 50 million
      to 75 million

dollars (not counting kickbacks). My dear, it is too late
      for peace, too
late for philanthropic phalaropes to adjust their lobate
      toes to current

market conditions. Down the wilde road the travelers
      proceeded, happy
to be on the move again after their enforced leisure
      caused by

drifting snow and a deliberate underfunding of public
      transportation.




~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Hal Johnson~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~




chris at 5:25 PM |

 

"Writing to woo is important work..."--Gabe Gudding

Gabe Gudding, address to students (from a student newspaper article asking his views) : On Writing Love Poetry (for Valentines Day)

via
Shanna Compton (& do check out Shanna's new book [it's positively morphing!] cover for the award winning Down Spooky!)


chris at 2:08 PM |

 

hangups aired !--

text:image & be sure to scroll for literal figures/figural letters...

: )


such very fine & fun work, Suzanne!--thanks for the, um... word-up!



chris at 1:52 PM |

 

Also known widely as the Fire Bird, the phoenix is a profound symbol of life and rebirth. It has a life cycle of 500 to 600 years and after that amount of time, it sets itself on fire and dies in the flames. Then, after three days, it rises again from the ashes. It is a completely benign creature who lives in dew. It is said that the phoenix has a beautiful melodious song which grows ever more mournful as its life comes to an end. It is also a symbol of the sun and immortality.

What mythical beast best represents you?

Take the quiz!



Note: quiz found via Rama Subramanian's philosophical-variety-blog, Towards Light, out of Chennai, India. Thanks, Rama!


chris at 1:47 PM |

 

from Texfiles Poet of the Week, kari edwards :


photo by kari edwards, India Journey, dec 04


*


there is no difference between the innumerable and the inconceivable facing the form eternal


there is no difference facing the street, facing the wind, facing the oncoming wave of rhythmic messages from the heart at the beginning end of time the time, time bore into the backs of all


there is no difference between the climbing sky, the earth, and the terrified grasping for a look at the real


there is no difference between facing a falling rock zone and the roots of a growing elsewhere storm rigged in a restless nevermind mind


oh missing youth, and those whose last breath waits for another sunrise, there is no difference between the seventeen story hotel and the slum, talons and masks, tears are tears, and the dead dead


whether between the joints that ache, working against the force that holds one up right or the fire that that burns without burning, waiting to be released, there is no difference


*






*


in some ways
I am afraid
I’ve been someone
in a headache of dust
not adept at advocating for souls
transpiring away in crevices
between smithereens and darkness
instead I grasp
pronoun logic
the texture of cement
picking at the present tension
one that has been mostly
a b-side on repeat
with a skip
at best
a disassociation of matter
sinking profoundly in progress
preparing to enter as nothing more
than a presence
dark above
the clutching hand
of unconsciousness


*





*


~~~~~poetry and photos copyright of kari edwards~~~~~~~ o~o/


chris at 11:44 AM |

Friday, February 04, 2005

 

After some serious dialoguing with Ken Rumble over the subject matter of the art film in the post below, i am considering changing the title of that post to Isn't Art Just Plain Cilia? : )


chris at 2:38 PM |

Thursday, February 03, 2005

 

Art and "Thinghood"

--"cilia" film--


from Theodor Adorno, "Enlightenment and Shudder" *


... Works of art are set in motion by patient contemplation. This goes to show that they are truly after-images of prehistorical shudders in an age of reification, bringing back the terror of the primal world against a background of reified objects. The more pronounced the hiatus between the discrete, contoured individual objects on the one hand and the paling essence on the other, the more empty is the gaze of works of art -- the only reminiscence of the fact that there has to be something besides this hiatus.
...

Art as mnemosyne is this kind of retaining operation. The instant of appearance in works of art is the paradoxical union or balance between a vanishing and a preserving tendency, for art works are static and dynamic at the same time. Artistic genres [all "seek"] to translate the memory of shudder, incommensurable as it was in pre-historic times. Artifacts liberate shudder from its mythical self-deception... .
...

There is a close resemblance between the notion of appearance as used here and the concept of preternatural appearance or apparition. Works of art collude with apparition, especially in the way an apparition rises above people beyond the reach of their intention, beyond reach of the world of things. Those works of art from which apparition has been radically removed are nothing but empty shells... . ... Works of art surpass the world of things by acquiring a thinghood of their own, i.e. their artificial objectification. They begin to speak when thing and appearance are kindled. They are things which are destined to appear. Their immanent process externalizes itself as their own doing, not as the product of human meddling and purposive action.



* Theodor Adorno, "Enlightenment and Shudder," Aesthetic Theory transl C. Lenhardt. London: Routledge, 1984 (118-119).




o~o/






chris at 7:26 PM |

 

Citation: composite toward dialogic:


"This is why we feel
it is enough to listen
to the wind jostling lemons,
to dogs ticking across the terraces,
knowing that while birds and warmer weather
are forever moving north,
the cries of those who vanish
might take years to get here."

*

"Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left."

*

"There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing."

--Carolyn Forche, The Country Between Us--


chris at 11:23 AM |

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

 

excerpt from Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body * :

Louise and I were held by a single loop of love.
...

I was sitting in the library writing this to Louise, looking at at a facsimile of an illuminated manuscript, the first letter a huge L. The L woven into shapes of birds and angels that slid between pen lines. The letter was a maze.
...

Articulacy of fingers, the language of the deaf and dumb, signing on the body body longing... . Your morse code interferes with my heartbeat.
...

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.
...

Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.
...

Louise was lost in thought. ... 'This isn't working,' she said.

She asked me to wait three days and promised to send me a message after that time. I nodded, dog-dumb, and went back to my corner. ... I sat in the library on the first day trying to work on my translations but jotting on the blotter the line of my true enquiry. I was sick to the gut with fear. The heavy fear of not seeing her again. I wouldn't break my word. I wouldn't go to the phone. I scanned the row of industrious heads. Dark, blonde, grey, bald, wig.
...

The second day of my ordeal I took a pair of handcuffs to the library with me and locked myself to my seat. I gave the key to the gentleman in the knitted waistcoat and asked him to let me free at five o'clock. I told him I had a deadline, that if I didn't finish my translation a Soviet writer might fail to find asylum in Great Britain. He took the key and said nothing but I noticed he'd disappeared from his place after about an hour.

I worked on, the concentrated silence of the library giving me some release from thoughts of Louise. Why is the mind incapable of deciding its own subject matter? Why when we desperately want to think of one thing do we invariably think of another? The overriding archof Louise had distracted me from all other constructs. I like mental games.
...

Whenever the word Louise came into my mind I replaced it with a brick wall. After a few hours of this my mind was nothing but brick walls. Worse, my left hand was swelling up, I don't think it was getting enough blood being strapped to the chair leg. There was no sign of the gentleman. I signalled to a guard and whispered my problem. He returned with a fellow guard and together they picked up my chair and carried me sedan style down the British Library Reading Room . It is a tribute to the scholarly temperament that nobody looked up.

In the supervisor's office I tried to explain.
'You a Communist?' he said.
'No, I'm a floating voter.'
He had me cut loose and charged me for Wilful Damage To Reading Room Chair. ... Could I fall any lower?


(88-89, 91, 94-95)



* Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body. Vintage/Random House, 1992.


~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Jeanette Winterson~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


chris at 11:15 PM |

 

Writing into the Worl... & more image in/of/on/to text "This book has been written for [people]... who care about poetry and read it first of all for personal reasons. Such readers, I would like to think, know well enough the violent spirit of our century, and exactly for this reason expect at least one kind of language to hold its own against the grim disquiet. Poetry helps us seize our being-in-the-world, the better to enjoy, the better to endure. About the violence of our century [and now this one too], ... [the] lethal strife and endless misery, there seems little doubt that politics has played a central, and too often a ruinous, part. The poetic impulse—-hope’s proof and finest messenger—-arises to fulfill itself in praises and blessings... " --Terrence Des Pres, Praises and Dispraises xiii.


chris at 10:10 PM |

 

from kari edwards, Texfiles Poet of the Week :



photo by kari edwards, India Journey, dec 04

Just as in the knowledge of one lump of clay we have the knowledge of all the clay in the universe. --Upanishads

The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal of whom truth seen is a face or a form. --Sri Aurobindo

The will to live is the ground of our existence. Its negation is our salvation. --S. Radhakrishman


*


Bharat jiva


photo by kari edwards, India Journey, dec 04


I am but a child in your arms waiting in anticipation for first light to fill me with splendor

every morning, no matter where I am, I am no longer nowhere, I am you, you greet me.

every morning you start new egrets flying by lotus stretched to heaven

every morning as always, rice paddies, sugarcane, water for the day

every morning bathing in the ganges, or badanpudi, at the crossing

there’s work to be done, there is always work to be done, there will always be every morning, the dogs wake the children, there’s work to be done there always will be.

you have never stopped, ceased, every morning you wake me, remind me of everything beyond language

every morning crushed by time, invading hordes, and your own mass and yet you wake me again and again.


*

[Part 1]

on a certain occasion



the secret to immortality
the secret to be found
the secret to the end of the earth
the end of the earth
without a secret

the self without a self
fluid
indivisible
divided by three
hoping for a favorite setting
getting second class
hoping for anything
settling for
tax free
duty requirements
and god accumulations

the secret to
becoming second class
being careful
being a careful cow
that enforces carefulness
and discards the banner
lame and blind


let’s try again

the secret to immortality
the secret secret
the liquid situation
the simulated secret
absent moral gravity


let’s try again

the secret
to be second class
invisible
hoping for a prayer
forgetting what it was like

like the flames of a fire
like the end of time
like a house
as a guest on the land
not there
turning on something
and declaring

this is the fear of fear
and this is a medication for it
and this is the medication for the medication
and this is the fire
that can burn it all away

this is the uncharted ocean
expressed in its material condition

this is motionless intensity
stretched everywhere

. . .



photo by kari edwards, India Journey, dec 04 

~~~~~~images & poetry copyright of kari edwards~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~



chris at 11:28 AM |

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

 


photo by kari edwards, India Journey, dec 04 Posted by Hello

I like this one a lot--not sure exactly what caused the appeal in it, but it is memorable, provocative. --cm


chris at 11:36 PM |

 

Query in Hope of Your Esteemed Response(s):
What's your creepiest image/object belonging?

My students are really getting into the creepiness of Poe, and his (odd--i had "slightly sick' there and reread it and thought, well, maybe it's more odd than sick, dunno...) sense of humor (um... "irony"). So, I'm not surprised this query occured to me tonight. Per a comments box exchange between me and Laura Carter the other day, which began with her posting about a Dali-esque dream, a post I then responded and linked to, as in :


Laura: "... I also have a Dali over my couch: with the lovely ant-swarming Bunuel-ish hand.... ick."

Chris: "ooooooo.too.creeeepy!--trying here to think of the creepiest thing i have right now (um... art-wise). well, i do have this blue, life-sized, 3-D candlewax impression of *dottir* Holly's best friend, Andrea ('s) right hand. it sits on my bookshelf like a terrified glove. positively poe or somesuch. what else ya got? maybe we should all just post a few of our creepiest image belongings? yeah, i think i'll put out a call to see wazzup. ..."


So hey, Y'all fine readers of tex: what's the creepiest of your image/object belongings?

If you're game, then tell us in the comments box to this post. Thanks--I'm looking forward to hearing some very Poe-ish stuff, Y'all (special thanks to Laura for the idea, too!), and it could turn into a kind of found poem, eh?

: )


chris at 7:47 PM |

 

Spirit House!

I really like things like this:

copyright of Marilyn Taylor (see link below)

Now, this is no ordinary image. If you go to the link below, you can open the slots and drawers, to find many fascinating and provocative things at the real, or hot, virtual-image of the Spirit House (the image I have above is a cold copy). Check it out: "Spirit House," by Marilyn Taylor.

Nice, eh?
I think all poets should have some kind of Spirit House.

& not a very complicated concept, yet still it is full of the fun of exercising basic curiosity, and imagining, but with everyday materials. Making connections. Although on surface not complicated, it gently opens up all kinds of intriguing complications, not least of which has to do with the history of the name, Spirit House, which the website exposition will tell you, goes back to India...

I happened on this Spirit House-idea-comes-from-India quite by (happy) accident today while looking for something totally unrelated. But in that, since we also have so many of kari edwards' exquisite photos of India these past few days, well... I have to say that it is definitely India week here at Tex, eh? Happy accidents of good discoveries and good wishes, these are always welcome, eh?

Thanks to Marilyn Taylor for the provocative idea and website.


chris at 6:29 PM |

 

now, this is a marvel--so glad you posted it, Suzanne!


chris at 1:12 AM |

Monday, January 31, 2005

 

on Letters Q & R & Carolyn Forche's Blue Hour


I've thought it would be interesting to post an excerpt from Carolyn Forche's Blue Hour, * the abecedarium poem that I mentioned here the other day and which I should clarify by saying it is not strictly (or separately on its own) an abecedarium nor meant to be an indexing project as are some of the others I spoke of. It's distinctive on its own (as are the the others I discussed), in that Forche's is the longer part of a poem called "On Earth," which arrives between a poem called "Prayer," and the book's final poem, "Afterdeath." The poem begins with a page full of several fragments in quote marks--which I expect are differing voices speaking, dovetailing, blending, separating--and then there is a modest single inked line centered to indicate a break, and the 44 pages of the abecedarium part of the poem (44 being a nicely balanced number, if one is into numerology, as many ancients were, tho it is not anything i know much more about than that generalization and that numbers in certain sets and circumstances are as pleasing as letters).

For a change of pace here in the Texfiles Poet of the Week feature, I am also going to post some of featured poet kari edwards' photos from India with the Forche excerpt, just to see what that pastiche turns out to be like, in the doing as well as the viewing, as it were.

As for why this particular excerpt from Forche's book, I guess I should say I sort of have a thing for letters Q & R--no real funky or specific reason, except maybe because they are past midway in a linear arrangement, and quirkier than the the other letters that make up words like quirky... hehe... or even one other sound-favorite of mine (and many others, too) qwerty, and have some interesting ways of being round or open sight-wise, yet are different sound-wise. But really it's only because I just like them--so, here are Q & R from Forche's "On Earth," Blue Hour :



...
quiescent, quiet, quinine, quivering

rain falling into their open eyes
rain in the catacombs
raising each a ring of soot

redemption not an accounting or a debt
refugee, relic, reverie

relief sacks loaded into trucks
relief tents until the horizon
remaining in fear of death but remaining
responsible beyond our intentions

resting language or language under surveillance
reverses itself as we read it

riddles the statues of martyrs and turns
rinses limbs then craters the field

rinses limbs then
rises as wet smoke
rising in bodily light
roads rivered with waste and a tea-colored rain...



~~~~~photos copyright of kari edwards~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


* Carolyn Forche, "On Earth," Blue Hour. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.


~~~~~~~~~~poetry copyright of Carolyn Forche~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



o~o/





chris at 8:29 PM |

 

from kari edwards, Texfiles Poet of the Week :

--poetry & photos by kari, India Journey, dec 04--



from section 2 of the manuscript Bharat jiva :


*

whose mind
thinks thinking body
tongue speaking
whose tongue
whose eyes
whose ear of ear
thinks body
life's tongue
speaking speech
eye of eye
of that that
cannot be
of whose mind
thinks
can only be seen
spoken of
by the tongues
breathless breath
unheard from dawn
in the fire wind
lightening
truth beyond motion
in the mind


*


two trembling minds
face each other
through a mass of hallucination
held together by speech thoughts
held together
by a series of obligations
beyond the 16 part
universe
beyond the nothing left undone
the thief
is no longer the thief
murder
no longer murder
in a blank hour
past a mood
that stood by
speaking sense
as two
organs
trembling
in their own hands


*


beyond this and that and everything
beyond

acts and relationships
an ever changeless
web of spiders
beyond a blank
attempting to speak
to a victim’s
own mythological motif

a place where fat is melted
beyond
this and that and everything
burns a formula
born imperishable
blazing two mind
on a bed of flowers
a crown of thorns
trembling indecipherable
beyond the all pervading torment



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of kari edwards~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~


chris at 2:25 AM |

 

Happy to have updated my links to the typepad space at Laura's (er, finally udated it, that is...). She's posted the entirety of Marianne Moore's "The Mind is an Enchanting Thing", a fave here, as is "The Steeple Jack"--a good poem for Arlington, TX, and lots of other places, I guess. & oh, gee, please take it easy with the Dali--he once painted his sister in a huge hat shaped like a high heel and a window in her back--though (per Steeple Jack) even a seemingly tame Durer might cause dream-semiosis--thinking of all that obsessively gross attention to detail in Durer's work--my god!--he must have been wonderfully interesting.

& hey, many thanks for the nice mention over there, Laura!


chris at 1:26 AM |

Sunday, January 30, 2005

 

from Terrence Des Pres: "My subject is survival, the capacity of men and women to live beneath the pressure of protracted crisis, to sustain terrible damage in mind and body and yet be there, sane, alive, still human."--Survivor


chris at 10:31 PM |

 

aw shucks & oops: now i see what i couldn't exactly recall the other day when posting on brTom Murphy's fyp first line index. 03 chapbook. another abecedarium poem i'd seen and heard/read talk of wz here at Ken Rumble's Desert City, one of Standard Shafer's poems read for Ken's series a few weeks ago!--gosh i wish i'd been able to hear it--lovely to see it here, tho--thanks for this post, Ken!--and, gosh! extra thanks for including me on your wish list!--i'm honored--what a nice surprise : ) oh, and hey, if ya make it around Halloween i'll come dressed as a blog template...


chris at 7:14 PM |

 



Oh, yeah--If it ever seems I might be losing
my sense of humor,
just do this:
call the Texas Teamstress Union of
MULTI-TASK-ACK!!!
YAKs
, okay?--they know what to say to me!

(like, mooooo!, or Ack!! or something strong like that)


chris at 5:38 PM |

 

--mass--deadly--pastels--sonnets--propulse--ions--lipstick--bullets--more-- ammo--less--fetish--&


enter "propulsive" event(ually) get mauser munitions...



"The notion of the sonnet was ‘propulsive’ in that I wanted to make visible the arbitrary, generative violence of any imposed formal constraint...

... The planet is sick. Our mass culture has made a deadly fetish of its stupidity. I don’t know what the use is of art, or if it’s the uselessness of art that is a bearer of hope, or what. I certainly cannot see the efficacy, aesthetic or political, of prescribing or proscribing certain poetic modes in advance of the poems themselves. Regardless, an exclusively literary response to the multifaceted madness of being in this world will never be sufficient in and of itself."--Ben Lerner,
interview with Kent Johnson, Jacket 26
(Jacket's one of my favorite reads, Y'all...)


Do check out this interview by Kent Johnson, of Ben Lerner,
Jacket 26 - October 2004 -
"No: Ben Lerner in conversation with Kent Johnson."


Ben Lerner is founder and editor, with Deb Klowdon, of
No: a journal of the arts.


Wow!--what a provocative read:
Thanks, Kent, for sending me the hullo on this one : )



chris at 1:06 PM |

 

Finally had a few minutes to catch up on reading blogs and found so many fine things I didn't yet know about.

I've been sick this weekend but feeling better now (many thanks for sending your good wishes on getting well, Steve Vincent--it means a lot to me--& gosh I must say, your blog is looking very, very, fine indeed!).

Though feeling better, I'm still overextended work-wise, and then sad, too: I've lost my wonderful assistant here at the UTA Writing Center, Cyndi Dumas, also a wonderful student/writer, who some of you know because she was the fine person who helped me coordinate the Poetry_Heat readings here last summer and fall. My deepest sympathy and condolences go to Cyndi and her family--her mother passed away suddenly on Dec. 26--and so Cyndi has had to quit her studies for now and move from Texas to Tucson to be with her family. Cyndi--my best thoughts are with you--be well!--please stay in touch!

So, then, on cruising around bloggyland, in addition to the wonderful surprises at Jacket 26 (see above: Kent Johnson interviewing Ben Lerner) and Steve Vincent's blog (he's experimenting in excellent ways with images and text), here are two more fine things I happened on:

Adding Jay Thomas' Bad with Titles blog to the links list--welcome, Jay, and thanks for reading Tex! I'm especially captivated by Jay's work with such... keep on!

And last but not least--this at Tom Beckett's new blog,
e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s: a new, fascinating, in depth interview by Tom Beckett with Thomas Fink
Lotta hard thinkin' goin' on outsida Tex, y'all... : )

keep on!


 

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