Sunday, June 26, 2005

"Tumbal," by Ida Bagus Made, Balinese artist-priest,

the Agung Rai Museum of Art,
located in Paliatan, Ubud, Bali. Via Nusantara .com


To be uncompromisingly clear-eyed about it, which in my opinion the situation requires (and has required for decades now), causes me to point out here that
this NYRB article(Tony Judt, The New York Review of Books: "The New World Order," Vol. 53, no. 12, July 14, 2005), unlike the ones I mention below (yesterday on Billie Holiday, and last week by Joan Didion) is not POV as in merely Point of View, but POV as utter Point of Vomit: it completely overlooks the regions of rhetoric where analysis and circumstance make clear that the other highly transparent motives served by the current type of "humanitarian" perspective (those considered in the article) are cultural imperialism and self-serving, profit-mongering, resource-stealing economics.

In that, cultural imperialism and self-serving economics are not separate motives but are intimately related: capitalism as a system will always need to be the kissing cousin of political domination--captitalism is not about sharing wealth and resources, it is about hording for the few, competing to knock out all comers, dominating or eliminating those who are perceived to be weak, survival at all cost--that is why essentially it is a system that does not care about the environment, people, and artful culture unless those elements are compartmentalized into commodities.

Beyond the obvious problem of hording, though, why should it be necessary right now for capitalist interests based in the U.S to be kissing cousins with territorial and cultural imperialism?--because it is running out of places, resources, and peoples to exploit so to satisfy its beastliness, its continuing need for the profit that sustains our comfortable lives. Get it?--that is why the world picture and situation are worsening and difficult for us, here in our comforts, to understand.


"Beastly," by Tan Oe Pang, Singapore Museum of Art, 1988
via Nusantara. com

"Humanitarianism," as this writer frames the use of this term, is not in trouble because of an elementary contradiction in its principles, to "do good," and to "prevent ill" in the world, which are wonderful ideals. No. Humanitarianism is in trouble because those ideals are not enough: they've been cut-off from the materialist sourcing that is the basis for life and world. "Humanitarianism," in that definition, misrecognizes its complicity with destructive and self-serving corporate interests. Humanitarianism has cut itself off from ways of understanding and dealing with socio-economics as systems, and history as structure, a combination that governs lives and how resources are used/managed materially: in real-life places, over time. Simple as that.

If so cut-off from recognizing and integrating a response in terms of the macro governing structures of life, I'm now wondering if the "humanitarian" ideals, "to do good and prevent ill" in the world can even work on the micro levels of one-on-one relations between people. It's a serious and an on-going question--one where getting at answers (which are never permanent) means continually re-inventing ways and means according to unique situations and perspectives. That is primarily a rhetorical framework, and is essential, then, to survival of many. Apart from the other kinds of rhetorical situations that are escalations beyond that level of the rhetorical into material violences such as war, then, this is what is meant by life being a constant struggle--rhetorical awareness and responsibility for understanding, recognizing, not blindering oneself with ideals ungrounded in materiality.



--cm
o~o/

chris at 9:44 PM |

 

I'm really getting annoyed with this weirdness
in the template/posting thing. ack!

chris at 9:41 AM |

 

I love this:
'He sings with his horn, and you can almost hear his words..."
Oh, my, Ladyday,
eh?! Yeah. That kind-- that way.

chris at 9:37 AM |

 

Welcome to chris murray's texfiles, the inside-out blog... ACK!!!!

Y'all: I still have no idea why everything is wandering over to the right margin just below every next topmost post. eep.

chris at 8:39 AM |

 

Billie Holiday

In the latest NYRB, an especially valuable read by Arthur Kempton on
Julia Blackburn's With Billie (Knopf, 2005), the most recent biography of Billie Holiday, a dialogic biography--as told moreso via numerous interviews of the folks who knew her, rather than being narrated by a pseudo-authoritative sounding perspective, which is more or less the conventional mode for the genre of biography. But regardless of mode, Kempton has no little eloquence. He writes:

Cardinal Spellman denied a request to hold her funeral mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. No matter how high she rose, from the viewpoint of official America, Billie Holiday would always be regarded as a lawbreaker and never a citizen. She left behind most of what there is to know of her authentic self in the grooves impressed into the shellac and vinyl on which her voice was preserved. Her recordings disclose the innate refinement of the street urchin who became an artist famously expressive of tender feeling, and a woman whose "first and last word was always 'bitch.'

So: Definitely a few yeahs in that one, ya kno?



Lester Young, sax master-musician, via dcjazz .com : "Lester sings with his horn. You listen to him and you can almost hear the words... " --Billie Holiday, With Billie, Bill Dufty [qtd in Arthur Kempton, "Street Diva" NYRB, V.53 no.12, July 14, 2005.

chris at 2:19 AM |

 

Mimi's Red Chair --Sedona, Arizona, 24 June 05, photo credit: Mimi Boswell:
Mimi's favorite chair on her new porch and garden... I was standing right there only three weeks ago...

But hey: Hi Mi!--so nice to have this favorite chair and scene of your patio gracing my little bloggie!--thanks, luv ya, chris

chris at 1:02 AM |

Saturday, June 25, 2005

 

Hamilton Stone Review, Issue 6, Summer 2005, Now Online!

Featuring fiction by Pat MacEnulty, Ramsey Wilkens, and Masha
Zager and poetry by Gene Frumkin, Amy King, Kenneth Pobo,
Joseph Somoza, David Hopes, Stephen Vincent, Bob Marcacci,
Harriet Zinnes, Kerry O'Keefe, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino,
Eileen Tabios, Frederick Pollack, and David Howard.



Submissions to the Hamilton Stone Review

At this time, the Hamilton Stone Review is not open to unsolicited
fiction submissions, but will be taking unsolicited poetry submissions
until Sept. 15, 2005, for Issue #7, which will be out in October 2005.
Poetry submissions should go directly to Halvard Johnson at
halvard@earthlink.net.

PLEASE SEND THIS ALONG TO OTHERS

chris at 11:27 PM |

 

Make Poverty History

chris at 8:25 AM |

 

i'm fooling around here
trying to see if i can get
the damn thing to post
the way it is supposed to.

please bear with me.
as soon as I have this
figured out or decide to let it be,
then i plan to create a
(Happily) Received (books) post,
as well as an update on
the Wildly Desiring Gazpacho
post below. Keep on, Y'all.

chris at 2:29 AM |

 

okay

i

have

no

idea

what is wrong with the blog posting screen...
i've been messing around with it and can't find anything
wrong in the template nor in any of the recent posts.

so i guess i'll just

ignore it for now

forgive the strangely relineated poems, please...
i have no idea why everything has shifted to the right margin

chris at 1:18 AM |

 

from Stefan Hyner's 10 000 Journeys: Selected Poems 1977-2003
(Skanky Possum Press, 2005) :

HOMO SS. IS THE MOST COMPLICATED 
SYSTEM OF FERTILIZATION EVER


The connection         (I) make
with Earth

                  that which (I) is, is
                      of this planet: composed
& will always remain HERE & decomposing

from the PARTICULAR to the GENERAL
              Fertilizer. Dung.

Willow branches broken block the path thru her grove.
The Earl meets Lady
Butterfly among a stand
of golden poplars

the bones they find still warmed by the earth
huge tree fungus             on dead trunk

keep going
              along deer trails
thru thicket                 thick autumn sun

15/X/2000 (Rohrhof)

(80)

* 


A NOTE ON A CERTAIN HISTORY


          Sami people are the direct descendants
of Mesolithic Central European humans,
who define their nation by following an
animal around.
              Basques are the elders of mankind &
slowly the understanding develops that
Neanderthals were closely enough related
to Homo SS to intermarry.
                  Intermarriage, as we know from
modern American History was very
common & if the state didn't have a
strong interest in maintaining its hierar
chy & therefore did outlaw it, America
might not have been the failure it is.

18/VII/2002 (Rohrhof)

(98)

~~~~~~poems copyright of Stefan Hyner~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~

chris at 12:09 AM |

Friday, June 24, 2005

 

Gmail...

I also added a new email, well, gmail eddress for contact. actually i've had the account for over a year now but haven't used it. i'll try it out now, tho. also: if anyone needs a gmail account, let me know--i've got 50 to give away. if you didn't know, they're kind of cool because you get 2000 MB of free storage, whereas other accounts don't give that much unless you pay for more.

chris at 11:15 PM |

 

hey, wha' happ'n'd here?--template's messed up: everything's aligned right, the font size and type are different, and it has messed up the spacing on all the poems below... eep!

chris at 11:11 PM |

Thursday, June 23, 2005

 

Deborah, thanks for the kind, good wishes.

chris at 8:34 PM |

 

Hey,
I just found Telephone Poles... very cool new blog, Jukka!

chris at 6:29 PM |

 

Sending Big Hugs & the Best of Texfiles Wedding Wishes



for the Wonder, Joyousness, Love, Happiness, in a Blessed Marriage Today--

Celebrate in Bangalore, India--Rajajinagar Industrial Town, 560 004: Ashoka Convention Hall, on Friday, 24 June 2005, and anytime, everywhere, from now on!

Two Beautiful Ones Promising Together:

Blessed Varadaraju Pradeep & Sowmya

Fond Wishes of Happiness, Always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
from o~o/ (chris m)

and from UTA Writing Center:
We Love Y'all!

chris at 9:40 AM |

 

[a sample of] Navajo True Type Font
via Navajo Central .Org


from Beverly Dahlen, A Reading: Seven * :

...
the Ace is like a big heart blooming out there. and I could wish all my days to be bound each to each. by natural piety. whatever that is, she wrote these things are of nature. trees, rocks, flowers, a desert. have a desert, have an ocean. think of living down there, there would be other fish swimming around, strange plants growing. that too would be nature, let's not be too hasty to define it. there's a thin moving line. blurred edges. if it were there as sharply as Blake wanted who would get over the boundary in the middle of the night. they were living close to the border in northern Italy, 'we need some new genes' he said. he remembered the nor and thought I was Norwegian, someone from the north originally. someone, a Svenska-Suomalainen.

all that was a foreign language, something she was learning. Navajo. o my horse. the corn of the east. somewhere over the rainbow. blue skies. it's shaping up and I wasn't even thinking about it. it grows. hard and soft, she wrote. hard buds, nipples of buds. hardening. I take you. his

oleander. his skinny, the slight boy's brown body.

'the brown boy's slight body.'

the copper light falling on the brown boy's slight body is carnal fate, the fate, the destiny of meat and beans. how we are all in that, so unseen. the fate of sand, to become glass.

...

be thou

...


(113



* Beverly Dahlen, A Reading 1-7 (Momo's Press, 1985)
[to cm/Texfiles, courtesy of Momo's former editor-publisher, Stephen Vincent]



~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Beverly Dahlen~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~

chris at 12:19 AM |

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

 

Starfish Poetry--"a journal of surrealist poetry"--is fresh:

Jim Leftwich
Solamito Luigino
jUStin!katKO
Cecil Touchon
Mark Young
Amanda Smith
Catherine Ednie
PR Primeau
Chris Murray
John Bennett
Jesse Crockett
Kirby Olson


Check it out!

chris at 7:35 PM |

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

 

 from  A.K. Ramanujan * :


Alien


A foetus in an acrobat's womb,
   ignorant yet of barbed wire
and dotted lines,

hanger-on in terror of the fall
   while the mother-world turns somersaults,
whirling on the single bar,

as her body shapes under water
   a fish with gills into a baby
with a face

getting ready to make faces,
   and hands that will soon feel the powder touch
of monarch butterflies,

the tin and silver of nickel and dime,
   and learn right from left to staple, fold
and mutilate

a paper world in search of identity cards 

(442)


*

Drafts


3.

And we have originals, clay tigers
   that aboriginals drown after each small-
pox ritual,

or dinosaur smells, that leave no copies;
   and copies with displaced originals
like these words,

adopted daughters researching parents
   through maiden names in changing languages,
telephone books,

and familiar grins in railway stations.


4.

The DNA leaves copies in me and mine
   of grandfather's violins, and programmes
of much older music;

the epilepsies go to an uncle
   to fill him with hymns and twitches,
bypassing me for now;

mother's migrains translate, I guess,
   into allergies, a fear of black cats,
and a daughter's passion

for bitter gourd and Dostoevsky;
   mother's almond eyes mix with my wife's
ancestral hazel

to give my son green flecks in a painter's eye,
   but the troubled look is all his own.

(443-444)

* A. K. Ramanujan, Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol 2, 2003. 
 

chris at 8:51 PM |

 

Free Press : Write Congress : Write a letter to your congressperson about why you object to the proposed fund-cuts for PBS/NPR, and Freepress will hand deliver it to their office.

chris at 6:49 PM |

 

Avelino de Araujo - Poesia Visual/Experimental

Hey, check it out: some superb stuff at this site, eh?

chris at 10:21 AM |

 

* * *

from kari edwards' bharat jiva :


a gift



extensive space

endlessly extensive

deeper w/out certainly

reflected endlessly
in a million
hundred million
wakeful divine
quite awake
quite divine
in between
the word
and the vision
in between
a place
filling space
and a space w/out
present in and out of
material matter

w/out
vital
attachments
w/out
bricks and mortar

endlessly reflecting

stripped of mind
stripped of ignorance
stripped of standards

alive in forever
in forgotten receptors
in the depth of
an ocean
centered
kiss on the check
in a dream
discovery dissolving
into a body
into the light
obliterating the self
in a vision
of nothing but love

deeper in certainly
endlessly reflected
in a devotion
of transmission


where
the trilling divine
vibrates through my body
penetrates into another
exercised tomorrow
into another other
remaking of the world
never quite existing
always beginning
revealing a spark
never quite solid
always burning

beyond animal rationale
beyond manufactured tales
signifying nothing
deforming the transmission
of the floating swirls
and dark wobbly
aquatic sound
of the vowel A


* * * *


--42 stages to enlightenment




~~~~~~~~~~~kari, thanks for sending this *gift*!~~~~~~~ o~o/

--cm

chris at 2:33 AM |

Monday, June 20, 2005

 

Whalen, Corman, Zukofsky, Coolidge and mother's roses, celebratory acrostic: 2 fascinating and poignant posts here... thanks for the good read, Stephen.

chris at 8:28 PM |

 

-- Susan Klebanoff, Perfect-Union via Zenith Gallery




from Barbara Guest * :


Color


He believed if the woman on the right moved over to the left he could place her into the frame where a meadow lay beyond her. But it did not work out that way. The moon came up too early. The glow the moon cast lit up the shadow behind the wheelbarrow. No one could advance in the shattering moonlight. The film begins to take the shape of a milk bottle with the heavy cream on top.

He blamed everything on the use of color. The heavy woman who played the woodcutter's wife wanted to lay some emeralds on her bosom. They are the color of trees, she says. The skin of the leading actor was the color of ferns which do not blend with the pastel process that turns the clouds to pastel. The girl's knee is supposed to be grey when she bends it, not the color of blood. The voice coming from the elderberries is colorless, indicating melancholy. He remembers the alluring depths in film without color when tears were dark as drops falling from a raven's mouth. Once again his efforts have been emptied of meaning.

(73)


* Barbara Guest, "Color," Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present. ed. David Lehman. New York: Scribner, 2003.

chris at 11:17 AM |

 

Happy Father's Day to all you good fatherly folks out there!

And most especially to my Dad, Jim Murray.

chris at 1:54 AM |

Sunday, June 19, 2005

 

Patchouli...

is a plant! I never knew that! All these years of being acquainted with it--sometimes it's a favorite scent of mine and sometimes not, because it gets so strong--but I had no idea it was a plant all on its own. Duh. Well, I thought it was some kind of blend of other perfumey-oils. Who knew? I knew another favorite of mine, sandalwood, is a valued tree (I have a beautiful, large, carved elephant brought to me from India by Pradeep Varadaraju, former tech admin for me in the Writing Center lab--Hi Pradeep!), so how come I never thought patchouli might also be a plant on its own. I found out last night when I was over at Whole Foods looking for gazpacho (see wildly-desiring-gazapacho post below) and they had a bunch of plants for sale, herb stuff like oregano and rosemary, both of which I also love, and there was this one I had not seen before and I lifted up the leaves to read the tag and sheesh: it said patchouli, and at first I thought it must be a mistake, so much I could not believe it is a plant. So I smelled the leaves. eep!--sure enough. So I bought one. I'll see how it goes/grows. Patchouli's a plant, and I have one!

chris at 10:39 PM |

 

eep! and/or expoZay of the (um, overblown?) pufferfish: 8. On a dare, I once did shots of sake laced with the scales of the (extremely toxic) pufferfish. My lips were numb for 12 hours.

chris at 8:08 AM |

 

Wildly Desiring Gazpacho: YEOWWWW--

Gazpacho, man, I woke up yesterday with it in my head making a little bird's nest in my appetite, Y'all. And now i want some gazpacho so fucking bad that i'm going lookin' fer it right here in Arlington on several menus (um: good luck)--yeah, as if gazpacho's readily available here in burbie-Barbie/Ken Arlin'ton, Sheesh! But I did get some at Whole Foods (tho it was not exactly what I had in mind--I'll have to make my own, I think). But speaking of Arlington, Texas: I want a bus. I want a Bart. a ticket. a thumb. to go. outta here! I want an ocean. I want outta this land-locked dis-imaginative burby space that haz no GAzPAChO,
YAWP.

thanx, Y'all fer letting me vent a little about how I don't like it here, which is not news--I post at least one of these a year, but now i still really want GAZZZZPAChO, almost sweet tomatoey, hotly spiced, and full of TODAY in terms of summer vegetables, cukes, sweet peppers & many cilantro-rockin' leaf things that make a life good, eh?

hey, if you've got a favorite gazpacho recipe, please share it with me:

cmurray88atyahoodotcom

xo--thanks!

chris at 6:19 AM |

 

Why do I write today?
The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it...

--WCW

chris at 4:08 AM |

 

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously...
     These things 
astonish me beyond words

--WCW

chris at 4:01 AM |

 

from William Carlos Williams* :

The Attic Which Is Desire


The unused tent
of

bare beams
beyond which

directly wait 
the night

and day--
Here 

from the street
by

     * * *
     * S *
     * O *
     * D *
     * A *
     * * * 

ringed with
running lights

the darkened 
pane

exactly
down the center

is 
transfixed

(73)


* WCW, Selected Poems (New Directions, 1985)

chris at 3:19 AM |

 

Thank You, David.

chris at 2:48 AM |

 

"I googled, My teacher has a nervous stomach and hair like goldilocks" (hehee... great post, Laura)

chris at 2:42 AM |

Saturday, June 18, 2005

 

Review:




Question: ... can I locate the heart's hot puddle without irony's iron claw? A Review of Dale Smith's Notes No Answer (San Francisco: Habenicht Press, 2005, 49 pp.)


Questions create the energy that drives discourse. In other words, we know the act of questioning forms the dynamic basis for any dialogic mode. In poetry, I think that lately we rarely see questions put to use at all, and certainly in poetics we haven't lately seen any focus on the myriad performativity of questions as grammatical construct. It seems rare today to see poems inflected with an emphasis on dialectic or question as a rhetorical mode, no matter where a particular poem might fit in the trajectory between so-called avant or experimental, and other varieties or nuances of type in contemporary poetry (written in English). In that regard, most poetry lately seems more given to uttering statements, sometimes fun piles of them made as if to be tossed into self storage units, often productively or entertainingly done. Even with all that fun, I do often wonder where are the questions, why isn't there more use of this provocative mode? Or, another way to think on it might be to say much poetry seems to be uttering differing senses of answers rather than formulating ideas via explicit question. Poetry often seems made of answers, then, to what are implied or unasked questions, which understanding would at least allow for dialectical mode, if only in subtexts or rhetoricized, subtle ways. As such, question is not its bare and essential, explicit self, then, but more an understated springboard or subtextual assumption--questioning more as a curiously dulled thing because so muted, so absent--or as one strand of Dale Smith's poems here puts it:

There are words,
but who's talking?

There are assumptions,
but who performs so intently?

There are cages,
but where are the furry pets?

(25)

Questions as "talking" "intently," not as "caged" "assumptions," but as likeable, as lively and clawed, as toothy and aware as are "furry pets."

And it should be noted, when question does appear in poetry, it often seems to be merely rhetorical questioning--that mode where the answer is flippantly built-in, a sort of know-it-all wise-crack, which can be very useful but again, what of the utility and variety of discourse that comes from explicit and real asking of questions? And anyway, why should it matter whether a question is asked in explicit mode or as subtext? Or if statements are the modality of a poem? Just what is the value of questioning, anyway? As a rhetorical mode today, especially in the U.S. dominated view that seems to have taken over discourse more than ever before--if only via assumptive media presence, prevalence and excess--as world-view, questions are also markedly absent, thus we could use a little boost toward recognizing, I think, that if we do not ask questions in explicit mode, we might lose the rights and abilities to do so. This might be so especially in a contentious and violence-driven, U.S. Republican-conservative-political-moment when, increasingly, questions of authority are not only unwelcome and discouraged, but ignored, or worse yet, become the reason for twisted rhetorical responses, rash name-calling and belittling (for example, George W. Bush's recent attempt at belittling Amnesty International's criticisms of his administration's duplicitous and violent policies on human rights), and/or other kinds of violent rhetoric meant to discipline a populace to a way of life that even simple reasoning shows is untenable for all but a narrow minded, privileged few.

As a well-made chapbook (note: I haven't a ruler here but will guess at its dimensions: approx. 5"x5", thus, a small square, light blue, staple bound in heavy weight white pages--a lovely book to hold while walking and reading I found, or to stow for later, carrying it in a pocket: David Hadbawnik's Habenicht Press makes a durable yet aesthetically pleasing, high quality chapbook) of poems concerned with the problematics of contemporary discourse, Dale Smith's Notes No Answer goes a long way toward responding to the lack or absence of the act of questioning. Every poem in the book is formulated as a question, and as such, creates an ongoing flow based on open-ended, multiple perspectives that necessarily inform the act of questioning. This stands in counterpoint to the more common mode of the day, close-ended positing of statements about a given thing or phenomenon--in other words and to flip Dale's title around a bit: Answers No Questions...

Notes No Answer also enacts and thereby demonstrates the value of serious question specifically as it can be poetically productive in terms of innovating the open lyric form. In our socio-political and culturally diverse rhetorical situation of poetry, this book based on questioning marks a change, thus fulfills the essence of meaning of the term creative, yet does so devoid (happily) of tortuous lyric flourish. It does so with energetic simplicity, exacting rhetorical economy, and a continual commitment to the matters and flow of everyday life.

The first poem in the book sketches out something of a problematic involving the act of questioning:

Should I assist or
desist, resist
or insist,
persist or exist
in status
quo stasis?

A taxonomy is posed, a dialectics of 'ist'--which at first seems an uncomplicated listing of arbitrary terms. More than a little pow is leveraged out of this 'ist' mix, however, by the last two lines. Here it becomes apparent that what we are hearing or reading is, first, a question, rather than a statement, which immediately lends an energy to the reading, an energy infused by the insistent need to find out where this little aspect of poetry might be going. What, close readers will be asking themselves, is all this 'ist-mix' doing? If posed as a statement this poem would have far less energy driving it along: 'I assist, desist, resist or insist, persist or exist in status quo stasis'--to which readers are limited to responding by saying something to the effect of 'And?' or 'So?' But the same terms formed to question mode create a certain sense of mystery, of, well, quest. A kind of double reading results, a reading inflected, then, by more than one kind of voicing (by use of this term I do not mean "voice" in the expressionist way, I mean heard voices, anonymously forming utterances inflected with intention yet only in the mildest way of insisting--impressionist, then). In fact, a kind of voicing for each of the verb constructs imbricated to form this poem. In its explicit form, questioning is intriguingly sonorous.

And, secondly, what becomes apparent with this first poem in the book is that although highly sonorous it is not frivolous. Its purpose is to question a "status quo." What status quo might that be?--perhaps the status quo of *not questioning,* which in effect creates--rather than an energetic, motivated quest--a rhetorical situation of "stasis." Static immobile fixity--a deadness, a lack or absence of vitality, an absence of being. The absence of questioning leads to stasis. Thus we have at onset a meta-consideration of the act of questioning: it is both mode and topic. Questioning involves an assumed first person, so that, if here we have a meta-consideration, then we also have a form of questioning not only the variety of topics that arise in the questions, but also the subjectivity of first person. In fact, it may be that questioning is one of the few ways to break out of first-person fixity and solipsistic thought. Philosophically, this I think is one of the most significant contributions of this humble little book that is also full of voicings and life.

Readers familiar with others of Dale Smith's books, for instance, American Rambler (Austin, TX: Thorpe Springs, 2001), The Flood and the Garden (First Intensity, 2002),*(see note below) and My Vote Counts (effing press, 2004), will recall in those works the persistent motifs and concerns over history--the sustenance of a historical materialist consciousness. Notes No Answer continues this concern, mixing moments of everyday life with concerns for history, yet torqued now by the mode of questioning:

Is history a myth
or a name,
a corpse or a sign
for something we
forgot so the past
will keep living'
inside us?

If I sing the song
of myself in American
will there ever be
any other
to live free
of who we are or
where we're from?

If its so good to meet me
why's your cell phone ringing
your desktop open
your words loaded?

(7-8)

I find the assertion at this point in the poem of a "cell phone ringing" to be particularly riveting and culturally/historically resonant since it evokes the related, contradictory yet now commonplace image of people walking around alone yet talking aloud--seemingly talking to no one--in effect, involved in what amounts to static dialogue in that material moment and scene. Of course I mean they are talking on their cell phones to dialogue-partners, but only in the eeriest of isolating ways, in terms of rhetorical situations: in the past, say, on any urban street ten years ago, it was not uncommon to find people walking around, stopped at a light, or waiting for a bus and then striking up a conversation with others, often amenable strangers. Today, on any given urban street on any day there is a similar crowd of bodies who might be nearly touching, nearly bumping into one another but never speaking to one another. Instead, via the cell phone, they become in that rhetorical situation a cacophony of self-involvedness, a rhetorical version of the oddest kind of solipsistic behavior. Given such contradictory everyday material scenes, whatever can it mean, then, to be "connected" to people? The scene in the poem above, where people "meet" (albeit not on a street, but an office of some sort) and seem to welcome one another, seems more and more undermined now by these tiny instruments of instantaneous rhetorical reward, the cell phone, the 24/7 form of being 'connected' yet in many material ways, a 'connection' that is misfired, thus, misconnected, in terms of the larger and community-centered aims of discourse.

And juxtaposed to this misfiring of 'connection' are many passages of intensely material connection to life and to others of many forms, achingly, fervently, tenaciously so, yet with a poetic economy found humbly grasping for, not "irony's iron claw," but for earthly abundance, vital desire, anima, essences:

Because the moon shines,
the pine grosbeak flits,
snow drifts somewhere, or
cloud faces float
while seasons bear green and
golden forces, can I locate
the heart's hot puddle without
irony's iron claw?

Wasn't the dirt warm?

Why can't I find
and indigo bunting
or a vermilion
flycatcher?

What's in my mouth I can't
swallow?

(38-39)

There are many other provocative matters raised by this fascinating chapbook. The import, functionality, and philosophical background of, and for, "words," form a continual thread here and indeed have no little *text-ure* :

Why do words weigh
so light on my tongue,
slightly prickly, or
almost rubbery, but
definitely weirdly like
let-go ballons, Cratylus?

(19)

Here the question surprises us at its end by being posed multivoicedly, once again (as in the first poem of the book, discussed above). Here the question is posed not only by Socrates, due to the allusion to the Platonic dialogue Cratylus, but by extension, Plato, as well, for it was Plato who had created the written, questioning persona of Socrates (Socrates never wrote anything--we only know him because of Plato's writing). The use put to lyric voicings in this book extends current notions of intersubjectivity and performative voice in many ways: once the lyric above is read, it calls into question the speaker for all these question-lyrics. In fact, it confounds entirely the convention in poetry interpretation of questioning 'Who is speaking?' since each separate poem-question can be another speaker, just as each poem can also, sonorously, contain as many voices as there are verbs to intonate and activate them. To my mind, this element alone, although subtle is nonethe less explosive in the best rhetorical ways. It offers the possibility of collectivity of questioning, then, yet also allows for single-minded uniqueness. Such is difficult to achieve in a focused way with poetry--Bakhtin would love it, even if he did mistakenly think that poetry could not be as dialogic as a novel (in my opinion he was thinking of epic poetry, which is not dialogic).

In all, this book will provide readers with numerous provocations to think hard and long about what it means to question, especially today, when authorities disparage the act of questioning what they are up to. As for questioning poetry, well:

There's poetry
but what's
the measure? (27)






* Note: I have taught both American Rambler and The Flood and the Garden in a number of college writing courses here at University of Texas at Arlington. In that I am happy to remark here that, hands down, students love both these books for the earthiness of life. Moreover, they say that they learn a lot about poetry, history, as well as the value and uses of everyday life from these two very fine books.


--chris murray
o~o/

chris at 2:35 AM |

 

At moment, finishing up the review of Dale Smith's new book, Notes No Answer (Habenicht, 2005), to be posted here shortly--a very fine book indeed.

chris at 12:53 AM |

Friday, June 17, 2005

 

Cheerful Robotic Fish



Look!--the striving fish
of robotic origin
are cheerful & racing

across the screen
of chlorine-infusion-
pool built by a supreme

as seen here
on national double eye
goggles decked

out or otherwise
happy for diamonds,
gold & earthly things

self empowered
smiles & veils
& manufacturing wet

suits
casting shadows
on brand name

& beard alike pluck
of eyebrow,
whitened straight

teeth, bleach
streaked golden
electro static hair

See--there
goes a stingray
stinging & flapping

oh, slapping the watery
grave
with its polyurethene

poetic wings
along the impossibly
deep end sunshine

or Hockney'd surface
of H2O & consumer
swells





--cm
o~o/

chris at 6:15 AM |

Thursday, June 16, 2005

 

some work to do this morning-early afternoon. then the promised review.

meanwhile, it's going back up to 100 degrees today, sunny, and a red alert day for air pollution (second highest alert). eep.

chris at 6:06 PM |

 

Ack! on Jello-Pitts--Mr. and Mrs. Smith:




Okay, so Dottir Holly and I gave-in and went to see Jello-with-Pitt's sex/guns vehicle. Marriage is a crowded riot that requires a lot of tear gas, clubbing, bottle breaking, punching and kicking your partner in the ribs for fun--a Fight Club Redux (indeed one character wears a Fight Club tee shirt)--that's because, whereas formerly marriage partners were not of equal stature socially or in one another's eyes, in the ultra world of excessive violence, partners are now excessively equal. Then, after all that kicking and scratching and grenade throwing, as the theater audience made clear with ooo's & ahh's, it's one long make up night with lots of toys both imaginary and material, except in this flick it's a night where the toys involved are more bombs and guns.

Um, not much worth saying in terms of value, I think. I think I read somewhere that it steals a little from that 60s Brit TV show that in the 90s was made to a movie, The Avengers. Yeah, there's a little of that attitude going on. But value?--nada. Value being beside the point in Hollywood flicks anymore (or perhaps never was much to begin with?--dunno). Of course, in this one, there is some provocative eroto-heat wrapping around the audience's neurons, but no doubt that is this flick's reason-for-being in terms of that famously grinning Pitt/Jello frisson creating a warmth allowing for all those consumer products to be luxuriously put on display--especially all those flashy guns, watches, clothing, earrings, netted stockings, household items, lingere, cars, wine, martinis & etc: letting the excess of consumerist cultural artifacts zoom in largely to be and largely to find their target audience stocking the theater full.

In fact, really I'm surprised they were not offering free perfume and aftershave samples at the theater entrance--something really body-ish, exacting a full toothy grin because so damned bloody. ugh.

But then, too, this flick was so busy making fun of the martini and blue-suited sex era of, say, smoothie Sinatra and Sammy Davis flicks (actually, out of all the scenes in this mostly urban flick, there was just one person of color, Jello's right hand woman, I mean, unless you want to count Jello--but anyways, we don't need those ways of naming anymore, right?) that it totally shows how those flicks were often doing the same thing--understatedly selling one or another kind of shit, but hardly anyone at the time noticed or said so. We're so cool now, though that it's second nature to expect that in a flick there will be the gratuitous eroto-heat-borne irresistible wristwatch or bullet proof vest (several snazzy, ultra sturdy styles of those on display in this flick...). Or hey, how about that durable burby family mini-van that blew away all those death machines in the chase?--get yrself right down to the dealer, now, darlin'...

Ah, such cynicism--regrettable, to my mind. I mean my cynicism. (The movie, on the other hand is so naively honeyed with it that you can hardly tell it's there.)


o~o/
--cm

ps. Oh and hey: one point of perverse spiritedness in the flick: a lengthy shoot-out in a store that eerily resembles a WalMart, and the place is destroyed. Listen up, you WalMart harpers, harangers and mongerers--definitely: here's your moment of vicarious pleasure--several block long floors decimated in the blink of Jello's eyes.

chris at 9:43 AM |

 

Off to see a film with Dottir Holly--YaY!!

Catch Y'all later--with maybe a film review...

But definitely a poetry review coming up tonight or tomorrow--of Dale Smith's
tantalizing Notes No Answer (Habenicht Press, 2005),

where one of which provocative pages holds these:



Do you think
there's a way
out?


Are my phantasies worth
the sacred headlines
of CNN?

(33)



~~~~~~~~~~~~~poetry copyright of Dale Smith~~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~

chris at 2:13 AM |

 

--Go Joan Didion!

Questions of *Kind* in Culture, Politics, Rhetoric:

"Kind" is suggestive here: just how kind is dying around the U.S. lately?--especially when your designated legal representative (rather than you) and the law both seem to have unequivocably decided that your life is no longer worth living? Read on:


from Joan Didion in the June 9th New York Review of Books (see full credit below) :
... there remained, on the "rational" side of the argument, very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as "fundamentalists" or "evangelicals," who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it. There remained little acknowledgment even that the case was being badly handled, rendered unnecessarily inflammatory. There was an insensitivity in the timing of the removal of the feeding tube, which took place on the Friday before Palm Sunday, meaning that the gradual process of dying coincided with a week that for Christians has specifically to do with sacrificial suffering and death. "Oh come on," someone said when this was mentioned on a cable show. There was a further insensitivity in the fact that the tube was removed at all. If the sole intention is to terminate feeding and hydration, there is no need to remove a gastric feeding tube. All anyone need do is stop plunging the formula into the tube. Hospitals routinely leave gastric tubes in place long after patients have progressed to oral feeding, because any later need to replace the tube (after the incision has begun to heal and scar tissue to form) can be difficult and require surgery. In this case, in the absence of some unusual circumstance that remained unreported, the sole purpose of actual removal would seem to have been to make any legally ordered resumption of feeding difficult to implement.

These were symbolic points, messages only, but messages make things happen. It was the physical removal of the tube that led to the perceived inexorability of the countdown. It was the convergence of that countdown with the holiest week in the Christian calendar thatexacerbated the "circus," the displays of theatrical martyrdom outside the hospice. It was the ability to dismiss the scene outside the hospice as a "circus" that made the case so ready a vehicle for the expression of "disgust." Old polarizations took over. Differences became intolerances. Before the end of the first news cycle, those who believed the removal of the feeding tube to be a morally correct decision were being referred to as "murderers," and those troubled by the decision, even those of no perceptible religiosity, as "fundamentalist freaks," "evangelical mullahs."

Some of what made the case so toxic was clear. The general claim those opposed to the termination of feeding seemed to be making, for the absolute value of life, could be applied as well to fetuses. (It could also be applied to the death penalty, but the politics of the pro-life movement have not encouraged this seamless-garment approach.) Yet this specific case, which had to do with whether a healthy woman whose brain was damaged to a catastrophic but still unestablished extent should or should not continue living, was never about abortion alone. It had at its core a virtually unthinkable but increasingly urgent question, one that few on either side of the debate wanted to address aloud.

The question began with the different ways in which we define a life worth living, but it did not stop there. The question had ultimately to do with whether or not there could be occasions when the broad economic and ethical interests of the society at large should outweigh any individual claim to either the most advanced medical attention (which Theresa Schiavo, outside the one procedure at UCSF in 1990, did not have) or indefinite care. This was the question no one on any side of the debate wanted to hear... [Then, after Schiavo died, so that therefore,] freed of the need to avoid confronting the presence of an actual moral dilemma, all sides could reassume their usual fencing positions. All sides could imagine that by exposing the errors of the opposition, they had advanced the public dialogue....
--Joan Didion, "The Case of Teresa Schiavo" (NY Review of Books, Vol. 52, # 10, June 9, 2005).

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Not that I am in favor of raising once again the media-frenzied, outrageously repeating (culty reproductive) spectral imagery, and the despiccably side-winding polemical discourse about the recent Schiavo life/death situation. No. But I am fascinated by the admirable way Joan Didion in the *New York Review of Books* has analyzed and written this thorough, in-depth, and empathic argument on it, an argument about the Schiavo situation as a cultural phenomenon that anyone invested in strong intellect and having a political concern for the way the country is going, as well as, for that matter, the way that neo-con ideologies influence the world, should probably do a close reading.

I've been scouting around on the web looking for provocative readings and examples of differing forms of argumentation. This article is so comprehensive that it more than qualifies, so, I will be having my students in summer session (#II) read it--my UTA course in advanced argument, Engl. 4371, July-August 05. If you happen to be a prospective student reading here right now, you might want to bookmark this article--it'll be formative to the course in terms of learning what today's best and worst forms of argument and rhetorical phenomena are.

chris at 1:04 AM |

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

 

Deborah's back! With lot's of good stuff about what she's been reading...

chris at 8:53 PM |

 

Tim Morris' Optative Mood: calling for more in-depth critique of the newly confirmed, seemingly common-sensical yet ultimately "frightening," "new right legal ideologue," Justice Janice Brown....

chris at 7:12 PM |

 

Acappella



(upon PBS's broadcast 14 June 05,
Independent Lens:
Rodney Evans' "Brother to Brother"--yeah!)


Y'all, sisters I just want
to say are here
too

let's wreak some
love havoc
love "wild or tame"

& "... if you wrote
about gay in that
time--

respect was the last
thing you would
get..."

these crowing book
shelves tilting
invisible smoke

curling up bluish
material I
alienate from you

when people
try to tell me about myself
like an already

named who
assumed the three
letters

that moon-curve
of nipple
accumulating

a dust of bony
bodies
where was an ancient

description
lingering
tannin or splinter

"you seem ready
to
whether

I
want
you

to
or
not"

"... whose big
idea was this
anyway--

who gives
you the right
to judge?"

let's
have a
long smoke

a
vast
beauty

"Here's to beauty--
that it may always
be nearby"



--cm






~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~yee~haw~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Tex!Ur~~~~~ o~o/

chris at 5:38 AM |

 

OO-OO-OO-OOoooo Shampoo!

Brand new and celebrating 5 years. What a great bunch of poetry and art, Y'all. Keep on.

Happy Anniversary, Del Ray Cross, and the bubbly Shampoo crew!

chris at 4:56 AM |

 

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR: more neo-con wormy-way bullshit: moving to eliminate educational television that uses little or no commercial advertising...

I don't watch much TV or listen to much talk-radio, but when I do I like it to be PBS and NPR. While they are certainly not without their own leanings toward neo-con media behaviors (their commercials selling all those bougie-delux cars and gold/diamond jewelry turn my stomach) in the last 8 years or so, they at least still broadcast a variety of perspectives and intelligent coverage as well as offering something a little better than Entertainment Tonight, Raymond and what now looks like CSI 24/7 (tho I also admit to being drawn into watching some of the CSIs since the semester ended last month). Cutting their funding this way is a certain way to narrow severely the field of available media. But I still wonder what it might be like severely to have no media in our lives at all--and I've lived many years at a time in places where there was no electricity or when I had no TV, thus I understand what that means and it can be a very good thing for mind, spirit, and material, everyday life. On the other hand, most people are socialized to live within the paradigm of media influence, so this fund-cutting will severely limit the variety and rhetorical modes in their lives, limit them to crap and the continual blurring of commercials and product hawking into other modes and forms of rhetoric. Bleh.


So, brace yourselves and read on, Y'all, on the slashing of funds for NPR & PBS:

... public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming. That effort was initiated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's own chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson. ... [PBS] Broadcasters noted, for example, that the 25 percent cutback in next year's CPB budget was a rollback of money that Congress had promised in 2004.

PBS, in particular, drew harsh criticism in December from the Bush administration for a "Postcards From Buster" episode in which Buster, an animated rabbit, "visited" two families in Vermont headed by lesbians. And programming on both PBS and NPR has come under fire in recent months from Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the CPB, who has pushed for greater "balance" on the public airwaves. ----Paul Farhi, Washington Post staff writer, "Public Broadcasting Targeted by the House," Washington Post, Friday, June 10, 2005 (p. A01)

And here's this note from Move On dot org's email notice to me (a mass mailing) including links to the petition today--tho I want to point out that blogger Jordan Stempleman (hi Jordan!--hoping y'all got moved okay) also, kindly, sent me the petition yesterday:

Move On's page about Congress's cutting of funds for PBS & NPR


Subject: This time, it's for real: Save NPR and PBS

Hi,

You know that email petition that keeps circulating about how Congress is slashing funding for NPR and PBS? Well, now it's actually true. (Really. Check the footnotes if you don't believe me.)

Sign the petition telling Congress to save NPR and PBS:

Sign the petition to Congress telling them to save NPR and PBS

A House panel has voted to eliminate all funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," and other commercial-free children's shows. If approved, this would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting, threatening to pull the plug on Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch.

The cuts would slash 25% of the federal funding this year—$100 million—and end funding altogether within two years. The loss could kill beloved children's shows like "Clifford the Big Red Dog," "Arthur," and "Postcards from Buster." Rural stations and those serving low-income communities might not survive. Other stations would have to increase corporate sponsorships.

If we can reach 250,000 signatures by the end of the week, we'll put Congress on notice.

Move-On's PBS page

Thanks!

P.S. Read the Washington Post report on the threat to NPR and PBS at:

Washing Post article on threat to NPR & PBS

chris at 1:17 AM |

Monday, June 13, 2005

 

A Special Texfiles-Post for Sawako : )

Gaston Baquero (translated by Mark Weiss) : *


Pavane For The Emperor


Napoleon had a cloak covered with gold bees.
When lumbago attacked the Emperor
The old witches of Corsica advised him:
"Nappy, reverse your cloak, bees to skin."
And the cruel bees stung the length of the imperial spine;
Without the least reverence they plunged their little stingers
          up and down,
Until their benevolent acids entered the blood of the Corsican,
And the lumbago ran off screaming, victim of the victor
          of Austerlitz.

Laughter reappeared on the imperial face, and the court
          dressed in red;
Napolean, free of pain, turned his bee-covered cloak
          right-side out
Seized its ermine border with his fingertips
And began to dance a pavane through all the salons
          of the Tuileries:
Tra-la-la, Tra-la-la, he danced and sang, shouting Ole!
         and Long live life! and Ole.
The Lord of the Earth danced with renewed happiness,
And the bees on his cloak, also happy, laughed and sang
Like rays of sun in a child's head.

(109)



* Gaston Baquero, "Pavane For The Emperor," trans. Mark Weiss, Poetry International VI, 2002.

chris at 6:19 PM |

Sunday, June 12, 2005

 

Books Received:




Dale Smith, Notes No Answer (Habenicht Press, 2005)

Stefan Hyner, 10 000 Journeys: Selected Poems, 1977-2003 (Skanky Possum, 2005)
--see poem posted below, Friday 10 June 05

chris at 11:17 PM |

Saturday, June 11, 2005

 

"nanofossil worm, magnetite whiskers" --via UCSD, Space_Sciences page


Inter-Leav(en)ing Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable


Ever have absurdist days where the only reasonable thing to do would be to re-read Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable straight through, very fast, no stopping (I think I read once that is how he wrote it but I could have that wrong, but anyway it's an interesting fantasy to consider), even for food, drink, rest, clothing changes or toilet runs (tho of course a pause for blogging is perfectly acceptable)? Would the body become stiff and stuck to the furniture?--well, reading while walking around (it requires pacing around, I think) at the same time would be allowable, I suppose. It's that kind of day around here right now. Here's where I am at moment, page 86 of the Grove Press paperback edition (1958), and here is a transcript of readerly dialogism:

Yes, let us call that thing Worm

what thing?--the state of being/feeling/wanting/thinking nothing, to be "Worm inside"

so as to exclaim, the sleight of hand accomplished, Oh look, life again, life everywhere and always, the life that's on every tongue, the only possible!

the way consciousness deceives itself into being/thinking/speaking/tasting--poor tongue with its continual demand of multitasking, tasting, feeling, speaking, wet wet wormy thing it is

Poor Worm, who thought he was different, there he is in the madhouse for life.

worm:consciousness as life:being ...
housed, locked, imprisoned, misprisoned inside that which is disorderly--an infancy, an infant consciousness, a bawling body incapable of itself, un-self-namable

Where am I?

not who, or what, or how, or why, or even when--but where?!

That's my first question, after an age of listening.

tongue:ear as eye:self-notional

From it, when it hasn't been answered, I'll rebound towards others, of a more personal nature, much later.

it cannot be answered and already is

Perhaps I'll even end up, before regaining my coma, by thinking of myself as living

where a Shakespeare would describe consciousness of life lived as a form of dream--or Shakespeare's characters would call it that--Beckett writes to call it, hehe: a coma (!)--half full or half empty, rose or thorn?

technically speaking

'technically' speaking to/of/in the letter, that is

But let us proceed with method.

let us be systematic, let us impose a pattern on things to make more and/or seemingly predictable

I shall do my best, as always, since I cannot do otherwise.

I am nothing if not the good little altar boy, or ever-obediently-the-best

I shall submit, more corpse-obliging than ever.

submissive to the body, the dead, the inert, the wormy body

I shall transmit the words as received, by the ear, or roared through a trumpet into the arsehole in all their purity, in the same order, as far as possible.

it was more polite to say arsehole than asshole. what is the relation betwee ear and asshole? ear:asshole as mind:tongue. oh. inquiring arses might need to know: is arse (also, easily skewed, misprized, intentionally mistaken along the golden path of signification, as Ares) a euphemism as used here in this particular rhetorical situation? And anyway, who said Nicholas Cage is not a good actor? Let alone that words cannot be or have "purity," and if that is the point, it is unclear/impure since sandwiched between two powerful images, ear and arsehole, as well as no little irony, which creates a context of multiple indeterminacies.

This infinitesimal lag, between arrival and departure, this trifling delay in evacuation, is all I have to worry about.

delay:sonic boom as whip is to crack: the crack of a whip is a form of sonic boom--did you know that?

o~o/

chris at 9:58 PM |

 

more coming up in a little bit here, 
on Stefan Hyner's 10 000 Journeys, 
as well as another wonderful surprise 
in the mail today.  so, please stay tuned.

chris at 4:03 AM |

 

to celebrate my new-found flexibility with poem spacing here at tex, here i'm posting a special treat that just arrived today in the mail, Y'all, causing me to jump up and down and howl at my little aluminum mailbox an hour ago so that all the people swimming in the nearby pool fell silent and turned their inquisitive minds in the direction of my joyful noise... yeah, you got it--this is also a way of sending out some extra big love to the Skanky Possum folk:


from Stefan Hyner's
10 000 Journeys: Selected Poems, 1977-2003
(Skanky Possum, 2005) :

Interstellar Weather Report of the Mind




This         an African         high
      they                tell         me
the eye of hope                 rots
      when confronted     with reality
pain                      goes everywhere
      a four leafed clover        
      in a used book            on Tibet
by Frasco Mariani
                       the early years
need
more consideration   without
being
              It's overcast
                            light
speeds thru the           kitchen.  Time to cook.


13/VIII/96 (Rohrhof)

~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Stefan Hyner~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/

chris at 3:43 AM |

 

YaY!! or Duh!!
Figur'd it Out, hehe:
well then what happens if the post following the immediately subsequent post does not uses pre tagging?--and what of using the bolding tags? ... Hah! tricked it! Yeah. forgive my dumb-assness! Trial and error works for me, i'm no html genie: Just have to remember to follow the pre tagged poem post with another pre tagged post no matter whether it is meant to be a pre thing or not, because it will flip when you post the next time (unless you pre tag that one, too). Sheesh! But I'm jazzed now to be able to post poems lined out in any crazy spacing way. For two years I've instead been typing in all the extra html coding, which is time consuming, but something of a labor of love, really. Hah--anyways, got it all down now!

chris at 3:32 AM |

 

 maybe the subsequent post needs to use pre tagging
to keep its antecedent post from flipping over to the right margin 
of the blog screen? Okay coming back in for a landing now:
yes, that is it, exactly-Jackie! ... use pre tags following 
the initial post and see que pasa. 

chris at 3:29 AM |

 

& n b s p ; playin' with spacin's & n b s p ; here

hmmmmmmmmm                         mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

                 well i see that spaces 
                     inbetween 
               html code for 
                                 spaces 
                        does not create 
                                 more or 
      any specialized
spa                      ces...

chris at 3:23 AM |

Friday, June 10, 2005

 

--Audre Lorde (image via OSU. edu, multicultural center)

...and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations... --Audre Lorde, "Who Said It Was Simple?"

1st Annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice
in New York City on June 24th, 2005:

check out the The Audre Lorde Project, Y'all: We invite our Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of color communities, and our allies, to march with us in the

Visibility of Trans and Gender Non-Conforming People:

Communities of color have histories that are rich with multiple gender identities, experiences, and expressions, but today the two-gender system is enforced against us everywhere: in health care, immigration, bathrooms, clothing, shelters, prisons, schools, government forms, job applications, and identity documents.

--Gender policing has always been part of America’s bloody history. State-sanctioned gender policing targets Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) people first by dehumanizing our identities. It denies our basic right to gender self-determination, and considers our bodies to be property of the state.

--Gender policing isolates TGNC people from our communities, many of which have been socialized with these oppressive definitions of gender. As a result, we all too often fall victim to verbal and physical violence. This transphobic violence is justified using medical theories and religious beliefs, and is perpetuated in order to preserve America’s heterosexist values. Gender policing and violence denies our existence and is used to maintain control over us and keep our communities divided.As Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of color, we see that our struggle today is directly linked to many struggles here and around the world.

We view the June 24th, Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, as a day to stand in solidarity with all peoples and movements fighting against oppression and inequality. We also view this action as following the legacy of our Trans People of Color warriors, such as Sylvia Rivera, and others who with extreme determination fought not only for the rights of all trans and gender-nonconforming people, but also were on the frontlines for the liberation of all oppressed peoples. In this spirit, we as Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Peoples of Color call on all social justice activists from communities of color, lesbian, gay, bi and trans movements, immigrant rights organizations, youth and student groups, trade unions and workers organizations, religious communities and HIV/ AIDS and social service agencies to endorse this call to action and to build contingents to march in solidarity together on June 24th.

With this march we commemorate the lives of those that came before us, and honor the courage of our all communities that continue to struggle and fight for liberation and self-determination everyday.


To Endorse: email ikhenry(at)alp.org or call 718.596.0342, ext 18

Yours In Struggle --TransJustice, a project of The Audre Lorde Project

chris at 10:00 PM |

 

Variations on Red Tide:

"Mixed bloom of Dinophysis acuta and D. norvegica co-occurring with a bloom of Ceratium furca"

"North Carolina Sea Surface Temperature image of a Karenia brevis bloom... 1987"

"Red Tide Dead Fish"

chris at 9:17 PM |

 

so yeah, like i was saying...
it happened again. see below. i'll have to look into this some more. i see that over at As/Is folks were discussing it in the comments box. And btw, the phrases in the poem below are taken entirely at random from television-spam heard in the moment when I wanted to test the 'pre' tag.

chris at 5:59 AM |

 

just checking on how the posting screen operates when using the 'pre' tag for poem spacing. in the past, the poems i post with that tagging are fine on initial posting, and then they change once another post is added. dunno why... and trying to see here if it is still happening that way

chris at 5:51 AM |

 

rhythm of pulse     down beat    actitude

                looking for Me and Bobby                McGee

                         I'd like to feel more 
           
       secure in my job                  as trash            

       collector

my personal area             is open          it's all about the evidence

                     abolone shell buttons

                rawhide shoelace       worn thin

chris at 5:35 AM |

Thursday, June 09, 2005

 

from Mina Loy * (next to Stein, my favorite modernist writer--I'm rarely taken with HD's poetry):

Der Blinde Junge


The dam Bellona
littered
her eyeless offspring
Kreigsopfer
upon the pavements of Vienna

Sparkling precipitate
the spectral day
involves
the visionless obstacle

this slow blind face
pushing
its virginal nonentity
against the light

Pure purposeless eremite
of centripetal sentience

Upon the carnose horologe of the ego
the vibrant tendon index moves not

since the black lightning desecrated
the retinal altar

Void and extinct
this planet of the soul
strains from the craving throat
in static flight upslanting

A downy youth's snout
nozzling the sun
drowned in dumbfounded instinct

Listen!
illuminati of the coloured earth
How this expressionless "thing"
blows out damnation and conussive dark

Upon a mouth-organ


(274)



* Mina Loy, written in 1923--this publication: Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (2003)

chris at 8:22 PM |

 

Hot & Sour!



No, silly... it's just my current favorite

soup ...

chris at 11:19 AM |

 

Update:

Thanks to Y'all good folk xoxoxoxo

for continually tuning in here at Tex, where things have been intermittent and seeming to be undecided now for several weeks, in part due to tech problems and in part due to misgivings on my part about the perceived and possible valuation of this kind of writing/publishing/social reproduction. Social Reproduction--it concerns me greatly because it is probably one of the only places of possible agency in terms of the rhetorical.

In fact, I thought about bailing from the bloggy thing, as you know from a post about a month ago, since this daily bloggy stuff is so hard and nasty sometimes in terms of figuring what it has to do with meaningfulness (of combined) human being. Not only was I inundated with other (rhetorical) work at that time, but I was seeing what seemed an overabundance of public-relations-influenced (whether or not intentional: indeed, for most part, unintentional!) textuality being produced (reproduced) then. I just had to re-assess whether it was worthwhile to continue. (I'm still re-assessing, if only because blogging seems very susceptible to the kind of exclusionary ideas and practices that governed high school, for chrissakes!).

And, well, in blogging and as a writer, I seriously wanted to expose and to skewer politicos via poetics and poetry and write lots of differing kinds and modes of poetry--to be as eclectic as possible, ya kno? And then to write, as well, notes to build toward whatever passes now--in our moment, not as a prescribed thing (!) as critical exposition about it (tho I see that critical prose about poetry is severely limited and lacking: stymied for the most part by preconceived notions not about poetry per se, but about what constitutes critical prose (!), which, despite the way it seems to propound itself in bloggyland, is actually a very fluid rhetoric.

But for now I am still into blogging and especially if Y'all are into continuing to read, and I do very much care about the people/personae I've encountered and interacted with in blogging. Y'all have made me feel welcome, and have shared intriguing ideas and have risked writing poetry in ways I truly admire. Imagine putting all a poet's unedited drafts out there for anyone to peruse: that is how it works out here, and gee: we've all done well by one another that way, to my mind, anyway.

Materially, I've finally got both my home phone and the internet cable/computer problems resolved. Weirdness reigned last month (more than usual, tho it is tru that I must certainly be far more privileged than almost anyone else in any other poet category (whatever those are) simply because I also happen to hold some kind of cobbled together university job. Whatever, Keem-oh-Sahbee. I got the life marks and the loan debt to prove it was all just a fucking other way to get from single parent to job-beyond-WalMart, tho I have to say that Walmart job was obviously the smarter choice, tho I had to pass, ya kno?--3 kids to raise on my own and all that. And shit, all I knew how to do besides sew and crochet was read and write. Said 3 kids?--raised now, thank goodness.

Anyways,a problem that began just about a month ago, and left me in the lurch for keeping in touch with various email lists I belong to, as well as the 3 main email accounts I keep (in case something goes wrong with one or another so that I am assured of having some online messaging ability). Sheesh! And then my traveling, which was excellent and especially worthwhile since it concerned my son, but frustrations with online stuff (even though my friends were all very accommodating), but trying to keep up with email, proved impossible because of the inordinate amount of spam that lands in my university email account (at least 200 per day), which then must be hand deleted so to be sure not to miss the meaningful emails sandwiched in the midst of the blizzard, and of course dial-ups (that is what was available, and I was very glad for it) are much slower than the high-speed stuff I'd been used to at my university networking and my cable at home ports, so... . I'm afraid my lack of response may have alienated some correspondents I think the world of, and that is making me worry somewhat, but I will work on straightening that out. I also wasn't able to read blogs very much for the same slow-online-response time reasons, but was able to catch up a little bit yesterday, and gladly so. I realize how much appreciative, shared, community really is present in all this bloggery, and, well... I am just very grateful for it.

I won't go into the details now but one cool outcome of this techno-shift in my circumstances is that I finally went ahead and got a cell phone. An excellent deal, too, through Cingular. Including online access and free phone. The deal is cool--I can blog from my phone! But doing that is extremely expensive so I probably will refrain from it. It's likely I'll try it out once, then see what the bill looks like, and go from there. Ooooo. Cool beans, yeah!

But hey: how does a poem on a phone screen build itself into something, anyway?--dunno, but I might have to try it out to see. And then I'll have to ask my inquisitive self how the cabbage got hold of the cow, anyway, eh? As in: so, chris: now yr willin' ta pay to be able to write a poem?--when everyone knows writing poems never did pay the writer, anyway? What and how much does it cost a person to be a poet? That's the question I think I want to know something about right now (beyond the dumb obvious stuff).

Or, hey, girl (a self address, Y'all): what is it about *communications,* as that (is an) *enterprise* intersecting with current (extremely naive) notions of _creative writing_?-- isn't that taking the poetry-as-a-way-of-life-thing a little too far? I mean: as a writer committed to community and innovative writing, how to sustain (supposed) distance from the 'military-industrial-complex'-of-it-all if one is right smack in the midst of it (just watched my son march off into it by his choice [not mine]), thus realizing how very compromised one's writing will have to be. Or maybe one should just write tripe: any bullshit layering of received voicings, anti-anti's, eh?

These, right now, are of deep concern to me.
Not for the reason of privileging poetry above other discourses or other modes of social interaction, but because it seems to me that poetry may not be anything.

As in: we, po-people, are aware of the dire straits we are in culturally, politically, rhetorically (as in use of English, for example, where all our self-identifying markers are fucked--I mean pronouns, Y'all--the subject of my recent dissertation...) and may be not complexly attuned to post-modern poetry but may only be post-poetry (as some might put it: who fucking needs it?!), at this moment. I see some po-folk do much more active cultural work (cultural agency) via cartooning, for instance. Stunning cartoons, work well done ...
So, hey, do rock on.

But I'm all for hanging around to see what else evolves and develops.

xo
to
y'all,

c

chris at 5:06 AM |

 

--"tendon," via neuromedia at ucla

Check out this new issue of Mudlark (No. 28: 2005) :

Plextrum


This is not a thing to toy with.
Why, this very plexus, that’s what.
Once, we breathed water, you know.
Next, we’ll breathe fire with worse results.
For now, ozone will do nicely.
Take this fine thread that spans our bones.
There now. Pluck it.


--with its very fine feature of the poetry of Brian Clements: Use Cases.



~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Brian Clements~~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/

chris at 1:06 AM |

 

from H.D. : *


[The Walls Do Not Fall: 39]



We have had too much consecration,
too little affirmation,

too much: but this, this, this
has been proved heretical,

too little: I know, I feel
the meaning that words hide;

they are anagrams, cryptograms,
little boxes, conditioned

to hatch butterflies...

(405)


~



Theodor Roethke : *


The Minimal


I study lives on a leaf: the little
Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions,
Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,
Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds,
Squirmers in bogs,
And bacterial creepers
Wriggling through wounds
Like elvers in ponds,
Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
Cleaning and caressing,
Creeping and healing.

(844)



*in Norton's Modern American Poetry, 2003.

chris at 12:15 AM |

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

 

-- "Fly [Fishing] Los Alamos Ant," by Paul Prentiss @ www. frontrangeanglers, Boulder Colorado... --

Hey, how cool is this?--Ant-Sized Objects Anew, or 2, or II: check it out from Sawako Nakayasu :

Dear (anonymous) Friends,

I am writing a book about insects. If you would like to participate, please write back with a story or some other grouping of words about insects and:

--your relationship to them
--or a particular one
--or anything however suchly related

And if you know anyone who might also have something to say about insects, please pass this message along as well.

Caveat: I don't yet know what I will do or what will become of this - those of you who responded to my 'What is the same size as an ant' query a few years back ended up catalogued in the poem called 'Ant-sized objects, in the order received.' You might think of this as an expansion of such....

* responses may be posted in the form of a comment, or e-mailed directly to sawako (at) gmail.com

chris at 10:39 PM |

 

"By the end of the year, more than 500 detainees of around 35 nationalities continued to be held without charge or trial at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay..." -- Tim Morris at Optative Mood, quoting Amnesty International. Tim's writing on the Bushbag weirdness with words ... . Go Tim!

And do check out more of what Amnesty International has to say here.

chris at 1:54 AM |

 

from Shanna Compton : *


Post-Texas Expressive Heat


Your mother put a
fan in the oven,
he said, to cool
it down. That's right
the door is open
and on it sits
a little fan, blowing.

I am a little
fan, she says, an
ardent fan, a big
fan of yours. Whew.

(2)


*


Tumble in November


Witness this rapid gingering,
the jasmine tea green
and apple flesh creamy,
the tender risk of
paper sack to finger.
Yet we may shop
forever at the farmer's
stand nearby, your soul
(I know) a flue
opened upward and parboiled
pretty. It's true I
know you. You're just
alike to me, what
the laundromat girl (chic
doll she) can't see.

(16)




* Shanna Compton, Down Spooky. 2nd printing. Half Empty/Half Full, 2004.


~~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of Shanna Compton~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~~

chris at 1:15 AM |

 

from Kenneth Burke:

Since war and action are both parts of a graded series, having cruelty and vengence at one end and the highest manifestations of thought and sympathy at the other, I see no logical necessity for selecting the dyslogistic choice of the Nietzscheans as descriptive of the series' essence. Dyslogy itself can be considered as but the deterioration of eulogy, a kind of regrettable by-product (for in the inverted alchemy of this "imperfect world" much gold id eventually transformed into base metal). Man lives by purpose--and purpose is basically _preference_. Hence, where we have an even choice between conversion downwards and conversion upwards, who would feel logically obliged to select the direction which implied the destruction of human society. ... or we might choose such words as _cooperation_ and _communication_ ... .

(235-236)


* Kenneth Burke, "The Search for Motives," Permanence and Change, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954.

chris at 12:52 AM |

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

 

... this is one of those areas of human experience about which I had previously chosen to remain willfully ignorant. That's why I'm hoping you'll stick with me long enough to hear me out on this again today -- and occasionally in the future -- when the natural inclination might be to look away to avoid seeing something that we might prefer not to know. People in Diane's situation could use a little more understanding from the rest of us.
--Dave Brown, columnist at the Chicago Sun Times--June 5, 2005, "Dave or Diane: Being Different [Is] No Reason for Guilt." *



* Forwarded to Texfiles by kari edwards : )

o~o/

chris at 3:33 AM |

Monday, June 06, 2005

 

from George Oppen : *


Psalm

        Veritas sequitor...


In the small beauty of the forest
In wild deer bedding down--
That they are there!

          Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

          The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.

          Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

          The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.


(836)




* George Oppen, "Psalm," in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Vol 1. Eds. Jahan Ramanzani, Richard Ellman, Robert O'Clair. Norton, 2003.

chris at 9:57 PM |

Thursday, June 02, 2005

 

--Tatangaya (Hornet) Katsina


from Perspectives of Pueblo Folk:


The Hopi way of looking at the universe is quite different from our own and accounts for much in Hopi culture and personality which may seem strange to us. It shows that the conception of change in linear, cause-and-effect terms, common among us is absent in the thinking of these people, who see life in terms of interrelated, multi-manifested wholes in the process of metamorphosis, each according to its own mode, rhythm and tempo. Moreover, the Hopi concept of the balanced, correlative interdependence of the manifold aspects of reality excludes an arbitrary over-all dual division, such as that which structures our own thinking and forms the basis for our traditional ethical concept of the competing forces of good and evil. Duality in the Hopi world view exists only insofar as it represents two correlates in a reciprocally balanced universal scheme, and each correlate is conceived as an indispensable part of the whole, neither one being essentially subordinate to the other. --Laura Thompson and Alice Joseph, The Hopi Way (Haskell Institute, N.S. Indian Service, Laurever, Kansas)

chris at 10:59 PM |

 

I see there is an intriguing call for poetry submissions at Little Emerson. Might be interesting to try this one out, eh?

chris at 10:54 PM |

 

-- Ft. Wingate ruin, NM

from Cibecue Apache testimonial on singing chants to sources of power: *

I heard it that some of these people who own it (power) just talk to it. I don't believe it, what they say. Our songs come from those things (the powers) and go back to them when we sing them. They give the songs to people and we give them back. That way, a power knows you are trying to tell it something. It knows that when it hears songs. That is why these people sing at dances. When a power hears its songs then it will want to listen. If you don't sing songs, a power won't know where to find you, it won't want to work with you.


*unnamed Apache commenter, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology: The Cibecue Apache, ed. Keith Basso. Holt, Rhinehart, Winston, 1970.

chris at 8:08 PM |

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

 

from project: 22 lines


night driving engine whine
on headlights front & mirrored

highway 89 shoulder dust
Jerome sign blur you say

morning's a one-cloud-sky
aphids sucking
leaf juice
& purple scribble

dianthus pollen
footprints turning heat flat
as over-opinionated newsmen

who is capturing willow
branches for trimming while they float
feathering breeze origins
& horseflies

she was eleven
the year that robin
strangled in discarded
yarn blown tangling
into the lilac Vs

ownership makes the animal
salable




--cm

o~o/

chris at 8:10 AM |