Thursday, December 16, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Night Depository
The reenactment
showed the citizens
were sitting ducks, done-in
by the pyroclastic flows
In the blink of a cowering
eye, fallout of a drastic
miscue, one of many
ways to go
///
Came lymphing down
the home-stretch,
She put us through paces,
Shaker woodwork
and shape-note singing
or call-and-response
endurance anthems:
Troubleshot with
dyspnea, waived and
wavering in cold, star-
less blue curtains
A ways to go
The Quickening
not yet arrived
"There are [still] many
species of biting flies"
And the night hedges
maybe after every
seeming yes or no
showed the citizens
were sitting ducks, done-in
by the pyroclastic flows
In the blink of a cowering
eye, fallout of a drastic
miscue, one of many
ways to go
///
Came lymphing down
the home-stretch,
She put us through paces,
Shaker woodwork
and shape-note singing
or call-and-response
endurance anthems:
Troubleshot with
dyspnea, waived and
wavering in cold, star-
less blue curtains
A ways to go
The Quickening
not yet arrived
"There are [still] many
species of biting flies"
And the night hedges
maybe after every
seeming yes or no
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Holiday Throw Sale!
["Laminated Holy
Cards" & rebar wrapped
in tinsel]
There we were
talking the talk
A pre-fab funicular
version, then re-
tooled effort-
lessnesses: the-who-
&-the-what tidings
["wound"]---Blown glass
& iron ingots
had MARKED THE
SPACE, traversing
the brain-blood barrier
Tagging the toxic
plaques, we talk---So what
If it all merely hangs
together:
[Memos, displaced
but deputized
The Marked Space
Blues]
Cards" & rebar wrapped
in tinsel]
There we were
talking the talk
A pre-fab funicular
version, then re-
tooled effort-
lessnesses: the-who-
&-the-what tidings
["wound"]---Blown glass
& iron ingots
had MARKED THE
SPACE, traversing
the brain-blood barrier
Tagging the toxic
plaques, we talk---So what
If it all merely hangs
together:
[Memos, displaced
but deputized
The Marked Space
Blues]
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
THE MOON IS THE NUMBER 18, by Charles Olson
is a monstrance,
the blue dogs bay,
and the son sits,
grieving
is a grinning god, is
the mouth of, is
the dripping moon
while in the tower the cat
preens
and all motion
is a crab
and there is nothing he can do but what they do, watch
the face of waters, and fire
The blue dogs paw,
lick the droppings, dew
or blood, whatever
results are. And night,
the crab, rays round
attentive as the cat to catch
human sound
The blue dogs rue,
as he does, as he would howl, confronting
the wind which rocks what was her, while prayers
striate the snow, words blow
as questions cross fast, fast
as flames, as flames form, melt
along any darkness
Birth is an instance as is host, namely, death
The moon has no air
In the red tower
in that tower where she also sat
in that particular tower where watching & moving
are,
there,
there where what triumph there is, is: there
is all substance, all creature
all there is against the dirty moon, against
number, image, sortilege---
alone with cat & crab,
and sound is, is, his
conjecture
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Scenery
I always eagerly search
the index of a new book
to find a name I cherish,
and then I go to the last
page on which that name
is mentioned to see what
memorable thing might
have happened at that
vanishing point.
...
A woman's body, cropped at the shins and seen in profile, leans to the left,
that is, forward. She may or may not be falling, and her slack face suggests
either sleepiness or the thrall of some sedative. A man stands right of her.
He is dressed in a tailored-looking suit. His arm is extended out toward the
woman, almost touching the small of her back, though if she is falling, it does
not seem likely that he will have any real chance of catching her. The woman
appears to be wearing the man's beige rain-coat. It is oddly draped, hiding
her body. The still-frame fades smoothly in and out, according to a precise,
automated sine-wave pulse: the image surfaces from the darkness, slides
across, on a temporal curve, an apex-point of brightness, and then immed-
iately becomes subject to a steady dousing. Correspondingly, the screen is
only caught in total blackness for an incalculable moment before the illumi-
nated forms emerge again. The moment fades in and out like that, for hours.
...
(In any event
if an object sees action
it under-
goes some portion of
said event.)
the index of a new book
to find a name I cherish,
and then I go to the last
page on which that name
is mentioned to see what
memorable thing might
have happened at that
vanishing point.
...
A woman's body, cropped at the shins and seen in profile, leans to the left,
that is, forward. She may or may not be falling, and her slack face suggests
either sleepiness or the thrall of some sedative. A man stands right of her.
He is dressed in a tailored-looking suit. His arm is extended out toward the
woman, almost touching the small of her back, though if she is falling, it does
not seem likely that he will have any real chance of catching her. The woman
appears to be wearing the man's beige rain-coat. It is oddly draped, hiding
her body. The still-frame fades smoothly in and out, according to a precise,
automated sine-wave pulse: the image surfaces from the darkness, slides
across, on a temporal curve, an apex-point of brightness, and then immed-
iately becomes subject to a steady dousing. Correspondingly, the screen is
only caught in total blackness for an incalculable moment before the illumi-
nated forms emerge again. The moment fades in and out like that, for hours.
...
(In any event
if an object sees action
it under-
goes some portion of
said event.)
Well / Now
"So much
has
happened
if you
really
think
about
it,
love
and yet
there's
also so
much
that's
yet
to
happen"
(these
yellow
leaves
don't
rhyme
with
those
pinkish-
gray
clouds,
and
yet...)
has
happened
if you
really
think
about
it,
love
and yet
there's
also so
much
that's
yet
to
happen"
(these
yellow
leaves
don't
rhyme
with
those
pinkish-
gray
clouds,
and
yet...)
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Two Ensigns of Poignancy from 1918
- Kurt Schwitters
The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three
where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces are formeless like the stars
crystal points without strength burned basilica
mad : the zigzags crack
telephone
bite the rigging liquefy
the arc
climb
astral
memory
towards the north through its double fruit
like raw flesh
hunger fire blood
- Tristan Tzara
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Scrutability
When and in how many ways does your voice crack?
Offfen enufff, and these ways:
in self-same concentric or spiraling patterns,
in wounded-knee creases,
in glottalized guttural graphemes,
in M-dashes, chopped 'n' screwed,
in "Voice of the Nature" is my ringtone,
in as-is so-and-so,
in a cold, dry smattering,
in newly illumined minus-signage.
.................
(An italicized hyphen hissed,
revolted, forsook its place
& ligature duties---
it lung'd out at me.
Now, we've a little glare
lodged snugly against
the underside of our upper-
left cranial plate.)
Offfen enufff, and these ways:
in self-same concentric or spiraling patterns,
in wounded-knee creases,
in glottalized guttural graphemes,
in M-dashes, chopped 'n' screwed,
in "Voice of the Nature" is my ringtone,
in as-is so-and-so,
in a cold, dry smattering,
in newly illumined minus-signage.
.................
(An italicized hyphen hissed,
revolted, forsook its place
& ligature duties---
it lung'd out at me.
Now, we've a little glare
lodged snugly against
the underside of our upper-
left cranial plate.)
Friday, September 17, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Re: The Moon
Joseph Conte on ROBERT DUNCAN:
"The moon does not become a fixed symbol with limited relations but as a sign enters a limitless network of associations...The moon moves bodies of water, it moves the bodies of the lovers in their nocturnal embraces, and it moves 'the body of the poem, aroused' (Duncan, BB 19)."
MINA LOY
"Lunar Baedeker"
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia
To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies
...
A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis
From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient
Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete
And “Immortality”
mildews ...
in the museums of the moon
“Nocturnal cyclops”
“Crystal concubine”
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes
LAURA RIDING:
"If, for instance, I say 'the sun which multiplied' or 'the moon which singled,' as I do in one poem, I am endeavoring to indicate actualities of physical circumstance in which our inner crucialities of human circumstance are set. My moon may look like an old tired poetical symbol, and I like an old tired romanticist, but I truly meant that the moon's being what it is where it is intervenes in our outer circumstances as a negator of the sun's fostering excessivenss in our regard, both lush and destructive---as a tempering counter-agency, relatively little but near. However foolishly mystical this may seem, nothing so far learned by scientists or experienced by astronauts disproves this."
WALLACE STEVENS:
from "The Man in the Dump"
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.
JACK SPICER:
Moon,
...........cantilever of sylabbles
If it were spelled "mune" it would not cause madness.
...
"I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddently covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem---a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger."
RAE ARMANTROUT:
"View"
Not the city lights. We want
-the moon-
.....................The Moon
None of our own doing!
"The moon does not become a fixed symbol with limited relations but as a sign enters a limitless network of associations...The moon moves bodies of water, it moves the bodies of the lovers in their nocturnal embraces, and it moves 'the body of the poem, aroused' (Duncan, BB 19)."
MINA LOY
"Lunar Baedeker"
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia
To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies
...
A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis
From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient
Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete
And “Immortality”
mildews ...
in the museums of the moon
“Nocturnal cyclops”
“Crystal concubine”
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes
LAURA RIDING:
"If, for instance, I say 'the sun which multiplied' or 'the moon which singled,' as I do in one poem, I am endeavoring to indicate actualities of physical circumstance in which our inner crucialities of human circumstance are set. My moon may look like an old tired poetical symbol, and I like an old tired romanticist, but I truly meant that the moon's being what it is where it is intervenes in our outer circumstances as a negator of the sun's fostering excessivenss in our regard, both lush and destructive---as a tempering counter-agency, relatively little but near. However foolishly mystical this may seem, nothing so far learned by scientists or experienced by astronauts disproves this."
WALLACE STEVENS:
from "The Man in the Dump"
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.
JACK SPICER:
Moon,
...........cantilever of sylabbles
If it were spelled "mune" it would not cause madness.
...
"I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddently covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem---a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger."
RAE ARMANTROUT:
"View"
Not the city lights. We want
-the moon-
.....................The Moon
None of our own doing!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Signature Extras
"Every Piece Was His Favorite"
(Whetted drapes, no song, an empire waist.)
"Lost Sea Adventure"
(The ramifications of a radically indeterminate
universe, a materialism of noncoincidence.)
"Anecdotal Evidence of Homesick Mankind"
("...an angel hovers above
her pubic bone, and an eye stares out
from one shoulder---")
"In a Gilded World, Theirs Is But to Quip and Sigh"
(Incorrigible, inexorable, incurable: what delicious words.
I find them fatally true, of me and much.)
...
I'm a nervy angler, an abortive
pugilist: dull-barbed,
hamfisted; a dusty drone
with elan, devious, dervishy; swollen-
tongued communicant,
formalist makeshifter.
I'ma nnvh:
hvvy brvvng.
"Enchantment in a Race Against the Clock"
(Whetted drapes, no song, an empire waist.)
"Lost Sea Adventure"
(The ramifications of a radically indeterminate
universe, a materialism of noncoincidence.)
"Anecdotal Evidence of Homesick Mankind"
("...an angel hovers above
her pubic bone, and an eye stares out
from one shoulder---")
"In a Gilded World, Theirs Is But to Quip and Sigh"
(Incorrigible, inexorable, incurable: what delicious words.
I find them fatally true, of me and much.)
...
I'm a nervy angler, an abortive
pugilist: dull-barbed,
hamfisted; a dusty drone
with elan, devious, dervishy; swollen-
tongued communicant,
formalist makeshifter.
I'ma nnvh:
hvvy brvvng.
"Enchantment in a Race Against the Clock"
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Man's great affliction, which begins in infancy and accompanies him till death, is that looking and eating are two different operations. Eternal beatitude is a state where to look is to eat.
...
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.
- Simone Weil
...
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.
- Simone Weil
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
John Harkey is the CEO of Consolidated Restaurant Companies. He served with Arthur Simon on the Special Committee to negotiate the deal with MHR.
John Harkey is an avid outdoor adventurer who enjoys physical challenges. His exploits started in 1997 when he scaled Washington state's Mount Rainier, which is considered the most extreme endurance ice climb in the United States. That same year, he competed in the auto racing World Challenge series at Sears Point in Sonoma, Calif.
John Harkey is an aspiring free lance sports journalist specializing in football-related news and events.
"I've worked closely with John Cracken and John Harkey, and I've come to trust their judgment in evaluating companies. They are very thorough in the conduct of due diligence and creative in structuring a win-win transaction for all involved."
From teen to man, restauranteur John Harkey has channeled the energy of an entrepreneur.
...
STEPHENSON, Augustus A. "Gus" (killed by John Harkey).
HARKEY, John A. (killed by "Gus" Augustus Stephenson).
John Harkey is an avid outdoor adventurer who enjoys physical challenges. His exploits started in 1997 when he scaled Washington state's Mount Rainier, which is considered the most extreme endurance ice climb in the United States. That same year, he competed in the auto racing World Challenge series at Sears Point in Sonoma, Calif.
John Harkey is an aspiring free lance sports journalist specializing in football-related news and events.
"I've worked closely with John Cracken and John Harkey, and I've come to trust their judgment in evaluating companies. They are very thorough in the conduct of due diligence and creative in structuring a win-win transaction for all involved."
From teen to man, restauranteur John Harkey has channeled the energy of an entrepreneur.
...
STEPHENSON, Augustus A. "Gus" (killed by John Harkey).
HARKEY, John A. (killed by "Gus" Augustus Stephenson).
Friday, August 13, 2010
Coronal Mass Ejection
There was a "viscous, colloidal fog" that temporarily
took the form of a garden.
There were 30 seconds of weightlessness.
There was a burst of light and wind; later, all that remained was
"a mountain of disjointed facts that strain credulity."
(The austral summer is 5 months of no nighttime.)
Someone said "shame will save humanity."
..........
Each was coming from and headed towards something.
The question 'where are we?' is deferred, withheld, for several days.
Each, together, is reading & manipulating signs & objects, always in the shadow of a heaving, menacing thing: force or being.
Each cuts a certain figure socially, appears to be a certain type of person; the signs they present and produce are read according to the nearest familiar type connoted, and then further experiences (additional signs) modify this initial reading---overturn it, refine it, complicate it, and/or cement it.
Each must relive the event via the intensely subjective memory of catastrophe that is lodged like shrapnel in the mind.
took the form of a garden.
There were 30 seconds of weightlessness.
There was a burst of light and wind; later, all that remained was
"a mountain of disjointed facts that strain credulity."
(The austral summer is 5 months of no nighttime.)
Someone said "shame will save humanity."
..........
Each was coming from and headed towards something.
The question 'where are we?' is deferred, withheld, for several days.
Each, together, is reading & manipulating signs & objects, always in the shadow of a heaving, menacing thing: force or being.
Each cuts a certain figure socially, appears to be a certain type of person; the signs they present and produce are read according to the nearest familiar type connoted, and then further experiences (additional signs) modify this initial reading---overturn it, refine it, complicate it, and/or cement it.
Each must relive the event via the intensely subjective memory of catastrophe that is lodged like shrapnel in the mind.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Some Peirce
"A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. (A Fragment, CP 2.228, c. 1897)
"It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects (whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially) or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs." ('Pragmatism', EP 2:411, 1907)
"It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects (whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially) or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs." ('Pragmatism', EP 2:411, 1907)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
This Morning's Notices
- Back to School Rug Sale: Save 55% with Coupon at Rugs USA
- Teaching Opportunities at Graceville Corrections Facility
- NY Times: 'Russia, Crippled By Drought, Bans Grain Exports'
- A-Word-A-Day: 'vainglorious'
- Borders: 25% Off Your Purchase, Plus Glitter Ball Giveaway & Silly Bandz Swap!
- FYI: Folger Institute Paleography Skills Course
- Teaching Opportunities at Graceville Corrections Facility
- NY Times: 'Russia, Crippled By Drought, Bans Grain Exports'
- A-Word-A-Day: 'vainglorious'
- Borders: 25% Off Your Purchase, Plus Glitter Ball Giveaway & Silly Bandz Swap!
- FYI: Folger Institute Paleography Skills Course
Thursday, August 5, 2010
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