Christmas
One God is born. Others die. Truth
Did not come or go. Error changed.
Eternity is different now.
What happened was better always.
Blind Science plows the useless sod.
Fool Faith lives the dream of its observance.
A new God is but a word.
Search not, nor believe. All is hidden.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
12.16.2009
12.14.2009
The Somnolent Territories
Inspired by recent poetry readings, I've started working on some new verses for the first time in years, and in the process went back through some older unpublished works to find and edit this piece, which is essentially a catalog of places I visit in my sleep. Enjoy!
The Somnolent Territories
roving insomniac landscapes
cities hung off the cliffs of mind’s eye
no windows and a blurry clock
peeling the hours between dim alleys
crooked wooden dovecote homes
and the diagonal drift of vague
symbol-choked bars and opera halls
rocknroll dripping from the walls of
haunted hallucinating forests
footsteps cobwebbed off a too-close moon
searching for that one winged book
and a lock to lost love’s keystone
crumpled across the dunes and obelisks
of memory’s striated bedrock
vast with sand in the hourglass eye
and only one light on in the ruins
where they mine for replicating relics
to prove the world was ever here
but only in the lone of night when
the desert of soul ripples with worms
worm holes and the witch’s grotto
she’ll sell you charms and insurance
against early morning amnesia
and the mountains of shivering ice
carved to statues of flayed godsflesh
down the porcelain-leaved road of trials
all highways pass the convex lake
to the city of crystal and conveyors
floating on the edge of that abyss
where they fight off tooth decay
and visions of apocalypse by fire
and you don’t want to know
what lurks in the subbasement
but down to the beach
which we still can never reach
straddling tall mossy barrier reefs
beyond pirated jungle villas
to watch the spume of whalebacks
and the underwater sun slope
out of this rose colored sea of dreams
while the lighthouse keeps blinking
on the shelf of my father’s study
calling out to some greater tower
lying leagues offshore maybe north or
in an Oakland you can’t reach either
and or the walls are all façades and or
labyrinthine with jeebering horrors
you shouldn’t have asked about
and just like every childhood nightmare
it’s hiding around the corners
and or those walls are actually
a hostile alien life form maybe
a dark chaotic maelstrom that will
transport you to another dimension
like endless stairwells or the gates of hell
you can’t seem to stay away from
those worm holes rippling
and somewhere in the middle where
spiders spin the worlds together
is maybe a good night’s sleep.
The Somnolent Territories
roving insomniac landscapes
cities hung off the cliffs of mind’s eye
no windows and a blurry clock
peeling the hours between dim alleys
crooked wooden dovecote homes
and the diagonal drift of vague
symbol-choked bars and opera halls
rocknroll dripping from the walls of
haunted hallucinating forests
footsteps cobwebbed off a too-close moon
searching for that one winged book
and a lock to lost love’s keystone
crumpled across the dunes and obelisks
of memory’s striated bedrock
vast with sand in the hourglass eye
and only one light on in the ruins
where they mine for replicating relics
to prove the world was ever here
but only in the lone of night when
the desert of soul ripples with worms
worm holes and the witch’s grotto
she’ll sell you charms and insurance
against early morning amnesia
and the mountains of shivering ice
carved to statues of flayed godsflesh
down the porcelain-leaved road of trials
all highways pass the convex lake
to the city of crystal and conveyors
floating on the edge of that abyss
where they fight off tooth decay
and visions of apocalypse by fire
and you don’t want to know
what lurks in the subbasement
but down to the beach
which we still can never reach
straddling tall mossy barrier reefs
beyond pirated jungle villas
to watch the spume of whalebacks
and the underwater sun slope
out of this rose colored sea of dreams
while the lighthouse keeps blinking
on the shelf of my father’s study
calling out to some greater tower
lying leagues offshore maybe north or
in an Oakland you can’t reach either
and or the walls are all façades and or
labyrinthine with jeebering horrors
you shouldn’t have asked about
and just like every childhood nightmare
it’s hiding around the corners
and or those walls are actually
a hostile alien life form maybe
a dark chaotic maelstrom that will
transport you to another dimension
like endless stairwells or the gates of hell
you can’t seem to stay away from
those worm holes rippling
and somewhere in the middle where
spiders spin the worlds together
is maybe a good night’s sleep.
11.30.2009
The Way of What is to Come
Monday, listening to M.Pyres, dancing up and down over my copy of Jung's "Red Book" [on his theories of interpretation] finally arriving, though won't have time to dive into it for a couple weeks due to the increasing school work load. But soon.
For the time being here's some links that have been building up in my reader:
Images
From Kris Kuksi's Beast Anthology (above).
Dust Echoes: animated stories from the Australian dreamtime.
The dawn of a new post postmodern era in art.
Words
Viking love (and war) poetry.
Alan Moore's new zine, Dodgem Logic.
A Reader's Manifesto, or why contemporary literature sucks.
Bad sex in fiction award 2009 (NSFW).
The Books that founded D&D.
Faith and Politics
Obama omits reference to God in Thanksgiving speech.
The inherent fail of New Atheism.
Ritual sacrifices in Nepal see 320,000 animals sacrificed.
Switzerland Votes to Ban Minarets
CIA's lost magic manual resurfaces.
The global protest movement, ten years later.
Science
Doctors Recommend Medical Marjiuana for Minors with ADHD.
Humans hear through their skin.
Plants have a social life.
Science is shackled by intellectual property.
Large Hadron Collider sets world record for particle acceleration.
Virgin Galactic's Space-Grazing Aircraft Is Ready for Liftoff.
For the time being here's some links that have been building up in my reader:
Images
From Kris Kuksi's Beast Anthology (above).
Dust Echoes: animated stories from the Australian dreamtime.
The dawn of a new post postmodern era in art.
Words
Viking love (and war) poetry.
Alan Moore's new zine, Dodgem Logic.
A Reader's Manifesto, or why contemporary literature sucks.
Bad sex in fiction award 2009 (NSFW).
The Books that founded D&D.
Faith and Politics
Obama omits reference to God in Thanksgiving speech.
The inherent fail of New Atheism.
Ritual sacrifices in Nepal see 320,000 animals sacrificed.
Switzerland Votes to Ban Minarets
CIA's lost magic manual resurfaces.
The global protest movement, ten years later.
Science
Doctors Recommend Medical Marjiuana for Minors with ADHD.
Humans hear through their skin.
Plants have a social life.
Science is shackled by intellectual property.
Large Hadron Collider sets world record for particle acceleration.
Virgin Galactic's Space-Grazing Aircraft Is Ready for Liftoff.
11.22.2009
The Artist's Mind/ the Public Eye
Last night I went out to reading held by the local Six Gallery Press, as I haven't been getting out of the house much lately and needed that creative inspiration. There I ran into my friend, the gentle giant Jessica Fenlon, who as always was gushing with her creative process. We stood on the corner talking about that moment when one is writing or making art, and everything starts to come together, not just in the work, but literally as if the contents of the art suddenly spilled over into reality with a great a-ha (such epiphanic moments being for me one of the strongest reasons to and for which to create, somewhat like the faulty pattern recognition of apophenia, except as artists, who else decides what patterns are real?)
What was actually more inspiring than the reading was afterward finding Jessica's website, drawclose, which, besides having some of her rather fantastic and surreal videos, made me realize that I have far too many creative outlets that a). I've been terribly neglecting of late, and b). aren't as represented on the interwebs as they could be. At least not in one cohesive place. I realize I should probably bite it and get a domain name at some point, but for now I've taken the trouble to make the links to my various writings more visible in the sidebar here, as well as update a ton of artwork from the past 8 years to my flickr account, in particular making new sets for Collages, Inklings, and photographs of Modern Ruins. The next step will be figuring out the best way to host music so that I can put up recordings somewhere.
On the other hand, I am also reaching a point of frustration with the easy and public mediation of the Internet, which happens every couple of years, when I get too caught up in the public representations and analyzes and begin neglecting the creative process all together. It seems to me that we live in an age where everyone is creating (or at least "producing content") all the time, and is equally making that content available, all the time, except what is lost is the ability to step back, to edit, to build larger projects. Or, is lost the necessary silence, the magical space created when no one knows where or who you are or what you are doing, when out of the public eye the artist's mind is the total sphere of attention, and anything becomes possible. It is only when you disappear into the work that the epiphany truly starts to happen. And it won't if you're too busy telling people about it to let the threads weave and build up to something more than the just this.
What was actually more inspiring than the reading was afterward finding Jessica's website, drawclose, which, besides having some of her rather fantastic and surreal videos, made me realize that I have far too many creative outlets that a). I've been terribly neglecting of late, and b). aren't as represented on the interwebs as they could be. At least not in one cohesive place. I realize I should probably bite it and get a domain name at some point, but for now I've taken the trouble to make the links to my various writings more visible in the sidebar here, as well as update a ton of artwork from the past 8 years to my flickr account, in particular making new sets for Collages, Inklings, and photographs of Modern Ruins. The next step will be figuring out the best way to host music so that I can put up recordings somewhere.
On the other hand, I am also reaching a point of frustration with the easy and public mediation of the Internet, which happens every couple of years, when I get too caught up in the public representations and analyzes and begin neglecting the creative process all together. It seems to me that we live in an age where everyone is creating (or at least "producing content") all the time, and is equally making that content available, all the time, except what is lost is the ability to step back, to edit, to build larger projects. Or, is lost the necessary silence, the magical space created when no one knows where or who you are or what you are doing, when out of the public eye the artist's mind is the total sphere of attention, and anything becomes possible. It is only when you disappear into the work that the epiphany truly starts to happen. And it won't if you're too busy telling people about it to let the threads weave and build up to something more than the just this.
9.28.2008
Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers
[from Harper's]
As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.
Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably.
As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.
As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.
Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably.
As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.
8.24.2008
On Being a Young Poet
Every few years I find myself set adrift, for one reason or another placed in an emotional or moral position somewhat off center and in need of guidance. It is in times like these when invariably someone reminds me about Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet."
I first came across this text, and Rilke at all, in my first year of my first attempt at college, ten years ago. It was a required text for incoming freshmen! Of course, I was too young, too headstrong at the time, probably like any other kid fresh out in the world, to admit that there were deep issues, dark questions, that one might need advice, not in answering, but in living. As Rilke puts it, "be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point it, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
This quote has been a favorite for many years, though I still don't fully understand it. Another thing that it's taken me a long time to wrap my head around is the necessity of solitude, something that Rilke stresses on almost every page of his letters. Solitude in order to go into yourself, to find your reason to write and to seek out the dreams, memories, impressions that make one's internal world. Solitude in order to find the patience to allow everything to gestate, the acceptance of doing what is difficult and therefor necessary, the clarity of the senses beneath the surface and multiplicity of the world where one can actually create. Solitude in order to grow into one that can love and be loved, a "love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."
These days I exist mostly in a happy solitude, with my stories and new kitten Ruby and lots of music, a happiness that is mainly broken only when other people are involved. It is strange to think that for years I sought out the company of others, not because I actually wanted to be around them, but because I was under the impression that I should, because it was easier to become involved in order to hide from myself and my possibilities behind the social masks of sex, drugs, rock and roll. One of the few kinds of occasions I would actually enjoy myself in public in was being on stage, playing a show. Talk about the performance of everyday life. Which isn't to say that I don't enjoy being around other people, but that I have learned that I require a much more immense amount of time to myself, which when I have it allows me to interact with others in a much more reciprocal and centered way, as well as get a lot of writing done.
"Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars."
It is also interesting, and immensely inspiring, to think that Rilke was twenty-eight, my age, when he wrote these letters, and yet so wise (or so precocious with the weight of the world, though one feels that he really felt and bore that weight in its fullest understanding). I can only bow my head.
[quotes from M.D. Herter Norton's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," though the Stephen Mitchell translation I linked to above is far superior, as Mitchell gets the emotional necessity of Rilke's writing.]
I first came across this text, and Rilke at all, in my first year of my first attempt at college, ten years ago. It was a required text for incoming freshmen! Of course, I was too young, too headstrong at the time, probably like any other kid fresh out in the world, to admit that there were deep issues, dark questions, that one might need advice, not in answering, but in living. As Rilke puts it, "be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point it, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
This quote has been a favorite for many years, though I still don't fully understand it. Another thing that it's taken me a long time to wrap my head around is the necessity of solitude, something that Rilke stresses on almost every page of his letters. Solitude in order to go into yourself, to find your reason to write and to seek out the dreams, memories, impressions that make one's internal world. Solitude in order to find the patience to allow everything to gestate, the acceptance of doing what is difficult and therefor necessary, the clarity of the senses beneath the surface and multiplicity of the world where one can actually create. Solitude in order to grow into one that can love and be loved, a "love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."
These days I exist mostly in a happy solitude, with my stories and new kitten Ruby and lots of music, a happiness that is mainly broken only when other people are involved. It is strange to think that for years I sought out the company of others, not because I actually wanted to be around them, but because I was under the impression that I should, because it was easier to become involved in order to hide from myself and my possibilities behind the social masks of sex, drugs, rock and roll. One of the few kinds of occasions I would actually enjoy myself in public in was being on stage, playing a show. Talk about the performance of everyday life. Which isn't to say that I don't enjoy being around other people, but that I have learned that I require a much more immense amount of time to myself, which when I have it allows me to interact with others in a much more reciprocal and centered way, as well as get a lot of writing done."Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars."
It is also interesting, and immensely inspiring, to think that Rilke was twenty-eight, my age, when he wrote these letters, and yet so wise (or so precocious with the weight of the world, though one feels that he really felt and bore that weight in its fullest understanding). I can only bow my head.
[quotes from M.D. Herter Norton's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," though the Stephen Mitchell translation I linked to above is far superior, as Mitchell gets the emotional necessity of Rilke's writing.]
6.04.2008
Words from the Brainpan
For a while now I've been looking for a good way of cataloging my library, which is well on its way over four hundred books these days. While there's something to be said for lists and alphabetical order there's times when I want to reshelve my books by genre, or by nationality, themes, or rating/review, which is why discovering Goodreads has been such an ingenious find, as it allows me to do all these things, combined with the functionality of a social networking site. And on top of that one can even submit one's own work and push yourself as an author. And since my small amount of published writing is self-published zines I decided to upload them in entirety for anyone to read, starting with my two poetry chapbooks: Invisible Neighborhoods and All Tonight's Adventures, as well as an interesting series of prose, Excerpts from the Back of the Skull.
Of course, both these books were written several years ago, and the process of uploading them was an interesting journey down memory lane, back to a time when I was much more of a naïve romantic, with tremendous amounts of hope for the world and for the power of language. Not that I am jaded now, but trying to take a much more mature position on my work and what is possible for me to achieve. But what was interesting was not going back to the memories of events surrounding my life at that point, but to the memory of actually writing the poems, with all the peculiar linguistic challenges that presented. As I am not a trained poet and have very little knowledge of verse, meter, etc, I was really approaching these books from somewhat of an outsider standpoint and essentially making up the rules for my poetry as I went along.
Hopefully I will be posting more of my recent work in the future, so stay tuned.
Of course, both these books were written several years ago, and the process of uploading them was an interesting journey down memory lane, back to a time when I was much more of a naïve romantic, with tremendous amounts of hope for the world and for the power of language. Not that I am jaded now, but trying to take a much more mature position on my work and what is possible for me to achieve. But what was interesting was not going back to the memories of events surrounding my life at that point, but to the memory of actually writing the poems, with all the peculiar linguistic challenges that presented. As I am not a trained poet and have very little knowledge of verse, meter, etc, I was really approaching these books from somewhat of an outsider standpoint and essentially making up the rules for my poetry as I went along.
Hopefully I will be posting more of my recent work in the future, so stay tuned.
12.18.2007
Nothing but Annihilation
Over the summer, Sophie encouraged me to try a writing exercise of typing free-association images for a given number of minutes each day, and then putting them away unread to be used for a poem later on. I forgot all about them with the advent of school, and found them today while going through my boxes and files during the process of moving. I immediately had to write a poem, which I realized I haven't done in at least a year now.
Nothing but Annihilation
A dark wolf stalks the forest of tin cans and wire,
Slouching over the guardrail and wood-grain of the night.
A solemn golem hunting the hawk-winged angel; Poisoned
Primroses pinned to his suit jacket, shotgun slung over one clay shoulder,
His howls darkling the streetlamps in this tar-pool rain.
Leopard skin bankbook glistening with the fat sweat of his pleated palms,
His tie a hangman’s noose, a serpent woven from liquid gold and ashes
Poised for flight on an arrow of wooden slats and silver dollars.
The lions of greed drink from these dark labyrinths of blood and roses,
An abyss of birds and buildings, clocks falling into the river.
A small dog in a trashcan sinking into the night’s warmth, trailing
The riverbed sewn with hatchets and revolvers, buttons and petrified sinew.
Language is a body dying in the window of the beast called mouth,
Tongues of flame and honey, a shoe forgotten in the gutter’s memory.
She sleeps on a bed of crushed velvet and scavenged newspapers,
A ladder made of bones, the morbid sacrality of moist lungs and halos.
The angel’s thigh, draped in white garments stained a pale rose.
She dreams of dollar-fled fields and pounds of corpulent text,
A child’s face of pure joy, illuminated by the subtlest matrices,
A destroyer of time as her hair sweeps the prismatic streets clean.
Stars fall bleeding to the pavement, crying softly at night to go home,
Small lightning bugs of molten metal and mutilated machinery
Dance like jeweled scarves and cinnamon sticks under the half-eaten moon,
Beneath the weight of a thousand plastic worlds twirling on tilted poles.
The beast weeps at his own reflection, falters the gun into the wasteland,
The sky askew and smoke smiting the city with razor-wire clouds,
He weeps alone, binding the hours till sunrise, presents for a time
When the whole feathered mechanism bursts into flames and hosannas.
Nothing but Annihilation
A dark wolf stalks the forest of tin cans and wire,
Slouching over the guardrail and wood-grain of the night.
A solemn golem hunting the hawk-winged angel; Poisoned
Primroses pinned to his suit jacket, shotgun slung over one clay shoulder,
His howls darkling the streetlamps in this tar-pool rain.
Leopard skin bankbook glistening with the fat sweat of his pleated palms,
His tie a hangman’s noose, a serpent woven from liquid gold and ashes
Poised for flight on an arrow of wooden slats and silver dollars.
The lions of greed drink from these dark labyrinths of blood and roses,
An abyss of birds and buildings, clocks falling into the river.
A small dog in a trashcan sinking into the night’s warmth, trailing
The riverbed sewn with hatchets and revolvers, buttons and petrified sinew.
Language is a body dying in the window of the beast called mouth,
Tongues of flame and honey, a shoe forgotten in the gutter’s memory.
She sleeps on a bed of crushed velvet and scavenged newspapers,
A ladder made of bones, the morbid sacrality of moist lungs and halos.
The angel’s thigh, draped in white garments stained a pale rose.
She dreams of dollar-fled fields and pounds of corpulent text,
A child’s face of pure joy, illuminated by the subtlest matrices,
A destroyer of time as her hair sweeps the prismatic streets clean.
Stars fall bleeding to the pavement, crying softly at night to go home,
Small lightning bugs of molten metal and mutilated machinery
Dance like jeweled scarves and cinnamon sticks under the half-eaten moon,
Beneath the weight of a thousand plastic worlds twirling on tilted poles.
The beast weeps at his own reflection, falters the gun into the wasteland,
The sky askew and smoke smiting the city with razor-wire clouds,
He weeps alone, binding the hours till sunrise, presents for a time
When the whole feathered mechanism bursts into flames and hosannas.
10.11.2006
kiss the dirt
because you aren't afraid to kiss the dirt
(and consequently dare to climb the sky)
-e.e. cummings
(and consequently dare to climb the sky)
-e.e. cummings
10.02.2006
the lamentations of an icarus
the lovers of prostitutes
are happy, cheerful and well-fed;
as for me, my arms are broken
through having hugged the clouds.
it is thanks to the incomparable stars,
blazing in the depths of the sky,
that my devoured eyes see only
the memories of suns.
in vain i wished to find
the centre and end of space;
i know not under what fiery eye
i feel my wings breaking;
and burnt up by love of beauty,
i shall not have the sublime honor
of giving my name to the abyss
which will serve as my grave.
-Baudelaire
are happy, cheerful and well-fed;
as for me, my arms are broken
through having hugged the clouds.
it is thanks to the incomparable stars,
blazing in the depths of the sky,
that my devoured eyes see only
the memories of suns.
in vain i wished to find
the centre and end of space;
i know not under what fiery eye
i feel my wings breaking;
and burnt up by love of beauty,
i shall not have the sublime honor
of giving my name to the abyss
which will serve as my grave.
-Baudelaire
9.20.2006
the journey, by charles baudelaire
When i started reading this poem earlier i knew it was going to be one of those poems, the ones that make you cry yes! the ones that when they were written you know the microphones were listening. this translation, by geoffery wagner, is not as good as the french (and that's funny that what with the five years of latin reading it in the french actually makes sense. it least there it meters and rhymes), so i may tweak it a bit, but won't transcribe all eight parts.
1.
For the child, adoring cards and stamps,
The universe fulfills its vast appetite.
Ah, how large is the world in the brightness of lamps,
In the eyes of memory how the world is petite!
One morning we leave, brains full of flame,
Hearts full of malice and bitter desires,
And we go, and follow the rhythm of the waves,
Rocking our infinite on the finite of the seas:
Some, happy to escape an infamous country
Others, the horrors of their cradle, and a few,
Astrologers drowned in the eyes of a woman,
Some tyrannical Circe of dangerous perfumes.
So not to be changed into beasts, they get drunk
On space and light and skies on fire;
The ice that bites, the suns that turn them copper,
Slowly efface the mark of kisses.
But the true travelers are they who depart
For departing's sake; hearts light as balloons,
From their destinies they never swerve,
And, without knowing why, say continuously: Let us go on!
These have desires formed like clouds.
And they dream, as a conscript of his gun,
Of vast pleasures, transient, little understood,
Which the human spirit can not name.
ii.
That we imitate, the horror! the top and ball
In their bounding waltzes; even asleep
Curiosity torments and turns us
Like a cruel angel whipping the sun.
Whimsical fortune, whose end is displaced,
And, being nowhere, can be anywhere!
Where Man, in whom hope is never weary,
Runs searching for repose always like a madman.
Our soul is a brigantine seeking its Icarie;
A voice resounds on deck: 'Open your eyes!'
A voice from the maintop, hot and mad, cries:
'Love...glory...fortune!' Hell! is a rock.
Each little island sighted by the lookout man
Is an Eldorado the promise of Destiny;
Imagination, dressing its orgies,
Finds but a reef in the light of morning.
Oh the poor lover of chimerical lands!
Must one put him in irons, throw him in the sea,
This drunken sailor, inventor of Americas
Whose mirages rend the gulfs more bitter?
Thus the old vagabond, tramping through the mud,
Dreams, with his nose in the air, of brilliants paradises;
His bewitched eyes discover a Capua
Wherever a candle glimmers in a hovel.
iii.
Wonderful travelers! what noble histories
We read in your eyes as deep as the seas!
Show us the coffins of your rich memories,
Those marvelous jewels, of stars and stratospheres.
We would travel without wind or sail!
And so, to gladden the boredom of our prisons,
Pass over our spirits, stretched like a canvas,
Your memories with their frames of horizons.
Tell us, what have you seen?
1.
For the child, adoring cards and stamps,
The universe fulfills its vast appetite.
Ah, how large is the world in the brightness of lamps,
In the eyes of memory how the world is petite!
One morning we leave, brains full of flame,
Hearts full of malice and bitter desires,
And we go, and follow the rhythm of the waves,
Rocking our infinite on the finite of the seas:
Some, happy to escape an infamous country
Others, the horrors of their cradle, and a few,
Astrologers drowned in the eyes of a woman,
Some tyrannical Circe of dangerous perfumes.
So not to be changed into beasts, they get drunk
On space and light and skies on fire;
The ice that bites, the suns that turn them copper,
Slowly efface the mark of kisses.
But the true travelers are they who depart
For departing's sake; hearts light as balloons,
From their destinies they never swerve,
And, without knowing why, say continuously: Let us go on!
These have desires formed like clouds.
And they dream, as a conscript of his gun,
Of vast pleasures, transient, little understood,
Which the human spirit can not name.
ii.
That we imitate, the horror! the top and ball
In their bounding waltzes; even asleep
Curiosity torments and turns us
Like a cruel angel whipping the sun.
Whimsical fortune, whose end is displaced,
And, being nowhere, can be anywhere!
Where Man, in whom hope is never weary,
Runs searching for repose always like a madman.
Our soul is a brigantine seeking its Icarie;
A voice resounds on deck: 'Open your eyes!'
A voice from the maintop, hot and mad, cries:
'Love...glory...fortune!' Hell! is a rock.
Each little island sighted by the lookout man
Is an Eldorado the promise of Destiny;
Imagination, dressing its orgies,
Finds but a reef in the light of morning.
Oh the poor lover of chimerical lands!
Must one put him in irons, throw him in the sea,
This drunken sailor, inventor of Americas
Whose mirages rend the gulfs more bitter?
Thus the old vagabond, tramping through the mud,
Dreams, with his nose in the air, of brilliants paradises;
His bewitched eyes discover a Capua
Wherever a candle glimmers in a hovel.
iii.
Wonderful travelers! what noble histories
We read in your eyes as deep as the seas!
Show us the coffins of your rich memories,
Those marvelous jewels, of stars and stratospheres.
We would travel without wind or sail!
And so, to gladden the boredom of our prisons,
Pass over our spirits, stretched like a canvas,
Your memories with their frames of horizons.
Tell us, what have you seen?
9.11.2006
correspondences
from an intro to baudelaire (by enid starkie)
"the hidden relation between things here below and in the world above he called correspondences. everything in this world is merely the symbol of a hieroglyphic language and he claimed that it was the function of the artist to decipher the hidden writing of nature and interpret the mysteries of the universe. he considered that only poets who had reached a high degree of spirituality were capable of understanding and interpreting these mysteries. beauty was not for him, material beauty alone. beauty was essentially a spiritual reality and he was convinced that art was the greatest and perhaps the only means of effecting beauty in this world... beauty for him did not lie in the subject itself but in what the artist brought to it. beauty was the flame of the fire, the radiance of the energy, generated by the spiritual shock he received when he was moved and this spiritual shock could come from aspects hitherto considered ugly. he did not see beauty in ugliness, he only said that from ugliness he could distill beauty. from the fire kindled within him the poet forged beauty and the intensity of the fire depended on his spiritual nature. the more spiritual the poet the greater the intensity of heat generated. poetry for him was not mere composition and to be a poet meant to be capable of spiritual growth."
"the hidden relation between things here below and in the world above he called correspondences. everything in this world is merely the symbol of a hieroglyphic language and he claimed that it was the function of the artist to decipher the hidden writing of nature and interpret the mysteries of the universe. he considered that only poets who had reached a high degree of spirituality were capable of understanding and interpreting these mysteries. beauty was not for him, material beauty alone. beauty was essentially a spiritual reality and he was convinced that art was the greatest and perhaps the only means of effecting beauty in this world... beauty for him did not lie in the subject itself but in what the artist brought to it. beauty was the flame of the fire, the radiance of the energy, generated by the spiritual shock he received when he was moved and this spiritual shock could come from aspects hitherto considered ugly. he did not see beauty in ugliness, he only said that from ugliness he could distill beauty. from the fire kindled within him the poet forged beauty and the intensity of the fire depended on his spiritual nature. the more spiritual the poet the greater the intensity of heat generated. poetry for him was not mere composition and to be a poet meant to be capable of spiritual growth."
9.06.2006
lovely dangers
"The lover, is in such splended danger just because he must depend upon the co-ordination of his senses, for he knows that they must meet in that unique and risky center, in which, renouncing all extension, they come together and have no permanence."
- Rilke
- Rilke
9.05.2006
a day in familiar sensations
smell of musty elevators in apartment buildings like the one my grandmother lived in
and checked tableclothes spilled with diner syrup
the rumble and stale subway air echoing melancholy off the platform walls with classical guitar chords well dressed but scruffy fingers wincing as the train announcments sound off beat
jumbled glare of warehouse graffiti only visible from the tracks
smell of ocean salt and expectation, each summer of my youth
crunch of toes in sand and spiraled shells between fingers worn opalescent with waves
colors in the mute gray breeze: sky blue and purple clouded sand drifts edged with red tar waves with green ripples only vibrant when the sun slides out from behind the approaching storm
then the sand is brilliant
a cut of tweed porkpie hat and mother of pearl inlayed accordian, a boy on the T tries to look ambiguous and older than his too smooth cheeks and century
"hello!" shouts an old friend smile not seen for four years
smell of basil grown and ground to pesto by her hands
tang of red wine and bite of whisky, irish clinking on ice
overtone harmonics of musicians tuning and crackle hiss of microphone failure
sore muscles from too much walking
shimmering reflection of moonlight on water and the configuration of the Plaeidies
taste of kisses on rooftop
***
today we wandered into the downtown crossing to browse through musty old used bookstores (and why am i not running one?) where i found a copy of some aldous huxley poems from the 30's and Plath's "Ariel" which i remembered later i had dreamt about buying a copy of in my dreams last night (except that one was enormous and in spanish).
and checked tableclothes spilled with diner syrup
the rumble and stale subway air echoing melancholy off the platform walls with classical guitar chords well dressed but scruffy fingers wincing as the train announcments sound off beat
jumbled glare of warehouse graffiti only visible from the tracks
smell of ocean salt and expectation, each summer of my youth
crunch of toes in sand and spiraled shells between fingers worn opalescent with waves
colors in the mute gray breeze: sky blue and purple clouded sand drifts edged with red tar waves with green ripples only vibrant when the sun slides out from behind the approaching storm
then the sand is brilliant
a cut of tweed porkpie hat and mother of pearl inlayed accordian, a boy on the T tries to look ambiguous and older than his too smooth cheeks and century
"hello!" shouts an old friend smile not seen for four years
smell of basil grown and ground to pesto by her hands
tang of red wine and bite of whisky, irish clinking on ice
overtone harmonics of musicians tuning and crackle hiss of microphone failure
sore muscles from too much walking
shimmering reflection of moonlight on water and the configuration of the Plaeidies
taste of kisses on rooftop
***
today we wandered into the downtown crossing to browse through musty old used bookstores (and why am i not running one?) where i found a copy of some aldous huxley poems from the 30's and Plath's "Ariel" which i remembered later i had dreamt about buying a copy of in my dreams last night (except that one was enormous and in spanish).
8.13.2006
asterism
Blinking balefully between the barlights and billboards. “that one’s Deneb,” he said, “and that’s Vega, and the third making the long point in the Summer Triangle is Altair.” It wasn’t a constellation, but it’s shape, drawn out of our peculiar penchant for pattern recognition, was one of the only asterisms visible in the city sky. “though i might be wrong which are Deneb and Vega, but it doesn’t really matter.” it’s not like we were trying to go sailing. He pulled out a piece of paper and began drawing clusters of dots, “let me show you something. you know where the big dipper is, right? well trace up from the lower side and you’ll find the Pole Star in the little dipper. Up from there, Cassiopeia, which looks like a crooked M. continue that arch and you’ll hit Andromeda and from there trace the longer arm down to Perseus. I’m not sure if that’s clear, oh wait, i’ve got a book of star charts in my bag.”
I flipped through it, mesmerized by the map of spectral points lines, like some secret forgotten tome of connect the dots, while he turned back and continued the winding conversation about comic books, snakes on a plane, the current debacle in Israel. Around the tables others stood in the summer sweat, drinking and talking and looking for some meaning in each other’s faces but none of them looking up. I wanted to take the book and use it for what it’s for, to find a way out of here. I wanted an antique telescope (even if the magnification wasn’t enough), a tall hill, a rock to bust the streetlamps, and all the heavens spread wide before my gaze. I sighed and lit another cigarette.
For the past several years I had made it a habit to go out at night and look up, try and familiarize myself with the few constellations i could find and name and watch their course as the earth spun through the year. as if being able to orient myself to the universe i could know where i was, or what i was supposed to do with my life. for centuries man has thus looked up and seen the vast oceans of light in which we are only the barest speck of dust. we have based whole societies off these configurations, determined harvest times, sailed around the world, created mythologies in the movement of figures in which we could understand the process of life, even if the constellations only appear as congruent, due to our perspective looking out into space, one could be spread out across billions of light years distance. but i suppose it was reassuring, and still is, to imagine the sky as a large dome of night on which the stars are drawn. a sense of center, of importance. but now we have forgotten even that, and walk around as if there was nothing outside ourselves, no greater reality on which to plot our lives, like we could no longer find a place or meaning beyond that small internal starlight that pushes us through the days.
the next night, another bar, another restless longing. “i want to go on an adventure, but where? how far is there to go?” eventually remember the Perseid meteor shower and we head off to the cemetery, which though still in the city is the closest darkest place, and even if we don’t see anything it’s still a nice walk. down the path between tombstones, like the black road of the Milky Way mapped on earth. i look up, try and orient myself, excited to use this new knowledge so soon. my companions are talking, adjusting to the dark. “ok, there’s the big dipper, there’s the pole star, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, we should be looking there… oh, fuck yeah! there’s one now!” a streak of light falling through the clouds, caught between a tree branch and an obelisk. i start jumping up and down, running backwards. “there’s another!” no one else has seen them yet and i take off running, zig-zagging through the graves to the tallest hill where i plop down on a headstone and stare up rapt. an hour passes in the drift of clouds and the overfull moon. i keep on reorienting myself but there are no meteors. eventually we head out, and on the way see a couple more, but that’s it, as if they only fell when we weren’t actually looking for them. i feel ecstatic, radiant like a star myself, but saddened that that’s the best it would get this night, this century. back on the streets it’s impossible to see anything up there and someone says, “well, now what?” Perseus may have slain the gorgon and turned Cassiopeia to stone to wed her daughter Andromeda, freed from the rocks, but now he is fading, forgotten, dying out as his story turns to dust and his stars fall, dead long before he was imagined. i wonder how long might we last, who aren’t already emblazoned in the heavens?
this following little ditty was based off key lines in the above piece, much like the deconstruction exercise...
a star fell off the map
and got tangled in the treetops
i wondered what myth had crumbled
while we kicked among the tombstones,
some warrior-god forgotten
between barlights and billboards
and finding fate in faces
and not one looking upwards.
if i had a telescope
and a rock to break the streetlamps
i'd sail the constellations
to see if it was my own
I flipped through it, mesmerized by the map of spectral points lines, like some secret forgotten tome of connect the dots, while he turned back and continued the winding conversation about comic books, snakes on a plane, the current debacle in Israel. Around the tables others stood in the summer sweat, drinking and talking and looking for some meaning in each other’s faces but none of them looking up. I wanted to take the book and use it for what it’s for, to find a way out of here. I wanted an antique telescope (even if the magnification wasn’t enough), a tall hill, a rock to bust the streetlamps, and all the heavens spread wide before my gaze. I sighed and lit another cigarette.
For the past several years I had made it a habit to go out at night and look up, try and familiarize myself with the few constellations i could find and name and watch their course as the earth spun through the year. as if being able to orient myself to the universe i could know where i was, or what i was supposed to do with my life. for centuries man has thus looked up and seen the vast oceans of light in which we are only the barest speck of dust. we have based whole societies off these configurations, determined harvest times, sailed around the world, created mythologies in the movement of figures in which we could understand the process of life, even if the constellations only appear as congruent, due to our perspective looking out into space, one could be spread out across billions of light years distance. but i suppose it was reassuring, and still is, to imagine the sky as a large dome of night on which the stars are drawn. a sense of center, of importance. but now we have forgotten even that, and walk around as if there was nothing outside ourselves, no greater reality on which to plot our lives, like we could no longer find a place or meaning beyond that small internal starlight that pushes us through the days.
the next night, another bar, another restless longing. “i want to go on an adventure, but where? how far is there to go?” eventually remember the Perseid meteor shower and we head off to the cemetery, which though still in the city is the closest darkest place, and even if we don’t see anything it’s still a nice walk. down the path between tombstones, like the black road of the Milky Way mapped on earth. i look up, try and orient myself, excited to use this new knowledge so soon. my companions are talking, adjusting to the dark. “ok, there’s the big dipper, there’s the pole star, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, we should be looking there… oh, fuck yeah! there’s one now!” a streak of light falling through the clouds, caught between a tree branch and an obelisk. i start jumping up and down, running backwards. “there’s another!” no one else has seen them yet and i take off running, zig-zagging through the graves to the tallest hill where i plop down on a headstone and stare up rapt. an hour passes in the drift of clouds and the overfull moon. i keep on reorienting myself but there are no meteors. eventually we head out, and on the way see a couple more, but that’s it, as if they only fell when we weren’t actually looking for them. i feel ecstatic, radiant like a star myself, but saddened that that’s the best it would get this night, this century. back on the streets it’s impossible to see anything up there and someone says, “well, now what?” Perseus may have slain the gorgon and turned Cassiopeia to stone to wed her daughter Andromeda, freed from the rocks, but now he is fading, forgotten, dying out as his story turns to dust and his stars fall, dead long before he was imagined. i wonder how long might we last, who aren’t already emblazoned in the heavens?
this following little ditty was based off key lines in the above piece, much like the deconstruction exercise...
a star fell off the map
and got tangled in the treetops
i wondered what myth had crumbled
while we kicked among the tombstones,
some warrior-god forgotten
between barlights and billboards
and finding fate in faces
and not one looking upwards.
if i had a telescope
and a rock to break the streetlamps
i'd sail the constellations
to see if it was my own
8.11.2006
notes on days
spinning along the tightrope shadows of telephone wires
and the constellation crunch of fall's first fallen,
though the days lay dogged and panting still
the underlying heat subsides into the liner notes
of stolen LPs pouring over star maps at the bar,
charting the course of cool breezes from dream
to rust in the trajectory of meteor showers and silence
and long walks in harvest moon hoodies
hanging from the eaves of the hospital
with a stack of hotcakes.
and the constellation crunch of fall's first fallen,
though the days lay dogged and panting still
the underlying heat subsides into the liner notes
of stolen LPs pouring over star maps at the bar,
charting the course of cool breezes from dream
to rust in the trajectory of meteor showers and silence
and long walks in harvest moon hoodies
hanging from the eaves of the hospital
with a stack of hotcakes.
8.08.2006
landscapes as large as insomnia
A couple weeks ago several of us started a writer's group so we could get feedback on work in progress and talk about our craft. also including furious rounds of exquisite corpse and writing exercises as homework between meetings. this last week we decided to each write a poem of sixteen lines, edit it down to eight, then four then two lines, a process of, as i see it, learning to refine the essential or necessary metaphors of the piece.
the problem being that for days i have been feeling unable to write. not writer's block, there are still too many themes and images welling up to be written, but just sort of a dauntingness of knowing how. not to mention working way too much and sleeping way too little and the always frustrations of figuring out the logistics of living, and the full moon and in the trough of my bimonthly manic cycles. and spending whatever free time and energy i have writing long letters and doing way too much research on Yeats' complex and strange symbol system (which is another story entirely and too close to home for casual thought).
finally last night i went to armand's, where i go after work occasionally to get a drink and write, and just started in on a piece about my grandmother's funeral that i hadn't been able to touch yet and probably needs a lot more work if not the rest of my life to consider in full. but much too long to be the 16 line homework assignment. but relieving, and like turning on the tap again.
so tonight after reading octavio paz's magnificent piece "sun stone" i just figured, it didn't matter what i wrote, as long as i went at it, and came up with the following bit of train of thought that while much much too short (it is a theme of all themes i could expand indefinitely in any direction), the process of culling it down was highly highly illuminating as far as seeing how metaphors are constructed from disparate images.
16.
i call on the names of all:
candle light, tabletop, train tunnel,
terror touched in a stranger’s face
and turned to smile (we’re really not so strange)
call on sublime sunsets
over rose petaled oceans
and lightning storms, days of travel,
the crumbling chessboard of roads and fences
this third smoke, that man’s beret,
the glare and howl of the television,
every drink shared between friends
and every toast thrown at the wall in rage
i call on you the names of all:
histories and communiqués and fading,
every memory lost and rewritten
on the silent stone of this world
8.
i call on the names of all:
the light that turns the stranger
from a tunnel of terror to smile,
across the storms of road and rose
i call on you the names of all:
the everyday glare shared like toast
with the memories of history smoking
on the silent stone of this world
4.
i call on the names of all:
daylight shared with strangers’ smiles
to toast the tunnel of memory smoking
on the silent rose of this world
2.
i call on shared sunlight smiles
to toast the tunneled rose of time
the problem being that for days i have been feeling unable to write. not writer's block, there are still too many themes and images welling up to be written, but just sort of a dauntingness of knowing how. not to mention working way too much and sleeping way too little and the always frustrations of figuring out the logistics of living, and the full moon and in the trough of my bimonthly manic cycles. and spending whatever free time and energy i have writing long letters and doing way too much research on Yeats' complex and strange symbol system (which is another story entirely and too close to home for casual thought).
finally last night i went to armand's, where i go after work occasionally to get a drink and write, and just started in on a piece about my grandmother's funeral that i hadn't been able to touch yet and probably needs a lot more work if not the rest of my life to consider in full. but much too long to be the 16 line homework assignment. but relieving, and like turning on the tap again.
so tonight after reading octavio paz's magnificent piece "sun stone" i just figured, it didn't matter what i wrote, as long as i went at it, and came up with the following bit of train of thought that while much much too short (it is a theme of all themes i could expand indefinitely in any direction), the process of culling it down was highly highly illuminating as far as seeing how metaphors are constructed from disparate images.
16.
i call on the names of all:
candle light, tabletop, train tunnel,
terror touched in a stranger’s face
and turned to smile (we’re really not so strange)
call on sublime sunsets
over rose petaled oceans
and lightning storms, days of travel,
the crumbling chessboard of roads and fences
this third smoke, that man’s beret,
the glare and howl of the television,
every drink shared between friends
and every toast thrown at the wall in rage
i call on you the names of all:
histories and communiqués and fading,
every memory lost and rewritten
on the silent stone of this world
8.
i call on the names of all:
the light that turns the stranger
from a tunnel of terror to smile,
across the storms of road and rose
i call on you the names of all:
the everyday glare shared like toast
with the memories of history smoking
on the silent stone of this world
4.
i call on the names of all:
daylight shared with strangers’ smiles
to toast the tunnel of memory smoking
on the silent rose of this world
2.
i call on shared sunlight smiles
to toast the tunneled rose of time
from sun stone by Octavio Paz
"I search without finding, and I write alone,
no one is here, and the day ends, the year ends,
I have gone down with the moment, all the way down,
the road is invisible over all these mirrors,
they repeat and reflect forever my broken image,
I pace the days, the moments pave this roadway,
I step upon the thinking of my shadow,
I pace my shadow in search of my one moment,"
no one is here, and the day ends, the year ends,
I have gone down with the moment, all the way down,
the road is invisible over all these mirrors,
they repeat and reflect forever my broken image,
I pace the days, the moments pave this roadway,
I step upon the thinking of my shadow,
I pace my shadow in search of my one moment,"
8.02.2006
Jack Kerouac's Belief and Technique for Modern Prose:
Jack Kerouac's Belief and Technique for Modern Prose:
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language &knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language &knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
7.26.2006
digging through pages of time
Long days of welling memories between the mechanics of living. engineering the sounds and sayings, looking for work and a roof, flashes of each time i've looked for work, a roof, strum and song and all the harsh grating of details. i almost got a whole house for cheap, but not cheap enough, so instead i went to goodwill to look for books to sell and came home with a stack for my own library. i can't help myself. of course there were some excellent finds. a copy of PKDick's Exegesis, a book on missing myths in america, a pocket edition of the surrealist poet Apollinaire's "alcools" who coined the term surrealism (in french unfortunately, but it was only a dollar. these texts can not be lost to time).
the greatest find, comparable to a DJ's record crate digging, was a copy of the Comte de Lautreamont's "les chants de maldoror" which i've been meaning to acquire for awhile and never expected in the snooty shadyside thrift shop. hailed as a masterpiece by the surrealists (it contains their founding quote "beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table") this prose poem was written in the late 1800's by a mysterious youth who died at the age of 24. many of the writers i admire, and the ones they admired, relied heavily on this text, which from the sound of it falls in the same type of journalistic literature as my two favorite novels, rilke's "the notebooks of malte-laurides brigge" or sartre's "nausea". where the "hero" of the notebooks is obsessed with and sees through Death, and in "nausea" with the existential horror of Emptiness, Lautreamont's anti-hero Maldoror is obsessed with Evil and the absence of god and how this is acted out (in apparently disturbing and imagistic passages that almost had the book banned for obscenity when it was first published). i look forward to reading this when i'm done with Henry Miller's "Plexus", along with the copy of Yeat's symbolist text "a vision" which i also recently tracked down. now if i can only find a copy of stephen mallarme's poetry in the trash...
lautreamont is also credited with saying: "Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It closely grasps an author's sentence, uses his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with a right one."
and
"Poetry must be made by all and not by one."
the greatest find, comparable to a DJ's record crate digging, was a copy of the Comte de Lautreamont's "les chants de maldoror" which i've been meaning to acquire for awhile and never expected in the snooty shadyside thrift shop. hailed as a masterpiece by the surrealists (it contains their founding quote "beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table") this prose poem was written in the late 1800's by a mysterious youth who died at the age of 24. many of the writers i admire, and the ones they admired, relied heavily on this text, which from the sound of it falls in the same type of journalistic literature as my two favorite novels, rilke's "the notebooks of malte-laurides brigge" or sartre's "nausea". where the "hero" of the notebooks is obsessed with and sees through Death, and in "nausea" with the existential horror of Emptiness, Lautreamont's anti-hero Maldoror is obsessed with Evil and the absence of god and how this is acted out (in apparently disturbing and imagistic passages that almost had the book banned for obscenity when it was first published). i look forward to reading this when i'm done with Henry Miller's "Plexus", along with the copy of Yeat's symbolist text "a vision" which i also recently tracked down. now if i can only find a copy of stephen mallarme's poetry in the trash...
lautreamont is also credited with saying: "Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It closely grasps an author's sentence, uses his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with a right one."
and
"Poetry must be made by all and not by one."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
