Continuing the Blog Days of Summer airing of blemes: just finished my quadrennial reading of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and mwah, the Vulcan golem still live-longing and prospering. Serendipitously, a bud who's the first link below also posted about Stephen Dixon who I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when posting a link to Millions' upcoming releases post. I confess Dixon has never sung to me, but perhaps now is the time to try again. I spent an afternoon reading Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and loved it, bought his Tree of Smoke and it's (or rather, I'm) not working. Found my paperback of Vollmann's Fathers & Crows, a new Vollmann, a Seven Dreams, mentioned in said Millions' list; even though they are not related narratively they are related thematically, I'm thinking of rereading at least one or two, Fathers & Crows my favorite. Gass has a new novel coming: The Tunnel is on my shelf Hey Sailoring me. So, no reading slump, yay me! Suggestions for something I've never read, maybe even heard of, solicited. Oh, never mind.
- Capitalism and definitions.
- The geopolitics of the financial crisis.
- C'est normal.
- The joke's on you.
- UPDATE! Stewart responds to the above.
- The nauseating grief of diseased America.
- Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready.
- Yes, motherfucking Obama, but motherfucking crackers will now be designated YMOBMC.
- YMOBMC.
- Trust Me, I'm Lying.
- Thoughts on a Denise Duhamel poem.
- Presence in God's absence.
- Frances sends me a thank you. My pleasure. Thank you.
- The Charlie Parker story.
- Have some Goatwhore?
- Is there progress in music?
- We're through being cool.
- Someone else loves Kate Bush. Seven days to High Holy Day.
- Mr Alarum introduced me to Ferneyhough, which has an insider work pun only he and I will get:
DAMARISCOTTA
D. Nurkse
1
How we loved to create a world.
Out of gray we made the pin-oak leaves
with their saw teeth and odd waxy sheen,
dry and matte to the touch, out of granite
we made the marriage house, and always
we added a flaw which we called fire
or time or the stranger.
2
A drop of water on the lip of a jug,
trembling, trying to hold on
for another second to the idea of sphericity—
that was us, our nakedness.
3
We worked to thwart our happiness
because it was so unexpected;
suffering tasted like our mouths.
4
We had a flagstone path, a pond, four birches,
a dog racing in tight circles, helpless
against the dream of fresh snow.
Tomorrow that red Schwinn with training wheels
must find a way to pedal itself.
5
World like a child who learned to walk
beyond our outstretched hands.
