Wowee, this was on a new book cart yesterday, I've already read the first five poems, I've already bought my copy from the publisher, I hope I get it by Monday before we head for Ohio Tuesday - more tomorrow, someone turns twenty - so I can beat it up in my hands and write in the margins like a book of poetry needs to be read and held and dog-eared and underlined and loved, here, have this poem:
THE VOWELS PASS BY IN ENGLISH
Brenda Hillman
-& the owl drops flowers
from its eyes [Dentaria californica]
the raceme, the stubbed stem lands straight
in the woods - as the ancients do;
on a hazel branch, a cocoon
hoists itself.... with a worm's mind -;
i-eee is released in winter
as humans hold bones to the fire -
they were there a long time,
(interpreting the dead loves
as meaning seeped through the cracks
of centuries held by everyone --);
the ocean rises by inches -- when
the wave withdraws, plovers pick evidence
from married footprints as the lyric does,
or sanity... Luminescent creatures
sink red in the sand --
for they have swallowed... all 3 sunsets!
& the vowels pass by in English,
the ruined banisters of the A, a bridle-
ring of the O, the saddle of the U
brought from the underworld;
I had to negotiate with devils
to retrieve even this much
from the language of the colonizers.
Wowee, huh? I tweeted in defeat Monday night that I am utterly incapable of reading fiction, as in I can read it for half an hour but none of it sticks. I've bitched about as it's steadily got worse the past three years, but here's good or bad news depending on moment: the guilt, the panic is easing. If I can just stop buying fiction I can't read in effort to fix the problem I'll save money too. HEY! tonight me and Earthgirl and Hamster see this guy:
- You won't hear about it or see photos from the concert until Thursday because tomorrow is Egoslavia's Most Sacred Day.
- No links tomorrow either tomorrow, Egoslavia's Most Sacred Day. Have some today.
- But not many, besides the link directly below I'm going to skip the Iraq scab-picking not because the scabs don't need picking, they just don't need re-picking here.
- UPDATE! Heroes in error.
- Barbarian Rhapsody. Yes, again, icymi.
- Yves on Cyprus.
- Steubenville and Jock Culture.
- Scoffing at the sacred cow.
- Oldblogbud Ed's latest project. I'm good for a postcard, more if he makes it to Indiana, then...
- There are new places to read over in New Here, go look for them.
- For instance, on the death of google reader. Google has removed the link to reader in my gmail accounts, can still get by - fuck me - googling google reader.
- Anacostia.
- Dickens and Blegsylvania.
- Archie Ammons.
- Another anthology I need get.
- UPDATE! Zombie playlist for a lost one.
- Most of the poems in The Arcadia Project are too long for me to type out, I may jpeg some and post, but below song, another.
OPERATIVE SPRING
Eric Linsker
near/gaseous twigs lacking fluency in the chunks of branch pipe
rot centered shade, and the shade of the thrush
stained by the suthering wind, loosens from the
other, bit-green/brown flap of sound, restart, touring on its side, a grass/attempt
sticking
with snow seen by, it brushing/delineated yellow ashes of human dropped
forsythia like thrush, who handles its world when it looks away, the
powers are marching hitherward it is known before
where they arrive they move
belike some things I know not what/whatever, cannot hear them, cannot hear
thrush now, I think we should slaughter them
